CIOs plan to spend more of their IT budget on information management than business process automation in 2012, continuing a trend that first emerged last year, according to research firm Corporate Executive Board.

The firm’s Global IT Budget Benchmark found that on average, CIOs expect to spend 39% of their IT budget on information management, up from 36% last year. Meanwhile, the proportion to be spent on business process automation fell by one percentage point to 32%.

The report suggests that customer experience, data analytics and the facilitation of knowledge workers will take priority over business processes within corporate IT departments. CEB attributed the changes to "the rise of big data" and organisations’ desire to gain a competitive advantage through the use of information.

The firm estimates that global IT spending will total $38 billion 2012. Operating expenditure is expected to increase 3% year-on-year, compared to an expected 10% increase in 2011, it found. Meanwhile, capital expenditure is will not grow at all. In 2011, capital expenditure is predicted to have increased 20%, the company reports, allowing companies to clear a backlog that now no longer exists.

CEB also found that 20% of the CIOs surveyed are using cloud computing in "substantial ways", although service-level agreements, security governance, performance degradation, billing models and legal ambiguity are areas which need work to accelerate public cloud adoption.

The firm predicts a shift in the skillset required of IT workers. The average IT worker in 2015 is more likely to require skills in stakeholder management, risk management, or usability design than in server administration or coding, the report concluded. It predicted that new roles such as ‘collaboration evangelist’ or ‘service architect’ will emerge.

"Only 25% [of the current IT department] will remain within IT, while up to 30% will move to a multifunctional shared services group or to business units," the report said.