Finance firms spend £10,000 per IT person

IT staffing levels are up 15% over 2005, according to research by the National Computing Centre (NCC), inflated partly by activity in the finance sector.

While a typical company employs 28 staff per 1,000 users, this rises to 75 staff in finance companies.

Finance firms spend £9,864 for every employee, compared with an overall average of £3,891. Transport, utilities and business services spend well above the average.

At the other end of the scale, companies in the health sector spend just £1,713 per user.

NCC reports that average IT investment remains a steady and modest 2.5% of turnover for the second year running.

“Today’s results tell us that IT decision-makers are confident, but not over-enthusiastic about future prospects,” says Stefan Foster, managing director of NCC.

“Organisations are typically making incremental rather than wholesale changes to their IT provision.”

Mobile devices are lapping up almost a third of IT spend while development investment is focused on voice over IP.

By 2008, NCC expects 12% of desktops to run on Windows Vista.