IT investment by mid-sized and small businesses shows signs of recovery, with increased spending on AI and infrastructure, according to Dell survey

Dell Technologies has published the results of its “2026 IT Investment Trends Survey for Mid-Sized and Small Businesses,” which examined IT budgets, investment allocation, and trends in areas including cloud services and data centers among IT managers at mid-sized and small businesses from February to March 2026. The survey has been conducted annually since 2017, making this its 10th year.

The survey identified major changes affecting IT investment decisions, including surging memory and SSD prices, the renewal of client environments in preparation for Windows 11, migration from virtualization platforms to next-generation architectures, and the spread of generative AI. It also analyzed how companies are balancing offensive and defensive IT strategies amid the need to prepare for cyber threats and constraints on personnel and budgets.

IT budgets are recovering, and companies with strong business performance tend to be more likely to increase them. Investment in cloud services and infrastructure rose by double digits. At the same time, the number of one-person IT departments is trending downward. While investment in servers and storage is becoming more active, some companies continue to use legacy operating systems for extended periods. The proportion of work outsourced remains high, highlighting challenges in operations and visibility.

AI investment is gathering pace, with many companies planning to invest ¥1 million or more in AI and generative AI. In modern infrastructure, on-premises environments still account for the majority, but larger companies in particular are moving toward less physically centered architectures, and the adoption of GPU servers is also progressing at some companies. AWS and Azure lead cloud usage, while more than half of companies now make full-scale use of online storage.