And the lucky iTnews reader is...

The team at iTnews would like to sincerely thank all our readers who gave up a few minutes of their time to fill out the 2010 Reader Survey.

We've again learned a great deal about you and your needs - much of which we'll be sharing with you over the coming days.

From the 1200+ surveys that were completed in full, we were able to glean, for example:

• That in seven out of nine IT budget bands, IT departments expected conservative, flat spend on IT last fiscal year - but even during the downturn, they had to spend more than anticipated.
• That the hottest areas of software investment in 2010/11 included virtualisation technologies (23 percent plan to invest, 46.5 percent 'interested') and network and server management tools (21.4 percent plan to invest and 47.2 percent 'interested').
• Other areas of growth - 17 percent of readers plan to upgrade their IT security (44 percent 'interested') - well up on 2009/10, whilst 15.3 percent plan to refresh their office productivity suite (43.2 percent 'interested') - also a marked increase on the prior year. Some 16.4 percent planned to purchase unified communications or other collaboration tools (39.7 percent 'interested').
• In terms of services, customers favour software-as-a-service and other 'cloud' models (19.1 percent to invest and 50 percent 'interested') over traditional outsourcing models (11.2 percent).
• Nearly all of our readers reported that they would spend more on hardware refresh than in 2009/10. Some 37.2 percent plan on refreshing notebooks this fiscal year (50.8 percent 'interested') versus 33.4 percent to refresh desktops (47.3 percent). Also, 31.5 percent of readers plan on upgrading their smartphone fleet (49.5 percent 'interested'), while roughly one in four planned to upgrade physical servers, storage kit or networking kit (switches and routers).
• Only 12 percent of readers were interested in buying media tablets.
• One in four readers intend to upgrade their fixed broadband plan this year, one in three plan to upgrade their mobile broadband plans.

The results were also a strong vindication of the hard work our team puts in to deliver you the right information at the right time. For example:

• The average wage of an iTnews reader, particularly those in decision-making roles, is on the increase despite a tough market last year.
• Some 90.9 percent of iTnews readers are in a position to influence ICT procurement within their company this fiscal year, up from 84.3 percent in 2009/10.

It's now with great excitement that I'd like to announce the winner of our $500 cash prize for filling in the survey - Keshaba Peddamadula, a programmer in the finance industry based in Melbourne, Victoria.

Congratulations Keshaba and thanks to all that participated!

As always, we're keen to hear more feedback on our work at iTnews, please feel free to use the comment field below.