Introduction IT budgets at midsized companies are chiefly holding steady or growing for the coming year, as midmarket CIOs grapple with challenges, including IT modernization, company growth, and security and risk management.

These drivers of IT spending are the top three cited in an exclusive CIO Decisions magazine reader survey, to which nearly 400 subscribers responded in September 2006 (see Methodology, below). And they show at least one way in which midsized organizations differ from larger companies. Respondents from companies with more than $1 billion in revenue cite compliance rather than modernization as one of their top three business drivers.