IT spending expectations among CIOs rose in March for the second consecutive month, according to the latest CIO Magazine Tech Poll. In the monthly poll for March, CIOs predicted that spending will rise 6.4 percent during the next 12 months; that"s up from a 12-month growth rate of 5.9 percent they had predicted in February.

The two months of higher spending expectations followed three straight months of declining numbers.

"The 6.4 percent is consistent with the last several months of spending," said Gary Beach, group publisher at CXO Media Inc. "When you look at it from the product-category sector, there"s more interest from panelists in investing in infrastructure software -- last year, 34 percent were interested. This year, over 40 percent say they are interested."

Computer hardware continues to gain momentum, surpassing storage as second-highest spending priority among poll respondents.

"The big story in this poll is that CIOs are continuing to be torn by, on the one hand, do more with less, and on the other, they"re being asked by a lot of business colleagues to do more, more quickly," Beach said.

Beach said 85 percent of the poll respondents said they had an application backlog, and 60 percent of those CIOs called the backlog significant. "And they"re saying either they"re going to attack it this year with funding, or they can"t attack it yet because they don"t have the dollars and cents. But it"s not trivial stuff that needs to be done," he said.

Larger companies appear to be hardest hit by the backlogs, Beach said.

"Where it gets interesting is if you look at businesses that have 5,000 or more employees -- 94 percent of them say they have an application backlog, and 81 percent of businesses that have 5,000 or more employees say their application backlog is significant," he said.

CIOs also continue to have trouble finding and keeping qualified IT labor, according to Beach. "Thirteen percent say that, and that"s the second highest that number"s been in 27 months," he said. "That"s continuing a trend we started calling back in August."

Each month, CIO magazine surveys a panel of IT executives on current and future IT spending plans and other issues. The survey is done in partnership with Ed Yardeni, chief investment strategist at Oak Associates Ltd. in Akron, Ohio.

The latest poll was conducted March 3-10, with 215 IT executives responding. Sixteen percent of the responses came from executives at companies with more than 5,000 employees.