The results, based on ., showed that one in 10 companies is planning to increase the IT budget by some amount in double figures. Four in 10 said they expected "roughly the same" level of IT spending, with 10% expecting to decrease their IT outlays.

As is often the case, increases in tech spending could also signal at least a slight downward trend in hiring, the research suggests.

"A lot of companies shrunk their workforce and are now looking to technology to get more productivity out of existing employees," vice president Rebecca Wettermann said in an e-mail to CFOworld.com. "The upside of technology is you can interrupt spending on it at any time, which is not true with employees that may collect unemployment."

Increased investment offers strong signals for future prospects in certain industries, the Nucleus research suggests -- especially in tech-heavy industries such as healthcare, and for any companies on either the demand or supply side of the move toward more cloud computing.