Peer-Driven Insights

Budget or Budgeting

About this topic

Budgeting refers to the process of planning, allocating and managing financial resources within an organization. A strategic budget ensures financial stability and supports business objectives.

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What sorts of strategic changes are you making to your IT budget for 2026? Are you reallocating funding from areas like infrastructure or talent in response to evolving priorities related to AI?

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Do you expect IT funding to increase/decrease overall for 2026?

Expecting a significant increase 13%

Expecting a slight increase 53%

Expecting funding to remain flat 20%

Expecting a slight decrease 13%

Expecting a significant decrease

Unsure/can’t say

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When you’re working on budgeting alongside your CISO, do you ever find that one perspective tends to take precedence over the other? How do you approach finding a balance and making collaborative decisions together?

Have your cost optimization initiatives hit their targeted goals?

Yes, we’ve been very successful25%

Somewhat, we have more work to do63%

No, we haven’t reached our goals13%

N/A — we have no recent initiatives

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Do you manage AI and traditional IT infrastructure investments as separate portfolios (budgets, governance, decision criteria), or do you combine them? What are the benefits and drawbacks?

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Which of these areas are you targeting for funding increases in your 2026 cybersecurity budget? (Choose all applicable)

Threat detection & response 51%

Identity & access management 60%

Cloud security 47%

Security awareness training 28%

Other 4%

N/A

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What is the best recommended approach to build intracompany billing in IT shared services models for a group of companies?

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Any advice for a new CIO planning their first budget for IT? What tips do you have for securing the funding IT needs?

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What adjustments are you planning to make to your org’s cyber budget for 2026 (if any)?

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What cloud cost optimization strategies have you found most effective in your organization? Are there specific techniques or best practices that have helped you reduce expenses without sacrificing the resources your teams need?

We are in the process of implementing a chatbot for our local government site with intentions to deploy for internal use only for testing. We are having problems quantifying is the cost around token consumption. I know that cost varies depending on the model used, but does anyone have any useful estimators. Consumption calculators I have found don't seem particularly useful. What methods for estimating cost did you use? Did you use number of searches against the site?