SAN FRANCISCO -- A just-released poll of chief information officers predicts IT budgets will grow 9% over the next 12 months, up 2 points over August.  Storage beat security software as the top spending priority.

Nearly half -- 48.4% -- of the respondents plan to increase spending on computer hardware, up from 42.3% in August. Positive sentiment at companies under 100 employees is at record levels.

The poll of more than 2,000 mostly North America CIOs is taken monthly by Deutsche Bank and CIO Magazine.

Spending projections were up in all categories in September, with the exception of data networking and security software.

CIOs at the smallest firms (<100 employees) predicted a 17% IT budget growth, while firms of 101 to 500 workers forecast 12% growth.

Firms of 501 to 1,000 workers expect 8% growth. The largest categories, 1001 to 5000 and >5000 workers, expect 5% growth.

Fifty-four percent of respondents plan to increase spending on storage, the poll found, up from 51.2% in August. Security software spending placed second with 51.6% of panelist planning to increase spending.

More than half (52%) of CIOs expect the next wave of innovation will come from the U.S., followed by China (18.4%), India (11.1%), Europe (7.9%), Southeast Asia (5.8%) and Japan (4.2%).

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