IT organizations are bracing to meet higher service level expectations brought on by virtualization and cloud computing initiatives in 2010 without the looming threat of budget and staffing cuts that marked 2009, according to a Stratus Technologies/ITIC survey.

The survey of 250 IT professionals in 14 countries confirmed that more IT organizations are over-extended, with smaller staffs working longer hours to compensate for fewer workers and ever-expanding responsibilities. The results show that 57 percent of IT professionals know that virtualization and cloud computing increase their system availability requirements and service level agreement SLA obligations.

Confidence that they can meet those demands in 2010 is firming. Among the companies surveyed, 31percent expect their IT budgets to increase next year, 39 percent expect it to remain the same, and only 17 percent expect further cuts.

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