The recession has spurred Wall street firms to investigate the use of new technology, particularly cloud computing, in a bid to overcome budgetary restrictions and skills shortages, according to a survey from IBM.
The poll of over 350 Wall Street IT professionals, conducted in conjunction with Sifma, shows that 32% predict cuts in their technology budgets in 2010, with 50% expecting them to remain the same or increase, a similar picture to last year.
This will contribute to a shift in technology use, with 46% of respondents predicting that cloud computing will force significant business change, up from 21% in 2008.
This makes it the top disruptive technology in the eyes of respondents, ahead of even operational risk modelling and mobile technologies.
IBM says cloud computing - where processing, storage, networking and applications are accessed as services over networks - has the potential to cut the costs, complexity and headaches of technology.
Ian Hurst, general manager, IBM Financial Services, says: "Firms need to capitalize on the latest technologies such as cloud computing to better manage all this data, operational risk modelling and analytics to assess it and turn it into market insight, and then mobile technologies to place it in the hands of the decision makers, wherever they are."
IT spending on compliance continues to be important, with the survey revealing that systematic risk regulation, and risk and pricing transparency expected to have the greatest potential to impact technology spend.
Randy Snook, senior MD, Sifma, says: "Often clients or regulators will call our members firms about a trade that happened several months ago. New technologies will make this far easier. Cloud computing can allow firms to keeping vast amounts of data online indefinitely and mobile technologies can give brokers instant access from anywhere so that they can quickly answer such questions without having to pull out and search their data archives."