"Corporate IT Trends Survey 2026" Report Publicly Released: 957 Listed Companies Responded, Investigating and Analyzing the Reality of IT Investment and Strategy. Proposing 3 Roles Required of IT Departments in the DX and AI Era.

The Japan Users Association of Information Systems (JUAS) has conducted the "Corporate IT Trends Survey 2026" (2025 fiscal year survey), which examines trends in corporate IT investment and IT strategy, and will release a report summarizing the detailed analysis results. The PDF version of this report will be publicly available on the association's website starting today, April 24th (Friday). A video explaining the survey results is also being distributed on the association's YouTube channel. Please take a look at both.

Survey Report PDF Version: https://juas.or.jp/library/research_rpt/it_trend/

Survey Results Explanation Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfHGxSJI438&t=2108s

This year's key theme is "Creating the Future with People and AI: The Image of the IT Department in a New Era." With the rapid spread of generative AI and its emergence as a foundation for business transformation, IT departments are expected to drive sustainable corporate transformation together with business units. In this press release, we will present a set of "3 Latest Facts" revealed by the survey data and "3 Recommendations for IT Departments in the New Era" based on those facts.

■ DX Promotion Objectives Shifting from "Defense" to "Offense"

Regarding the objectives of DX promotion, "Cost reduction for existing businesses," which had the highest proportion, decreased by 6.0 percentage points from the previous year to 36.1%. In contrast, "Improving profitability of existing businesses" (20.3%) and "Entering new businesses or new business domains" (13.5%) have increased, indicating that corporate awareness is shifting from "defensive DX," such as operational efficiency improvements, to "offensive DX," aiming for new business creation and revenue expansion. (Figure 1)

Figure 1 Objectives of DX Promotion

[Recommendation 1] Become a leader in corporate transformation in the coming DX and Generative AI era.

Driven by the penetration of DX and the spread of generative AI, momentum for transformation is increasing in various departments. IT departments are required not only to be a group of specialists in technology adoption but also to serve as "promotion leaders" who connect departmental initiatives to company-wide results. At the same time, they are expected to proactively implement business transformation using generative AI themselves and become role models for the entire company.

■ Urgent need to review budget allocation and development structure due to unavoidable IT cost increase and worsening QCD.

Although IT budgets tend to increase, the ratio of "value-up budget" for growth remains flat, influenced by unavoidable cost increases such as the weak yen, rising personnel costs, and maintenance of existing systems. Furthermore, the adherence to QCD (Quality, Cost, Delivery) in system development is deteriorating, and to address this, approximately 70% of companies are aiming to differentiate between in-house development and external outsourcing. (Figures 2, 3)

Figure 2 IT Budget Allocation by Fiscal Year (Average Ratio)

Figure 3 Policy for In-house vs. Outsourced System Development

[Recommendation 2] Become a leader in optimizing cost, data, and people.

To balance responding to unavoidable cost increases with investing in growth, the number of companies conducting pre- and post-evaluations of IT investments to scrutinize projects is steadily increasing. With rising costs due to changes in the external environment and increasingly complex technologies and systems, ensuring the QCD of IT projects originating from business units is more important than ever. Furthermore, maintaining data in a usable state is essential for promoting DX and creating value. IT departments are required to play a management role in overseeing and optimally allocating management resources such as cost, data, and people from a company-wide perspective, based on business strategy and investment effectiveness.

■ Increasing importance of security measures and questioning of business continuity.

As a management issue to be resolved through IT investment, the importance of security enhancement has steadily risen over the past 12 years and is positioned as one of the key management issues. On the other hand, actual efforts mainly focus on "deterrence," such as equipment installation and employee training, and initiatives such as establishing recovery procedures and conducting drills assuming incident occurrence are not sufficiently widespread. (Figure 4)

Figure 4 Medium-to-long-term management issues to be solved with IT investment over the past 12 years and management issues faced in FY2025.

[Recommendation 3] Become a leader in strengthening business resilience.

Security measures are not an issue limited to IT departments but are a management issue that affects business continuity and corporate competitiveness. IT departments are required to lead from the perspective of "company-wide business continuity (resilience)," not only deterring incidents as in the past, but also assuming incidents will occur, minimizing their impact, and establishing a system to stably resume operations.

◆ Survey Overview

The "Corporate IT Trends Survey" has been continuously conducted since fiscal year 1994 with the aim of understanding the IT trends of IT user companies. It is supervised by the Commercial and Information Policy Bureau of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan.