IT leaders are likely to prioritise the development of customer-facing or client-facing applications over other technology initiatives in the next two years, as they seek to defy the economic downturn, according to new figures from the National Computing Centre (NCC).

The NCC's Benchmark of IT Strategy 2008 survey, released today, found that 55 per cent of respondents expect to spend resources in this area, and almost 90 per cent will make a significant investment of effort.

Network security and server architecture occupied second and third place on the top 10 list of priorities established by the research, while areas such as LAN and WAN infrastructure, finance and accounts and systems integration fell out of the top 10.

"The results show that, in the current economic climate, organisations are concentrating their efforts on activities that improve the customer experience rather than focusing on back-office systems," said NCC publications manager Ian Jones.

"They are benefiting from work over the past two years where there has been a concentration of activity around rationalising server estates and storage."

The survey also found that the current economic climate is affecting IT spend. Forty per cent of organisations had reviewed their IT spending targets for this year since they were set, and 58 per cent of those who had completed a review for the current financial year reported a drop in spending.