December 2014 (13:4) | MIS Quarterly Executive 237 Introduction1,2 Since 1980, the Society for Information Management (SIM), in a joint effort with different universities, has conducted an annual survey of the key issues facing IT executives. Over time, these studies have expanded to include questions about spending, workforce, sourcing, reporting relationships, performance measurement, and various other IT organizational and management practices. They also explored how IT executives spend their time and with whom they spend it, as well as their assessment of the role and state of IT in their organizations. In addition to providing an annual snapshot of the state of IT, another important contribution of these multi-year studies efforts is the identification of important trends across the IT industry and profession. The 2014 SIM IT Trends Study, conducted in the second quarter of 2014, focused on six important areas: 1. IT management key issues and concerns 2. Largest IT investments and most important technologies 3. IT organization, role, budget, and staffing trends 1 This article is being published as a SIM-sponsored report. 2 Special thanks to Ken (Kittipong) Boonme (University of North Texas) for his assistance with data validation and graphics. The 2014 SIM IT Key Issues and Trends Study This article presents the major findings from the Society for Information Manage- ment’s (SIM) 2014 IT Trends Study. Organizations continue to invest in IT to improve operations, reduce costs, and enable business strategies. IT budgets, hiring, and sala- ries are modestly increasing, and IT executives are cautiously optimistic that this trend will continue into next year. Overall, the Study finds that IT is becoming more strategic and business focused. As organizations become more digitized, their focus is shifting away from tactical and operational IT issues like efficiency, service delivery, and cost reduction to more strategic and organizational priorities like business agil- ity, innovation, the velocity of change in the organization, IT time-to-market, and the value of IT to the business. These trends are confirmed by a corresponding shift in how CIOs are spending their time, how their performance is measured, and the skills that are most important to their success. 1,2 Leon Kappelman University of North Texas (U.S.) Ephraim McLean Georgia State University (U.S.) Vess Johnson University of the Incarnate Word (U.S.) Natalie Gerhart University of North Texas (U.S.)