Regional IT budgets have increased, but managing IT spending has become the top priority for CIOs and IT managers in the Asia-Pacific region, according to a new IDC report.

In its study released Tuesday, the research house said that strong regional economic growth has resulted in larger IT investments across the Asia-Pacific region, including Japan. Managing increased IT investments has also overtaken IT security to be the No. 1 infrastructure requirement in 2007 for many CIOs and IT managers.

"The recent survey of over 3,200 enterprise and public sector CIOs and IT managers regionwide indicates that managing IT cost is top priority," Gary Koch, associate vice president for IDC's Asia-Pacific IT Spending, said in a statement.

"This is not surprising as organizations which reported increasing IT budgets by far outnumbered those with diminishing budget needs," Koch added, noting that nearly 60 percent of organizations stated that their 2006 budget was an increase over the previous year, compared to about 5 percent of respondents who revealed declining IT budgets.

The survey also revealed that while hardware accounts for the lion's share of budgets, IT staff compensation, training and retention of internal IT staff will garner a growing share of total IT expenditures.

On the outsourcing of IT related functions by companies across the region, Koch said it will be a "bottom line consideration for the budget conscious".

According to the survey, the other two top IT infrastructure requirements include building a secure IT environment and faster deployment of applications.

On the outlook for 2008, IDC predicted that IT requirements will continue to grow and push up 2008 budgets.