9 trends that are keeping IT spending at record highs, according to top IT execs — and it's good news for Amazon and Microsoft

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Budgets continue to grow for the IT department as chief information officers continue to prioritize investments in digital transformation and cloud computing, according to Morgan Stanley's Q2 2018 CIO survey, published Tuesday.

Researchers interviewed 100 CIOs — 77 in the US and 23 Europe — and found strong budgets across the board. While annual growth remains strong, CIO's were slightly less optimistic this quarter, and their expectations how much they will spend in 2018 were slightly lower than they had been in Q1.

These are 9 of the key takeaways Morgan Stanley found from its survey.

US IT budgets are growing faster in 2018

CIOs indicated "modest acceleration" in terms of their IT budget growth, according to the report. The survey found that budgets will grow around 5.3% in 2018, compared to 5.2% growth in 2017.

When looked at regionally, growth in the US could actually reach 5.5% in 2018, up from 5.3%, while in Europe budgets are expected to grow by 4.6%, which is flat from 2017.

...but CIOs were more optimistic about growth last quarter.

CIOs in both the US and Europe were more optimistic in the first quarter of the year compared with this last quarter, according to the survey.

Estimated budgets for 2018 were 0.1% lower in the Q2 survey than they had been in the Q1 survey. In the US, estimates declined from 5.6% to 5.5% growth, while in the EU they declined from 4.7% growth to 4.6%.