Microsoft stands to receive the largest share of the world's IT budgets, according to new research.

Evans Data Corporation found that half of software professionals expect to increase their IT development spending with Microsoft more than with any other company.

In a study designed by the research house to track the opinions and attitudes of software professionals, Microsoft ranked highest for expected increases in IT spending.

Other leading vendors ranked in the survey were SAP, Apple, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Adobe, BEA, Oracle, AMD, Intel, Cisco, HP, Computer Associates, Compuware and Borland.

However, SAP steals the lead as the top company for application development spending next year at 54 per cent of respondents. Microsoft came second at 50 per cent, and BEA third at 44 per cent.

The top three companies for service oriented architecture (SOA) spending next year are SAP at 41 per cent, BEA at 40 per cent and IBM at 34 per cent.

"While many new vendors are taking advantage of the emergence of virtualisation, SOA, software-as-a-service and Enterprise 2.0, it is still those incumbents which continue to enhance their product roadmaps and, in some cases, their pricing models which are forecast to benefit the greatest in IT spending, " said John Andrews of Evans Data.

"These incumbents enjoy the greatest revenue growth due to their focus on the key enterprise priorities of applications integration, security, cost cutting, business intelligence, ERP/CRM and web-based applications development."