Forrester Research recently surveyed 878 IT decision-makers at North American enterprises. Forty-eight percent represent enterprises with 1,000 to 4,999 employees, and 52 percent represent companies with 5,000 or more employees. On average, these enterprises increased their IT budgets by 2.4 percent over 2003, up from the average of 1.7 percent growth projected for 2004 at the end of 2003. This research determined that Microsoft .NET has the edge when it comes to choosing a development platform. In interviewing these enterprise software decision-makers, Forrester found that 56 percent were using .NET as their development platform.