An authoritative survey of 100 chief information officers and IT
directors by finance house Merrill Lynch has showed that users
expect a gradual rather than quick improvement in IT spending in
the months ahead.
The survey also found price was the most important factor in vendor
selection.
The study, based on 75 US-based CIOs and 25 European IT executives,
quoted one unnamed CIO as saying corporate executives will be more
cautious about IT spending for the foreseeable future.
"Having cut costs and survived, we question how much of the
spending was needed in the first place," the CIO said. "Business
leaders are more knowledgeable of what the real benefits are that
IT spending can provide and will be more conservative in spending."
The survey showed that two-thirds of the CIOs are investing in Web
services; one-third use enterprise application integration
software; two-thirds have application servers; and users are split
between Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and .net for their Web
foundation.
It also found that 26% prefer J2EE, while 22% favour .net. A full
30% use neither while 7% use both.
Almost two-thirds of the CIOs surveyed by Merrill Lynch think that
software will, in future, be delivered as a service, but said it
may take another three to five years for that to occur.
Although most users said they were happy with their enterprise
resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM)
installations, significant numbers said they have not gota
satisfactory return on investment. About 60% had implemented ERP
systems, and 25% were installing CRM.
One CIO said that many ERP installations "never provided the
required return on investment, though you'll never read a press
release to that effect." Disappointed users said the software was
too pricey, full functionality was never realised, and integration
with legacy systems was difficult.
The survey results also showed:
- Users plan to add more full-time workers than consultants when
demand improves
- Demand for outsourcing is holding up better than systems
integration and consulting
- Europeans are outsourcing more often, but US CIOs by a wide
margin are doing more internally as the use of consultants
declines. More than half of users employ application service
providers (ASP), led by IBM
- Less than half of US CIOs cited cost of ownership (or
operation) as their chief concern. But more than half of Europeans
cited that as a top priority.