The challenges of aligning the IT department to business
strategy and responding to change and financial pressure on budgets
are the main managerial preoccupations of IT directors for the year
ahead, according to research by Computer Weekly.
The management priorities emerged in a Computer Weekly survey of
170 IT directors across a range of industries.
The long-running goal of aligning IT strategy with boardroom
thinking was rated as one of the top three priorities by almost
half of IT directors, and "coping with change" and "financial
pressures" were ranked as the other top three priorities for
40%.
The research also questioned IT directors about their spending
plans for the year ahead. Forty per cent of the IT directors
surveyed said spending on IT was set to increase over the next 12
months.
Of these, 66% said IT spending would increase by between 0% to 10%,
and 20% expected spending to rise by between 11% to 25%. Only 17%
of those surveyed said budgets would be cut.
Spending on IT services is also set to increase, with 66% of
companies planning to increase spending by up to 10% on supplier
services and outsourcing.
The findings add to a growing body of evidence that the IT market
is staging a steady recovery after three bruising years of economic
downturn and constrained budgets.
Given the proliferation of increasingly sophisticated viruses over
the past year, that security was the most pressing technology issue
judged to be facing business was no surprise. Security (54%) was
followed by infrastructure upgrades (44%) and mobile computing
(31%).
The rise in the level of outsourcing within a range of industries
was also underlined by the report. Of the IT directors questioned,
33% said they outsourced some function of their IT; technical
support was the most popular (63%), followed by customer service
(15%).
The most common reason given for outsourcing was higher quality of
service, with cost containment the next most popular reason.
Reasons given by IT directors for not outsourcing included the
cost, or not wanting to hand over IT because it was seen as a core
part of the business.
Despite analyst predictions that offshore outsourcing will
transform the IT industry - and cost thousands of UK jobs - 60% of
IT directors ruled out offshore outsourcing over the next year,
compared to 37% who said they would outsource.
On the increasingly important issue of compliance, the Data
Protection Act was cited by 52% of companies as the most important
piece of legislation that will affect business.
Elsewhere, long-running concerns continued to loom large; 33% of IT
directors said the difficulty of identifying the benefits of
investment in technology as a major hurdle to overcome.
However, on a more positive note, about 80% of IT direc-tors felt
their boards recognised the vital role of IT to the organisation.