Flexibility in the face of uncertainty and delivering more
value to the business are set to be the key tasks for IT directors
in 2005.
Despite the recovery in IT spending, IT directors should ensure
that their annual plans are flexible enough to accommodate a
possible downturn in the economy or changes in business plans, said
Ben Booth, chairman of the BCS Elite group and IT director at
research group Mori.
"As we prepare our budgets for 2005 we must have some contingency
in case we need to economise or there is reduced demand," he told
Computer Weekly.
Flexibility must be combined with boosting IT's relevance to the
business, said Alex Robinson, IT director at Norwich Union
Insurance, the UK's largest insurer. A key challenge for Robinson
is to ensure his IT managers have sufficient managerial skills and
commercial savvy to contribute to business strategy.
The IT director at a large automotive supplier said this will be
done by providing a new management information service across
Europe "to enable consistent and more timely decision making, as
well as transparency of performance".
Other IT directors questioned by Computer Weekly outlined the
diverse technological and managerial challenges facing the
profession.
The perennial favourites, doing more for less, security,
consolidation and getting to grips with open source all feature on
the IT director's agenda in 2005.
Robinson said, "Our biggest IT investment this year will be in a
programme to simplify our business processes and systems. We will
be discarding a lot of older technology and implementing a range of
new, predominantly web-based systems to support our business
growth."
Stephen Way, IT manager at chemicals company Johnson Matthey, said
his main goals for 2005 were "cost reduction and continuing to
provide more for less".
The debate over the merits of open source software will continue.
"We have to deal with open source software. We can grasp it, reject
it after consideration, or just stick with what we know," said Glyn
Evans, IT director at Birmingham City Council.
"I think there is a lot of potential for open source software, but
it is clouded by people in favour of open source being evangelical,
while on the other side, we are getting scare stories from
Microsoft. Neither is good or helpful."
Inevitably IT directors will remain under pressure to bolster their
organisation's defences within a tight budget.
David Rippon, IT director at the University of London Computer
Centre, said, "My main IT goals for 2005 revolve around security
and preventing viruses and denial of service attacks, as well as
keeping on top of patching, and testing desktop
applications."
IT challenges for 2005 >>