Information management
(IM) solutions are moving to the centre of IT
strategies as a way of driving IT and business
alignment and delivering real and visible value to the business,
according to a recent survey from Forrester research.
The market analyst believes that the driver for such a move is
the fact that wherever there is a hot growth market in IT, there
will be plenty of IT consultants, systems integrators, and managed
services providers to help architect, plan, implement, and manage
the solution.
After surveying vendors of both IM software and services to
assess the size of the IM services market, Forrester expects the
global information services market to grow from its present value
of $7.9 billion to $10.9 billion by 2012, representing a compound
annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.2%.
Business intelligence (BI) and business performance solutions
will likely dominate this spend, although Forrester adds that the
information strategy segment will see the fastest growth throughout
the forecast period.
Data warehouse services should also witness strong growth over
the next two years as with greater interest in and deployment of BI
and BPS solutions, the requirements for data warehouses to store
all of the data should also grow commensurately. On a long term
basis, data warehouses will likely start to take over some of the
functions typically found in the data management segment and also
require more consulting and integration services.
Forrester also thinks that content management and portal
services should witness high growth in 2009. It says the content
management market has consistently underperformed the high
expectations set for it and that even though the promise of
enterprise content management (ECM) solutions has never really been
delivered by the software providers, in those cases where heavy ECM
solutions have failed, portals are beginning to deliver. Some
organisations are beginning to use portals as their ad hoc ECM
solution, and Forrester predicts that this trend will accelerate in
2009.
Forrester advises firms to define clearly and information
management services strategy and adhere to it, ensuring that it can
take the company forward, should the current focus segment start to
merge with another. It adds that firms should assess core
competencies as part of the strategic due diligence in defining a
strategy, put them into context with the total market opportunity,
and balance a portfolio of new areas and old areas.