IT spending in 2009 will change little from 2008, according to a
worldwide survey of 1,500 CIOs by
Gartner Executive Programs
(EXP).
Despite expectations of sharp IT budget cuts as the economic
downturn continues, CIOs indicate there will be an average global
increase of 0.16%.
European CIOs predict growth of 0.48%, but UK CIOs expect an
average decrease of around 2.2%.
In general, the changes are very slight, said Gartnet analyst
Dave Aron. This is because IT is fairly lean already with little
growth in the past four years. It is also seen as a business
enabler.
"Many organisations are looking to IT to help get efficiency and
effectiveness in the rest of the business rather than drive out IT
cost," he said.
CIOs will have the same resources as they had in 2008 to address
a new set of challenges, which means working smarter to raise
efficiency and lower costs.
Effective enterprises understand working smarter and they are
using IT to extend their market leading position, said Mark
McDonald, group vice-president at Gartner EXP.
"Less effective enterprises are simply not investing in IT
beyond what is needed to support day-to-day operations for
short-term survival rather than strategic gain," he said.
The survey shows that business expectations for IT focus on
improving current operations and performance.
Improving business processes is in top position, which is
unchanged from the past three years, followed by reducing
enterprise costs, up from fifth position in 2008, and improving
workforce effectiveness, up from sixth position.
The hot technologies for 2009 are the technologies that are
already in-house, according to the survey. CIOs are concentrating
on getting the most out of existing technologies such as business
intelligence and meeting increased needs for communications and
storage.
Organisations are investing in new technologies such a Web 2.0,
but the scale of those investments is significantly less than the
money spent on the existing technology base, said the report.
In the face of continued economic volatility and uncertainty,
CIOs will have to be decisive in setting priorities that increase
business effectiveness.
Priorities for 2009 should focus on improving business
processes, using business intelligence to raise visibility within
the organisation and enhancing workforce effectiveness.
"CIOs need to be very clear about what is strategic and what is
not and act on it rather than muddling along doing the same
portfolio of projects," said Aron.
Organisations should use the opportunity to remove all the dead
wood such as "zombie projects" that never end and even to remove
non-performing people.
"CIOs should refocus on the business strategy, get really clear
on how the business will win and how IT will help, and then
aggressively prioritise the IT portfolio based on that," said
Aron
Enterprises face a challenging economic environment in 2009 and
expect IT to contribute by reducing costs to the business.
To do this, CIOs need to be resourceful in building an effective
enterprise that can meet current and future challenges, the report
said.
For many CIOs this will mean restructuring IT to raise its
productivity and modernising the technical infrastructure to meet
business demands for lower energy consumption, improved performance
and greater storage capacity.