| IT
Management: The Future of the IT Organisation
22.03.2004 - Computer Weekly
Prepare to spend to take full advantage of rising demand for complex technology
IT directors should prepare for growth and plan to spend their full budget this
year. That will be the message to corporate IT users attending the Gartner Symposium
in Barcelona this week.
After four years of IT directors cutting costs, rising
business confidence is
fuelling demand for new IT.
There is a sharp turnaround from 2003 when IT directors
were still grappling with the downturn. A quarter of
businesses did not spend their full IT budget
last year, according to Gartner.
This year, however, businesses are preparing
for growth and this will mean an accelerated pace of
change for the IT department and an increased complexity
in technology.
Senior IT managers will have to respond with new business
insight and put forward new technology proposals that
add business
value.
At the same time, IT directors must continue
to rationalise internal infrastructure, drive down
costs, improve
services and demonstrate control, according to the
analyst group. Gartner Symposium delegates will hear analysts question
whether software development will meet the demands
of new and
more complex business needs. Continuing shifts
in application infrastructure, as well as the skills to develop and deploy
these in more modern applications, remain key stumbling blocks for many organisations.
IT
directors will have to answer a series of difficult
questions in the coming months: should you build your
own applications or outsource them? Do you have
the right skills available in-house? Are packaged applications the answer?
Should application development be outsourced?
Any opportunity to hand over responsibility
for aspects of IT - whether through an offshore outsourcer
or a UK-based company - needs consideration, Gartner
will warn. Mistakes could leave organisations signed into a contract that cannot
handle
the changing demands of the business.
IT infrastructure will also need to be
refreshed because many companies have delayed upgrading
their PC and server hardware, making their existing
infrastructure
unlikely to cope as business picks up, delegates will be told.
Users seeking
to update their infrastructure will benefit from a
price war among server manufacturers.
Hewlett-Packard
has launched a campaign to lure Sun users, and Sun
is offering low-cost server hardware
based on the AMD Opteron64 processor.
Roger Fulton,
vice president of research at Gartner, said, "It
is a good time for users to buy and reap the rewards
of low-cost servers." Gartner
also expects users to start rolling out mobile infrastructures to support business
agility.
Gartner has coined the term "real-time enterprise" to
describe how businesses need to react to change. Wireless
technology and mobile computing
devices will be key to the future of both the real-time enterprise and a
new generation of consumer products and services, Gartner
said.
Gartner trends
- Careful consideration should be given
to outsourcing
- IT infrastructure should be refreshed
to cope with changing technology
- Users buying now
can take advantage of a supplier price war
- Mobile
infrastructures can support businesses.
|
