The industry reflects, looks ahead

John Brand, research director, Hydrasight

	John Brand, Hydrasight
	I see absolutely no point in creating a fair-weather budget and another one for overcast days. If you're modeling is right, then it's right.

Q: What do you remember as the biggest industry news for 2007, and why?
Brand: The consolidation of the business intelligence (BI) market. The major brands have eaten up almost every profitable area of enterprise technology, and BI ties many of their existing software portfolios together. Customers will be challenged over the next five years to determine how best to incorporate reporting and analytics into their broadening applications environments, given the complex nature of the business relationships between vendors of BI products and services.

Gartner issued a report warning IT heads to prepare a recession budget. What is your view?
If your budget wasn't solid enough to handle variable economic pressures in the first place there's already something wrong. How many budgets do you need? Do you end up taking parts of one budget and parts of another as the economic conditions change?

I see absolutely no point in creating a fair-weather budget and another one for overcast days. If you're modeling is right, then it's right. A budget and project portfolio plan should always take into account trigger points for when to exit or to defer projects based on changing conditions.

What was the most overrated technology product in 2007, and why?
Though it's still early days, most organizations have yet to discover how Web 2.0 will add long term value to their business beyond enhancing existing user interfaces. The community and distributed authoring aspects of Web 2.0 have proven to be powerful models but only for a very few.

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) deserves a mention here, too. SOA has been the latest attempt to "solve" integration challenges but has so far failed to bring significant benefits to most organizations in and of itself. In most cases we see that SOA projects are simply a "re-aligning" of existing integration projects in order to gain additional budget or hold onto budget that was about to be cut.

IT security continues to be a perennial problem. Please name up to three security trends that IT heads should look out for in 2008.
Hydrasight sees that policy re-inforcement systems rather than policy enforcement systems will be the most successful approach to addressing security concerns. Helping users make the right choices and decisions around security will always be the most efficient and effective approach rather than lock-down.

Moving ahead in 2008

 

 

1.	Socializing goes big in 2008
2.	The urge to merge in 2008
3.	New chips on the block
4.	Web threats dominate security landscape
5.	Battle for the mobile platform space in 2008
6.	The industry reflects, looks ahead

Looking back on 2007

 

 

1.	Looking back at 2007 with envy
2.	Predictions that went right and wrong
3.	2007's movers and shakers

Social networking sites...
... Organizations are currently struggling to understand the potential impact of social networking in general, and particularly around Facebook. Despite the obvious issue around employees wasting time on social networking sites, social networking data can be a very valuable and useful tool. I think we'll see more surreptitious use of social networking data as the value of what it contains becomes realized. Social networking sites also underlie a broader trend towards employees making use of externally hosted services, whether they be social networking sites or business applications.

The biggest mistake I see CIOs make is...
... Believing slick marketing pitches and placing more emphasis on the recommendations of peers, colleagues, and the media than those from their own employed staff. I see few organizations where the answers aren't already known inside their own organizations, if only someone had the courage to listen to them. The second biggest mistake is failing to communicate effectively across the organization. CIOs need to spend quality time helping the organization at all levels understand what is being done and why. We've spend a lot of time over the last few years encouraging IT 'thought leaders' but very little time encouraging 'thought movers'.

Work-life balance is...
... Something evolution will have to deal with.

The biggest challenge facing IT departments is...
... Increasingly unrealistic business expectations driven by higher profile media and popularist beliefs.

 Hitachi Data Systems 

IBM  

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