Cyber Security Institute

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Gartner EXP Worldwide Survey of More Than 1,500 CIOs Shows IT Spending to Be Flat in 2009

As enterprises face a challenging economic environment, IT spending budgets will be essentially flat with a planned increase of 0.16 percent in 2009, according to results from the 2009 CIO survey by Gartner Executive Programs (EXP).  The worldwide survey of 1,527 CIOs was conducted by Gartner EXP from September 15 to December 15 2008 and represents CIO budget plans reported at that time.  Flat IT budgets were found across enterprises in North America and Europe, with slight increases in Latin America and a slight decrease in Asia/Pacific.

The Gartner EXP CIO report “Meeting the Challenge: The 2009 CIO Agenda” represents the most comprehensive examination of business priorities and CIO strategies.

The CIOs surveyed represent more than $138 billion in corporate and public-sector IT spending, encompassing 1,527 enterprises across 48 countries and 30 industries.

“In 2009, executives face challenging global economic conditions that have not existed for more than 50 years,” said Mark McDonald, group vice president and head of research for Gartner EXP.  “This environment is reflected in IT budgets, priorities and strategies as one third of CIOs reported no change in their budget from 2008, while 46 percent reported a slight increase, and 21 percent reported a cut in IT budgets.”  “All CIOs will face the need to restructure their budgets, cutting in some areas and investing in others, including those reporting no change in their overall spending level,” Mr. McDonald said.  “Enterprises expect IT to contribute results in an uncertain economy.  CIOs need to be decisive and resourceful in building an effective enterprise that can meet current and future challenges.  Leading enterprises recognize the seriousness of economic conditions, but they are not paralyzed by them.  Their leaders have confidence in their ability to use IT to achieve results.”

Senior enterprise executives recognize that IT’s contribution to economic performance extends beyond managing expenditures.  They expect IT to play a role in reducing enterprise costs, not merely with cost cutting but by changing business processes, workforce practices and information use.

The business priority “improving business processes” has been the No. 1 business expectation of IT since its introduction to the CIO Agenda survey in 2005.

In 2009, more than 57 percent of CIOs reported this as one of their top five business expectations.

“It’s time for CIOs to develop business process improvement capabilities as part of the core of IT,” Mr. McDonald said.  CIOs continue to invest in technologies beyond the infrastructure core.

* Invest in business intelligence applications and information consolidation in order to raise enterprise visibility and transparency, particularly around sales and operational performance.  These investments coincide with the priority that CIOs are giving to legacy application modernization.

Top 10 Business and Technology Priorities in 2009>

Top 10 Business Priorities	Ranking	Top 10 Technology Priorities	Ranking
Business process improvement	1	Business intelligence	1
Reducing enterprise costs	2	Enterprise applications (ERP, CRM and others)	2
Improving enterprise workforce effectiveness	3	Servers and storage technologies (virtualization)	3
Attracting and retaining new customers	4	Legacy application modernization	4
Increasing the use of information/analytics	5	Collaboration technologies	5
Creating new products or services (innovation)	6	Networking, voice and data communications	6
Targeting customers and markets more effectively	7	Technical infrastructure	7
Managing change initiatives	8	Security technologies	8
Expanding current customer relationships	9	Service-oriented applications and architecture	9
Expanding into new markets and geographies	10	Document management	10

Source: Gartner EXP (January 2009)

http://security.itbusinessnet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=629658