Infrastructure Slideshow:
IT Trends for 2009

• As 2009 unfolds, it’s clear that enterprises with a forward-thinking approach and a solid grasp of technology trends will have a distinct competitive advantage. The following technologies trends in areas like SaaS, virtualization and project portfolio management, among others, are likely to shape IT and business in the coming year. They may give your company the technology advantage it needs to do business in this challenging economic environment.
• Cloud computing environments will contribute to the expansion of SaaS into areas beyond ERP, CRM and HR management systems. Rob DeSisto, analyst for Gartner, says organizations increasingly see the benefits of moving large-scale software expenses from the capital budget to the operating budget.
• According to industry estimates, 50 to 60 percent of all servers are now virtualized. The goal is to reduce server inefficiencies and lower costs. It is now moving into the realm of SMBs, and is also extending into storage and onto the desktop, says Moosa Matariyeh, enterprise storage specialist for CDW.
• Chip and PC manufacturers are moving toward more energy-efficient components including improved memory and resource management, but the big action in 2009 will be in the areas of virtualization and storage. Businesses are quickly recognizing that they have little margin for error, and energy costs are now a huge variable, says Anil Desai, an independent IT consultant.
• Savvy IT managers are now looking for ways to automate and embed security and compliance processes across the value chain, including on mobile devices. Surprisingly, a key challenge is one of perception, not technology. Companies must get over the idea that security and compliance systems are simply insurance against problems, and that they don’t improve the business in any measurable way, says Anthony Noble, vice president of IT Audit, at Viacom.
• More robust Web browsers for PDAs and the expansion of push technology are making it possible to keep contacts, calendars and data synced at all times. As cloud computing becomes more widely accepted and more bandwidth is available, better software and concerns for security are also leading more firms to adopt thin-client computing. These systems access data as needed and store it on a remote server.
• Organizations are increasingly looking to next-generation social networking tools to conduct sophisticated business intelligence and analytics. In many cases, they are mining data and looking for trends and patterns, such as which salesperson has the relationships to pull off a deal or which customers seem to have the biggest influence with others online.
• Some organizations are now exploring Twitter or Facebook-like applications that allow individuals to push information out and create a simpler, organic communications structure. Others are using Web 2.0 tools to handle everything from asset management to business intelligence and analytics. Tim O’Reilly, CEO of O’Reilly Media. says “We are seeing the Internet become a preferred platform for app development.”
• "Today, anything electronic is discoverable as any part of litigation," Forrester analyst Kyle McNabb points out. "Developing rules and procedures is essential, and it is going to receive a lot more attention in the coming year." Not surprisingly, the focus is rapidly moving beyond ERP and enterprise systems and into the broader realm of all documents and communications.
• PPM is evolving and bringing greater order to business-level decision making. Applications such as Daptiv PPM and Primavera are providing tools to mesh diverse workgroups, such as finance, marketing, human resources and IT--all while viewing groups of initiatives, conducting detailed analysis on them, and understanding underlying relationships across organizational roles and teams.
• Collaboration tools are poised to go mainstream and further change the way business is conducted. According to the Boston-based research firm Aberdeen Group, 63 percent of companies say they will be using videoconferencing and so-called telepresence systems (essentially, a form of videoconferencing with high-quality images and audio) by the end of 2010.