Top 5 Technology Projects in 2005 - 'ZIFFPAGE TITLEBehind the Numbers '

Behind the Numbers

To determine the Top 5 Projects for 2005, Baseline analyzed the responses of 1,270 readers who participated in an online survey between mid-February and early March 2005. All of the respondents were involved in the final approval process for their organization's information-technology projects in 2005. The Strategy Group, an independent market research firm in Englewood, Fla., tabulated the responses.

Participants selected the five technologies "most critical" to their company from a list of 40 categories, and indicated how much their organization plans to spend on each. Categories selected as a critical area of spending by fewer than 10% of respondents were omitted. We then ranked the projects based on average dollar amount.

For context, we've also provided the median amount—the numerical midpoint between the highest and lowest numbers in a series—for each project. So, for example, financial reporting has an average spend of $5.9 million, placing it at No. 6 on our list, while the median spend is $725,000. That says half of respondents for that group plan to spend more than that amount and half plan to spend less. So, some very large projects are pushing up the average.

But dollars spent on a project do not always signify its relative importance. When we asked readers which single technology "most critically impacts" their company in 2005, business process management came out on top with 8.2%, followed by intrusion detection and prevention (5.7%), supply chain (5.1%) and server upgrades (4.9%). Application integration, our No. 1 project by spending, was fifth at 4.8%.

Overall, the most popular categories based on respondents' selections of their top five projects were server upgrades (28.1%), intrusion detection and prevention (22.5%), business process management (20.3%), desktop upgrades (19.9%) and Web services (17.7%). (For more charts, rankings and analysis from the Baseline survey, turn to p. 33.)