IT forecast- 2010 and beyond

 

Gartner has come out with 2 huge projections this week regarding both the short term and long term IT forecast as well as top initiatives for 2010.  While they are not pretty (looks like 2008 #’s wont’ be seen again until 2012), these #’s do help us to see that the next few years of IT planning and spending will need to be seen through some new eyes.  Over the next two posts I will address both of these projections.   

The first projection I would like to jump in on is a press release Gartner released on Oct 20th that discussed their 2010 fiscal projections.  According to the release, after a projected 6.9% drop in 2009, we will see a spending increase of 3.3% in 2010.  Additionally, Gartner says it will be 2012 until we see spending up to the 2008 totals. 

Peter Sondergaard, senior VP at Gartner and global head of research added the following:

“While the IT industry will return to growth in 2010, the market will not recover to 2008 revenue levels before 2012.  2010 is about balancing the focus on cost, risk, and growth. For more than 50 percent of CIOs the IT budget will be 0 percent or less in growth terms. It will only slowly improve in 2011.”

It looks like hardware was the hardest his category in 2009, with a projected 16.5% decrease.  This makes sense as during the “Great Budget Scare of 4th Q 2008″, cutting hardware from 2009 IT budgets was the easiest way to immediately feel as if they were saving money.  At the same time, it was the easiest way to show dollar savings to other departments across an organization.   Luckily Gartner expects hardware spending to neither increase nor decrease in 2010.  Getting a sneak peek at a few customer’s 2010 budgets, I fully agree with Gartner.

Looking forward, Gartner also focused on 3 new items that IT leaders must consider in 2010 and 3 items from 2009 that will remain important.

The new items include: 

     A Shift from Capital Expenditure to Operational Expenditure in the IT Budget

     Impact of the Increased Age of IT Hardware

     IT Must Learn to Build Compelling Business Cases

And the 2009 concepts that will continue to remain at the top of an IT leaders list will include:

     Business Intelligence

     Virtualization

     Social Media

What this means is that IT planning, procurement, sales and IT’s role in an organization is making another huge shift.  IT made it’s last major shift when the dot-com bubble burst and budgets were hacked and reformed.  The days “use it or lose it” are gone for most and were replaced with budgets in silos. Those silos were categorized by quarters and by product group and left little wiggle room for IT leaders.  I think that this next shift will mesh IT budgets even more as the Sever-budget and Desktop Budget, which was handed by an IT director and CIO, will be replaced with a Managed Printing Budget, Infrastructure Budget and Business Continuity Budget which will incorporate CFO’s, CEO’s and become a part an entire corporate objective.

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