The 5 mantras for IT growth

MUMBAI: Firms will spend four percent more on IT in future than at present, and most of these firms will at least retain their current budgets. This was stated here by George F Colony, CEO, Forrester Research. Speaking at the CIOL Enterprise Connect forum he insisted that although IT budgets have stopped bleeding, it's still a harsh buyer's market for technology vendors. In areas like IT outsourcing and enterprise applications, a vendor's best hope is to squeeze incremental business out of its installed base of customers.

Addressing some of the top CIO’s, Colony presented five critical IT success factors that are imperative for the company’s growth. While starting the address he started with the ‘technology thunderstorm’ that happened at various point of time worldwide that include evolution of PC’s, workstations etc. He emphasized on the fact that this thunderstorm would continue as technology evolution and adoption is not going to stop.

He also termed the web as ‘Dead’. So what's going to overtake the Web? Forrester calls it the X Internet. The X Internet refers to the "executable" and "extended" internet that pushes connectivity past computers to other interactive devices, such as cell phones and televisions, and from there to a range of consumer products and applications -- from cars to fields of corn to cans of soup. "As the X Internet will evolve, we will see a fundamental change in the way business is done, and internet applications are built and presented. It enables delivery of browser-based applications that deliver the functionality and performance of client and server applications," he added. He estimated that by 2010, 14 billion such devices would be available and around $2.7 trillion investment would be required.

The Next Computing Revolution has started, which Forrester calls Organic IT. Throughout the evolution of corporate computing, IT architectures have been built using inefficient and expensive frameworks. Key technology trends have begun to create a new computing revolution and that’s what is Organic IT according to Forrester Research. Industry leaders will demonstrate how Organic IT will help businesses achieve higher infrastructure utilization, increases in labor efficiency, and greater technology responsiveness to business needs." Companies have become accustomed to IT infrastructure that is inflexible and under-utilized. Organic IT is changing the equation for technology leaders by enabling them to buy and implement infrastructure that meets their needs," said Colony.

Another factor described by Colony was about ‘Naked Technologies’. He impressed the need to invest in technology that is imperative and compatible with the technology and process changes in the organization. Company’s who are not following the pattern are lower on ROI’s and shortening the life of a CIO. " It is a CIO who knows best about the technologies and that’s the reason that last year 35 percent of CIO’s became CFO’s. This year the rate will go up to 50 percent."

The third factor was about ‘Managing the IT iceberg’ wherein he said is only possible if a company across its operations can standardize the processes. " A company should standardize basics like e-mail and workstations.’

Another factor that is most important for company’s growth is the awareness about the business process and that too should be across all the tiers of the company. The CEO should drive that which is to be followed by the sales, technical and management teams of the company.

He concluded the session by saying that high returns in IT is possible only by getting high performance IT and it doesn’t matter much how much one spends on IT. The only thing that matters is bringing IT projects in on time, under budget and to the business buyer’s satisfaction. And also, that the company’s ability and willingness to innovate with emerging technologies matters a lot.