What are the CIOs planning in 2010?

According to a Gartner report, as the economy improves, the IT’s functions are going through a change.  From just reducing the IT costs, CIOs will need to think of increasing productivity of the businesses.  Therefore appropriate investment needs to be made.

Business Users, of course, have their own expectations from the IT folks which looks for greater productivity and continued cutting of costs.  Here is the list of the top expectations:

1. Improving Business Processes (this remains the top #1 for last 4 years since 2007)
2. Reducing Enterprise Costs (this again is #2 for 3 years, except strangely for 2008, when it was #5).
3. Increasing the use of Information/Analytics (this becomes #3 from #5, growing in stature every year)
4. Improving enterprise workforce effectiveness
5. Attracting and retaining new customers
6. Managing Change Initiatives
7. Creating new products or services (innovation)
8. Targeting customers and markets more effectively
9. Consolidating business operations
10. Expanding current customer relationships.

According to the CIO Agenda for this year 2010, there are 3 main factors that must be addressed, and they form the overarching themes for the execs.

• An economy in transition places a premium on results productivity versus cost-efficiencies.
• Enterprise strategies are shifting toward more collaborative and innovative solutions.
• The rise of technologies such as virtualization, cloud computing and Web 2.0 are creating a new IT landscape.

Now, as more and more people talk of collaborative and integrated solutions, the emphasis for the execs and IT moves to the integration of Systems.  I believe that defeats the entire win from the new data and information management improvements over the years.  The main emphasis for the execs should be to focus on integrating the data.  Which means investment in powerful and flexible Master Data Management solutions and strong Business Intelligence / Data Warehousing platforms.

How will the productivity gains come?  From using “lighter weight” and new solutions.  The rankings are:

1. Virtualization
2. Cloud Computing
3. Web 2.0
4. Networking, voice, and data communications
5. Business Intelligence (BI)
6. Mobile Technologies
7. Data / Document Management and Storage
8. Service Oriented Applications and Architecture
9. Security technologies
10. IT Management
11. Enterprise Applications

I think all seem to be moving towards collaboration, yet for sending work out.  Does your company have a strategy for these areas?

Attachment:  CIO Agenda for 2010