November 21st, 2006
Top 30 trends for 2007: Do you buy it?
CIO Insight is out with its top 30 IT trends for 2007 and if nothing else the list is worth discussing.
CIO Insight compiled its 13 surveys it did in 2006 to project its categories. While the list is a bit hard to navigate the slides are informative. A few items that stick out in the trends, which are in no particular order.
–CIO Insight No. 5: Companies put their mounds of data to work. My take: Corporations have more data than they can possibly digest. And why not? It costs little to be a pack rat and hoard information that may be useful down the road. Perhaps companies will make good use of their data, but the bigger story may be the security angle. The more data you keep the more vulnerable you are to a hacker.
–No. 7. CIOs strive to be strategic. My take: I wish these poor folks would get strategic already so I won't have to hear about how they are working so diligently be aligned with business needs. Get there already, it's been a decade!
–No. 9. CIO pay will keep rising. My take: Jury is out on this one. The number of CIOs that make the ranks of being the highest paid executives at companies has been roughly flat for the last five years. For those wondering who makes the most see this list.
–No. 11. CIOs struggle to find business savvy-technologists. My take: Your best IT certification has three letters–MBA.
–No. 14. Offshoring shifts from India. My take: Highly likely. For starters, Indian outsourcers are coming to the U.S. to win over big clients. Meanwhile, India is being India-ed by China and eastern Europe. Couple the management headaches for some and you'd be better off "offshoring" to some place like Canada or Arkansas.
–No. 16. Demonstrating ROI will remain a struggle. My take: No kidding. Want to turn a vendor pale? Ask a rep for some hard numbers on returns.
–No. 18. Security concerns turn users away from Windows. My take: Vista's early days on the security front are going to be crucial for this trend. I still say switching headaches outweigh security concerns–unless you've been hacked of course.
–No. 20. Compliance achieves what government intended. My take: Who knew the Feds wanted an unemployment rate of nil for auditors, consultants and lawyers. From what I can tell that has been the biggest side effect of the regulation morass.
–No. 25. IT reluctantly embraces Web 2.0. My take: It's quite possible. I do wish the corporate types would hurry up though so we can examine more nuts and bolts and less breathless startup hype.
–No. 29. IT organizations start going green. My take: The jury is out. Oil is well below peak levels and that means the utility bills to keep that data center humming may also decline. Less of a financial hit equals fewer worries about being green.
–No. 30. Dissatisfaction with vendors is on the rise. My take: When were techies really in love with their vendors?
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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