Enterprise IT budgets in 2009 are nearly flat, and CIOs must drive business process improvement while creatively using existing resources to advance their organisations' agendas.
So says the latest research from Gartner. The consultancy's 2009 CIO Agenda survey, which took the pulse of more than 1,500 CIOs between Sept. 15 and Dec. 15, 2008.
The survey finds that IT budgets in 2009 will rise, but by such a miniscule percentage -- 0.16% -- as to be considered flat.
Therefore, organisations are not slashing their IT budgets wholesale -- "in fact, they are using IT to change the way the company works, to make it more effective and efficient," said Mark McDonald, a group vice president at Gartner and author of the study. "CIOs are essentially going to have the same resources as last year to address a whole new range of problems."
The survey, which ranked CIOs' top priorities, found that "improving business processes" topped the list once again this year, with 57% naming it as a top concern. Following that was "reducing enterprise costs" with 51% and "improving enterprise workforce effectiveness," which was up three spots from last year and garnered 37%.
IT restructuring includes focus on governance
For its part, Gartner is seeing organisations change their cost structures and use IT differently.
In particular, some companies are restructuring IT to make it more flexible, both in terms of costs and resources, to enhance the ability to do different kids of projects. "A lot of IT organisations are organised around specific IT assets -- ERP, CRM -- so when the business wants to make a change, it has to negotiate with multiple teams to accomplish a particular goal," McDonald said. "So we are now seeing a reorganisation around processes and products, as opposed to around teams, to be more responsive to those needs."
Intel has simplified its IT governance by eliminating multiple governance structures. It has established a formal application retirement initiative, and this year expects to eliminate more than 200 applications, McDonald said. In addition, staff is being reorganised so more people are working on development.
In the past several months, Carquest an auto-parts retailer, has put additional energy into simplifying its IT governance structure. "It needed to reprioritise its entire project portfolio to focus on essential projects first," McDonald said.
The report also recommends that enterprises "modernise," which will actually aid your organisation's bottom line. If an organisation's infrastructure is pre-2005, there are significant opportunities to provide more compute power at a lower average cost, and at a lower operating cost, he said. "The new price point for performance and capacity capability of hardware is significantly greater than it was in the past," McDonald said.