Deteriorating Economic Indicators Point to Challenging Year for Enterprises, says...

Deteriorating Economic Indicators Point to Challenging Year for Enterprises,
says Info-Tech Research Group

LONDON, ON, Jan. 22 /PRNewswire/ - In an environment characterized by the
credit crunch from the U.S. sub-prime lending fiasco, rising unemployment and
escalating energy costs, the consumer angst of 2007 will affect enterprise
budgeting in 2008, says Info-Tech Research Group. Enterprise IT managers and
CIO's will be under pressure to justify business value of IT expenditures as
companies of all sizes face belt-tightening.
"In tough times, risk tolerance for projects decreases due to the increase
in other business uncertainties, so convincing management to spend will be a
tougher sell," said Andy Woyzbun, lead analyst with Info-Tech Research Group.
"IT leaders will need to pick their battles in terms of which technologies
they choose to champion for investment this year."
Woyzbun says business leaders will still expect fast functionality and
quality enhancements for IT systems to improve the enterprise's competitive
positioning, but at the same time will squeeze the IT budget and use tougher
criteria to determine spending priorities. To be successful in this economic
climate, IT leaders should link spending to services that are essential to the
enterprise and/or deliver short-term cost savings - and then do an exceptional
job of presenting the bottom-line benefits to management, Woyzbun said.
Info-Tech Research Group says IT managers should consider several
solutions that can deliver bottom-line cost or efficiency savings including:
- Software as a Service and Service Oriented Architecture to lower
costs and speed business-critical application enhancement;
- Virtualization and WAN optimization to reduce number of servers,
costs and energy consumption in data centers;
- Power-optimized hardware when redeveloping data centers, plus taking
advantage of rebates and incentives from utility companies, for
immediate savings.

IT leaders need to strike a balance between security and compliance-driven
policies and procedures and innovative projects, providing sufficient leeway
to deliver solutions that can contribute bottom line benefits, Woyzbun added.
"In the current economy, business leaders are in for a challenging ride
but due diligence surrounding strategic and practical IT investments will help
them stay the course," he said.
About Info-Tech Research Group
With a paid membership of over 21,000 worldwide, Info-Tech Research Group
(www.infotech.com) is the global leader in providing tactical, practical
Information Technology research and analysis. Info-Tech has a ten-year history
of delivering quality research and is one of North America's fastest growing
full-service IT analyst firms.
SOURCE Info-Tech Research Group

For interviews with Info-Tech Research Group, contact Info-Tech's PR team:
Shelley Grandy at (905) 866-2656 or Mandy Merryweather at 1-888-670-8889 Ext.
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