“The insights from the study confirm that the economic downturn is continuing to cause a significant shift in IT priorities,” said Jerry Luftman, former SIM Executive VP and Executive Director of Graduate Information Systems Programs and Distinguished Professor of Information Systems at Stevens Institute of Technology, who has conducted this influential research for the last 10 years. “It is essential to recognize how organizations are leveraging IT during this prolonged economic conundrum, as well as preparing for when the economy will improve.”
Many of the top 10 concerns remain on the list from previous years but shifted positions, including business agility and speed to market, which jumped from the No. 3 position to No. 2 in 2010. Globalization, a new priority this year, was ranked as the No. 10 concern on the survey, which annually provides important benchmark data in areas including spending, salaries, job scope of IT professionals and technical/business trends. The top four areas, including IT and business alignment – a perennial concern of IT leaders – received extremely high ratings.
The full top 10 list of concerns in SIM’s annual survey is:
1. Business productivity and cost reduction
2. Business agility and speed to market
3. IT and business alignment
4. IT reliability and efficiency
5. Business process re-engineering
6. IT strategic planning
7. Revenue generating IT innovations
8. IT cost reduction
9. Security and privacy
10. Globalization
Respondents indicated that Virtualization and Cloud Computing were major new application and technology investments for 2010, while the most important application/technology continues to be Business Intelligence.
