By Tony Hallett, 26 April 2005 17:35
NEWS User organisations remain broadly reluctant to invest in cutting edge IT - though attitudes in IT departments and boardrooms are better than they have been for some time.
A survey of more than 400 CIOs and other business executives carried out between November 2004 and January this year in North America, France, Germany, Nordic nations and the UK found caution still comes first.
According to the Leading Edge Forum, the research arm of IT services giant CSC which commissioned the research, at the top of organisations' current tech to-do lists are disaster recovery, business continuity planning and system security - not a list to get the heart racing, perhaps.
David Moschella, Leading Edge Forum global research director, agreed but said: "They are, however, common sense and the reality is that they are still the priority."
The mixed group of respondents - from the IT and general business sides of organisations - agreed that one of the biggest barriers to progress is the business people themselves.
By a ratio of five to one, respondents put business people's inability to understand IT ahead of the IT department's lack of business nous.
"A lot of business people are realising they are part of the problem," Moschella said.
But while a clear majority of respondents - 70 per cent - say IT now matters more where they work than it did three years ago, there are some areas where spend isn't living up to the hype. RFID is one - some users care a lot about the tiny electronic tags but many across the sample have no interest at all - and grid computing is another.
"It is seen as primarily supplier hype," added Moschella.
The Leading Edge Forum was spun off into an outward-, client-facing unit of CSC at the start of the month after some time as an internal research unit.
Comments
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1. Simon Cox
The idea that the business should have a better understanding of IT is ridiculous - we don't need to know how pens and pencils actually work as long as they do - so why IT? IT departments have had their heads in the sand for far too long and still don't understand the business needs other than what is written in a requirements document. All the user interfaces I have ever seen on internally built systems are technically competent but visually uninspiring. Business users have been changing their working practices for years to integrate with IT. Moschella's attitude remains archaic.
2. Richard Sarson
None of the wannabe Apprentices have an IT background. And yet they are trying to join Sir Alan's IT firm. This means to me that, business-wise, Sir Alan thinks IT people are crap. He is right. Anybody who wants to go places, should learn the East-End lessons of trading first, and only then find out about the IT tool. That way round, we will get the right balance.