Doing more with less: CIOs disclose their plans

CIO Agenda 2009: The business and technology priorities on IT chiefs' minds this year

Published: 20 March 2009 13:13 GMT by Steve Ranger

Tags: cio, virtualisation, windows 7

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Consolidating IT infrastructure and trimming the financial fat are among the key objectives for CIOs this year.

When asked what their top business or strategic issue is this year, cost cutting was the subject mentioned most often by IT chiefs who responded to silicon.com's fifth annual exclusive CIO Agenda 2009 survey.

On a more positive note, growing revenue was also seen as a priority - in particular, projects to support business development and to "engage new clients and foster existing client loyalty", in the words of one respondent.

Unsurprisingly, more efficient use of existing infrastructure is also a key goal among UK IT heads. Accordingly, when asked about their top technology priorities for 2009, virtualisation got top billing.

While virtualisation was also the most mentioned technology priority in 2008, this year there seems to be little appetite for some of the larger projects - such as WAN upgrades, desktop refreshes and Vista - which were mentioned as priorities last year.

In this year's research, a number of other technology objectives made the list, such as establishing "common processes and systems", integrating systems, "making the most of SAP", legacy retirement, "standardisation and simplification" - all priorities linked by the common theme of making the organisation more streamlined and having a knock-on effect on cost.

When asked what issues are now on the agenda for 2009 that weren't there previously, CIOs said they are looking to emphasise the importance of the IT team, with one tech chief explaining the issue is demonstrating "how the IT team is value-adding while living with a smaller capability".

Other issues that have recently taken a higher priority for some CIOs, according to the research, included Windows 7, information security and mobility.

The silicon.com CIO Agenda surveyed 25 CIOs and IT directors in the UK across a range of industries in January this year.