IT BUDGET
AGENDA
2008
Consolidation is still key, but companies are
spending more on productivity apps
By Dave Greenfield
Spending for it goods and services and ‘innovation growth,’” Bartels said.
is expected to grow next year, as During tech digestion, acquisition is all
organizations enter a new phase of about price and ease of use, with budgets
technology acquisition. primarily driven by return on investment cal-
In 2008, IT will experience an 8 percent culations. There’s a large focus on infra-
increase in spending over 2007 pur- structure rationalization and process
chasing budgets—that’s 3 per- automation—prettymuch what’s
cent more than in 2007, said characterizedtechnologyacqui-
Andrew Bartels, an analyst at sition for the past seven years
Forrester Research, in Cam- or so.
bridge, Mass. Next year will signal a
Data center consolidation, point of transition, as we’ll
infrastructure refresh and see a whole new level of
security enhancements have investment for the next four
typified much of IT spending or five years. Purchases will be
since 2000. For 2008, spending pat- driven more by functionality and
terns are expected to begin to change, less by ROI calculations. “There
as companies focus more on increasing will be a shift from making processes
productivity than in cutting costs. more efficient to helping companies opti-
“Forrester talks about two periods of technol- mize business results by adding analytics
ogy acquisition, which we call ‘tech digestion’ [CONTINUED ON PAGE 42]
