Delivering better service objective for 2008 is assisting our It may be disappointing to the
to customers is one of businesses with cost-containment many vendors that put green IT high
the top IT initiatives for objectives—mostly achievable on their marketing, if not actual
2008, and many compa- through offshoring and process technology, agendas, but it looks
nies are looking to business intel- automation to span multiple loca- like many of the respondents to the
ligence, collaboration and workflow, tions and continents.” CIO Insight survey won’t be using
and data and systems integration Dr. Fred S. Vernacchia, medical the reduction of power consumption
to help achieve that goal, as a cost-cutting method.
according to results of a Most important technology priorities Only 2 percent of respon- Ziff Davis Enterprise Edi- for 2008 dents chose “helping our torial Research survey and company reduce energy
interviews with IT profes- Respondents were asked to select their IT organization’s three consumption and pollu-
sionals. And despite the most important technology priorities for 2008. Shown are the 10 priorities most often cited by 251 respondents. tion” as one of their IT
hype, green IT and Web 2.0 organization’s three most
technologies are not high Creating or improving strategic important business priori-on this year’s agenda. applications ties. And only 4 percent of
In a survey conducted Expanding IT infrastructure to keep up with growth respondents said reducing
for eWeek sister publica- Improving IT security and the energy consumption
tion CIO Insight, respon- continuity of systems was one of
dents were asked to name Instituting a more flexible their three most impor-
IT architecture
the three most important Improving the quality of tant technology priorities
business priorities for their information of 2008.
companies’ IT organization Standardizing and consolidating Seeing things differ-
in 2008. IT infrastructure ently is Robert Rosen, CIO
The priorities selected Discovering and deploying innovative new technologies of the National Institute
most often by 251 quali- Improving the ROI of IT of Arthritis and Musculo-
fied respondents were investments skeletal and Skin Diseases
delivering better service Reducing the complexity of and an eWeek Corporate
to customers ( 35 percent), information systems Partner.
improving business pro- Replacing legacy systems “As energy costs con-
cesses ( 35 percent) and tinue to rise, the pressure
0 10 20 30 40
contributing to the cre- will be on the big energy
Percentage of respondents
ation of new business users in a company to
strategies ( 31 percent). Source: Ziff Davis Enterprise Editorial Research/CIO Insight conserve,” Rosen wrote
Cutting costs was No. 4 in an e-mail to e Week.
on the list, chosen by 29 percent of director of the San Luis Diagnostic “IT is one of those big users. And,
respondents. Center, is looking to automation to of course, the requirement will be
Indeed, cost containment is the help cut costs at his organization. to save energy but not to cut back
top priority for the chief IT strate- “My IT system will pretty much on any computer services. While
gist for a major financial institu- hold me for a while,” said Vernac- IT costs in general are always a
tion. The strategist, who wished chia. “The only thing that I intend concern, energy is becoming big-to remain anonymous, said in to add in the next year is an auto- ger and bigger and is going to hit
an e-mail to eWeek, “Our No. 1 mated reporting package because many more IT organizations in
I’m in a business that’s gotten 2008.”
Labs picks the technologies IT pros slammed from a reimbursement Indeed, Rosen, who is also the
should keep on their radars PAGE 41 standpoint by Medicare. Anything past president of Share, the IBM
we can do to cut our expenses in the user group, singled out energy
The products Labs analysts can’t
long term [is something] we need to costs as one problem his fellow IT
wait to get their hands on PAGE 45
invest in.” managers are [CONTINUED ON PAGE 38]
