Predictions 2009

Here are my musings on IT predictions for next year.
2009 will be a more difficult year with investment being curtailed in line with the recessional indications. This means that efficiency will remain the big thing although there will be some investment in technology other than for efficiency in order to position organisations for the end of the recession. Security will remain high on the agenda particularly for or in dealing with the public sector and so will risk and compliance issues.
This means on the cost/efficiency side companies will continue with the virtualisation to reduce the number of servers and the associated costs, software licence costs will come under spotlight, as will the old chestnut of outsourcing although to the enlightened this can be counter productive unless the technology department is very large.
We may see business process outsourcing and shared services grow as a number of organisations have already put their toe in the water with these types of service.
New areas such as SAAS (software as a service) and cloud computing (Servers on demand) could be on the agenda but think it is still a bit early for these as total solutions and more for specific applications. For smaller companies a full SAAS service with all applications delivered over the internet and paid for on a flexible usage basis could be attractive and a number of vendors are now starting to offer this facility.
Security requirements will see more encryption technologies being deployed at hardware level, for instance laptops being encrypted and software such as emails being encrypted. End point security will become more important with companies looking to close down USB and other entry points to the network.
The less paper environment which can reduce cost and offers a greener approach is back on the agenda with lots of organisations looking at this but it won’t be without pain as many people still like paper and its flexibility. It will put pressure on storage as more documents are scanned and we will see an increase in storage demands over 2009 and beyond as a result.
The push for efficiency and reduced office space will see home and mobile working continue to grow and with voice recognition improving every year we will see this creeping into the work place and eventually being available on mobile devices to create and control email without having to type!
Other areas that I predict are further use, at business level, of Collaboration and social networking and the continued move to Unified Communications to enable flexibility as people move around and to bring together all forms of communication.
Vista will still struggle with companies putting this off and maybe starting to think about jumping over it to Windows 7. Open source may get more attention as a cost saving measure but am still feeling that most companies wont take the plunge.
So an interesting year with reduced or static budgets and as a result companies looking to make quick wins using relatively fast to market technologies such as Sharepoint.The enlightened (and cash rich) may continue to invest ready for the upturn!
As with all predictiosn who knows!