Management Toolkit

IT Priorities: Strategy suffers at the hands of tactics

Leader ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 04 Nov 2005 11:40 GMT

Grids, open source, business intelligence, CRM, virtualisation and server consolidation are just some of the technologies and strategies competing for a chunk of UK IT budgets. But which ones can really make a difference to a company's performance and which are just expensive distractions?

To answer that question, ZDNet UK together with analyst firm Butler Group created the UK IT Priorities Survey. Released this week, the report reveals that security continues to be the most pressing issue for IT professionals. Vendors and the media devote a lot of attention to the religious wars around open source or the potential of 3G networks — but protecting existing infrastructure is what really matters to the bulk of IT departments, it seems.

Although security, such as antivirus and anti-spam technology, is the top priority for the next 12 months, the report reveals that companies are failing to approach it in the right way. Sadly, instead of focusing on strategic, integrated security systems — such as those provided by hosted services — IT departments are often distracted by the necessity to deal with the latest virus or worm. That needs to change or companies will continue to repeat the same mistakes.

Security is clearly the number one priority but other issues and technologies are also seen as being extremely important. Application development, mail management, IT management and networking were ranked second to fifth highest respectively.

But the IT Priorities programme, begun in 2003, is about more than just identifying the most important issues. To help inform decisions around implementing technologies, ZDNet UK has created information aggregation pages called Toolkits. These pages pull together the latest information from across our network, and the Internet, to provide a comprehensive resource on the technologies that matter most to readers.

Keeping pace with an industry on perpetual fast-forward will always be challenging but we hope this research may go some way to stacking the odds in your favour.

To download the full UK IT Priorities Report click here.