35% of IT expenditure to be managed outside IT departments by 2015

David Bicknell

3 months ago 0 Comments

The Gartner research group has predicted that by 2015, 35% of enterprise IT expenditure will be managed outside the IT department's budget. But that may not be a bad thing.

Speaking at an event in Singapore, Brian Prentice, Research Vice President at Gartner suggested that the involvement of other organisation functions such as marketing in the purchase of IT solutions can improve collaboration between them and IT. Meanwhile the key role for IT managers is to focus on connecting business solutions together. Prentice argued that CIOs and IT managers should not focus so much on the technology but should recognise that the new digital enterprise thrives on information and collaboration. IT managers need to become the coordinators or brokers of IT-related activities across the business and to share IT budget management across it.

At the same time, Gartner says, IT managers should be on the lookout for security threats following a prediction that the financial impact of cybercrime will grow by 10% per year due to the discovery of new vulnerabilities. Gartner argues that companies and their IT managers must take cyber threats more seriously and evolve systems and processes to prepare for these new threats.

That is particularly relevant as cloud computing gains traction. By 2016, more than 50% of Global 1000 companies will have stored sensitive customer data in the public cloud by 2016. That means businesses will have to balance risks against agility, investigate jurisdiction issues and thoroughly evaluate compliance and security procedures and start public cloud projects with less sensitive data. Gartner believes third party security testing and certification of a cloud based service will soon become standard practice as users demand assurances that cloud systems have been independently tested for vulnerabilities.

Other issues that are expected to impact IT departments and their managers are mobility and big data. As the use of mobile devices becomes more prevalent, businesses must develop policies for corporate and employee supplied devices, and implement effective device management applications to control and secure remote access.

'Big data', or the analysis of large corporate data sets, has been predicted by some management specialists to become a key focus for organisations throughout 2012. But Gartner believes, more than 85% of Fortune 500 organisations will actually fail to exploit ‘big data’ for competitive advantage.

What are your views on other business functions' involvement in IT expenditure? What threat - or opportunity - does that pose for IT managers? Please share your thoughts.

Comments