Most effective strategy for 2007
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Making IT investment pay off.
Chief information officers looking to dramatically improve their use of information technology should do two things in 2007-8: virtualise processing and storage; and get full control of their security procedures and systems.
And after that, they should probably believe their often mistrusted suppliers and invest freely: most technologies and strategies deployed by Information Age readers seem to work and get good marks for effectiveness.
These are some of the findings of the 2007 Effective IT Survey, in which 699 respondents were asked which of 30 technologies are most effective – effective is defined as both improving business efficiency, in terms of cutting costs, and supporting business goals.
Each respondent was asked to rank “Effectiveness” on a scale of 1-5. The results have been ranked by adding up the number of responses who gave a high mark of 4 or a top mark of 5.
This method favours technologies or strategies which produce dramatic results, yet it does not clearly identify those which are solidly effective, but not dramatically. This helps us to highlight some outstanding winners but perhaps some dependable strategies were overlooked.
Whichever method is used, hardly any technologies or strategies disappoint. Take “Deployed Business Intelligence”, which comes in the bottom ten. Even by the stricter method, it still gets an effectiveness score of 59%. Allowing for those who gave a ‘3’, BI scores 91% satisfaction.
All of those that appear in the top ten are clearly very successful – with “appointing a security manager” in the top three for two years running.
Three separate data centre strategies surged into the top ten: virtualising processing, virtualised storage, using Linux. Using thin clients stayed at number ten.
The three strategies highlighted at the bottom of the table (opposite page) are the only ones that achieved an acceptance level under 50%. They also have one thing in common: each means less control and perhaps fewer resources for the IT department. Is this a sign of self-interest among the respondents, or do these well-placed people really think these strategies don’t work?
Download more results as a .pdf
