You Can Never Be Too Agile
"Agility" is apparently the watch word down at the Gartner Symposium
this week. In his opening keynote, Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president
and global head of research at Gartner, said IT leaders must be able to respond
to change "quicker than ever before" because "there is a need
for flexibility, and a need for agility."
Some of that agility will have to do with financial planning as well as technical
issues. Sondergaard advised IT executives to create two IT budgets for 2008.
The first, he said, should be one that reflects the same kind of marginal growth
prepared during the past six years. The second budget should assume the need
to cut costs in anticipation of a possible recession.
"The business plans that you had in June are probably not going to completely
address the changed conditions of your business in November," Sondergaard
said. "Together with your business colleagues and your CEO, you are going
to have to deliver new efficiencies, new innovations and new ideas to sustain
profitability and growth. IT will be core to many of those responses."
IT hasn't been -- and won't be -- shy about its spending in 2007 and 2008.
According to Gartner, worldwide IT spending in 2007 will go
over the $3 trillion mark, an 8 percent increase over last year. That's
the good new news. The better news is it will grow another 5.5 percent in 2008,
reaching $3.3 trillion.
Gartner says that IT spending in developing countries continues to grow at
impressive rates. The research says that figures show one-third of IT spending
now occurs outside of North America, Western Europe and Japan. The company contends
this development will result in new innovations in IT, along with giving rise
to new competitors, new usage patterns and greater cost improvement benefits
for users.
Posted by Ed Scannell on October 11, 2007