The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. rang in the new year with a report that two-thirds of the most recent poll of 100 CIOs believe that incremental budget tightening is more likely than budget loosening in 2003. Yet even with the projected lows in spending, CIOs surveyed indicated top spending priorities to be security, wireless LAN connectivity, Web-based application infrastructure, next-generation Windows operating systems, integration software, Gigabit Ethernet and storage networking. The top spending areas for security are intrusion detection, VPN and security management.
New spending initiatives cited in this report include portal software and handheld devices. Goldman says an increasing adoption of enterprise portals reflects the broader enterprise migration toward Web-based applications. Application server software, the basis of Web-based application, also garnered more interest from respondents.
And interest has increased in areas such as enterprise application integration (EAI), network management and supply-chain software. EAI growth came as a bit of a surprise to Goldman, but the firm says a solid November 2002 quarter from Tibco could indicate positive things for this market in 2003. Increased interest in supply-chain software is also a surprise, considering a difficult year overall for that market.
Veritas’ recent purchase of application performance management software maker Precise is an example of the “attractive growth prospects” in the network and systems management market.
Storage networking components and network-attached storage top the list of storage spending wishlists. And while Goldman says storage may not reflect the “hyper-growth” pattern of earlier predictions, the technology’s growth profile is strong and steady.
However, the December CIO Magazine Tech Poll of 301 executives included in the survey reported that IT budgets are expected to increase by 5.1 per cent on average in 2003. More than half (56 per cent) of the panelists plan to increase their spending on security software. Close to one-third (32 per cent) of executives surveyed plan to increase spending on outsourcing.
–With file from Lorraine Cosgrove Ware, CIO.com U.S.
