At a recent gathering of the Society of Information Management, an influential IT think tank you should get to know, TechRepublic Editor in Chief Jason Hiner cornered six high-powered CIOs with his video camera and ask what new IT trend were on their radar screens, and what they think IT spending will look like in 2010. His interviewees:
- Larry Bonfante, U.S. Tennis Association
- Curt Pederson, Oregon State University
- Patricia Coffey, Allstate
- Ed Trainer, Amtrak
- Tony Scott, Microsoft
- Peter Whatnell, Sunoco
Among the top technologies mentioned by the power brokers: cloud computing, open source implementations, green IT, consumerization of IT (workers bringing their own computers and phones to work), and thin clients backed up by virtualization. How many of these trends have you seen at your own workplace?
As for spending: Sad to say the executives agree it will be flat or declining, at least through 2010. "It's certainly going to be a period of reduced or constrained spending," says Sunoco's Whatnell.
-- Don Willmott