TechScope Trends in 2003

2002 was the year of regulated IT budgets, ROI-focused investments and increased efficiencies. IT managers were focused on maximizing their returns on IT infrastructure instead of buying technology for technology's sake. The bleak economy and curtailed IT spending forced many enterprises to re-deploy their existing infrastructure and invest in only those technologies that were either critical for them to stay competitive or as replacements/upgrades to existing technology.

'Re-evaluate, re-structure, re-deploy' was the new mantra. Everything revolved around business value and ROI.

This was clearly reflected in Infrastructure Strategies 2002, a Network Magazine-ORG-MARG survey of 200 IT managers (June 2002 issue), which highlighted the fact that there was a marginal increase in the amount of funds allocated for IT in the current year as against the last year.

Off course, simple statistics never reveal the entire picture. When interviewing IT managers for the survey, we observed that companies with sizable investment in technology were focused on cutting costs and squeezing more out of existing infrastructure, while those with basic networking infrastructure were looking at investing in areas like enterprise automation, CRM, etc.

The year ahead
The year 2003 is bound to usher in a new set of technological and business challenges that will define and drive the enterprise of the future. But the core issues that influence technology spending will still be the same.

IT managers will, as usual, try to balance infrastructure costs and ROI while ensuring their enterprises stay competitive. So what will be the likely scenario in 2003? Will enterprises allocate more for IT? Which are the technology areas they will or should invest in?

A page from the past
Last year (January 2002) we followed an unconventional approach to predicting enterprise technology or business trends.

Unlike other business or technology publications that spend reams of paper dedicated to what they think would be the trends in the enterprise space in the next one year, we decided to ask industry veterans—people who decide enterprise IT policies or who drive the technology markets—to inform us and our readers as to what the future holds. What resulted was a collection of articles from the who's who of the IT industry communicating their views on various technology/business issues and trends.

This year also, to coincide with 2003, we have followed a similar approach. What follows is a collection of articles that will discuss the technologies, protocols and standards, and strategies that enterprises can adapt to their benefit.