The sequester will hurt tech nationally
The federal government's automatic budget cuts, due to begin Friday, may accelerate cost savings measures already in place via sharing of services across agencies, IT consolidation, and an increasing reliance of off-the-shelf products and cloud-based services, as opposed to customized development.
However, there will also be damage to IT spending, and a period of uncertainty as the government reacts to the cuts. Known as the sequester, the automatic cuts are expected to hit "full force," and that will impact IT spending, said Andrew Bartels, an analyst at Forrester Research. Read more...
The IT job outlook: 5 questions answered
IT continues to show signs of recovery, even as the rest of the economy remains in the doldrums. Will the good news continue? And if so, what does that mean for IT jobs?
Let's get real: Probably only a handful of European bankers know for sure. Barring a global financial collapse, however, the outlook for IT jobs looks pretty darn good based on the results of recent surveys. No doubt you have questions. We've done our best to produce answers to the five most obvious ones.
Question: Will IT budgets increase this year?
Answer: It sure looks that way.
According to Gartner, worldwide IT spending will increase 7.1 percent this year to $3.7 trillion -- up from its earlier estimates of 5.6 percent. Why? Because enterprises will be spending even more on cloud migration, IT services, and telecom. Boosting productivity and cutting costs -- the No. 1 agenda item for CIOs in 2010 -- is now No. 4 on the list, according to a recent survey conducted by the Society for Information Management (SIM). Read more...
How to identify problems with an IT project before it’s too late
Too often, problems with IT projects go unrecognized until it becomes impossible to ignore them, such as when the project budget has grown wildly overblown or the schedule is careening off track.
Identifying potential problems with IT projects -- problems simmering below the surface of your pristine project plan -- may seem impossible. After all, who has time to step back and assess the status of a project with so many moving parts when the schedule that was established for it is already overly aggressive?
In fact, there's an easy way to identify problems with projects before they get out of hand. Rob Prinzo, CEO of project management training and consulting firm The Prinzo Group, recommends asking project team members for their take on the status of the project. Read more...
Cloud computing to save tech budgets
Cloud computing and virtualisation will help UK CIOs cope with a drop of almost seven per cent in IT budgets in 2011, according to a survey of tech chiefs worldwide.
The UK IT spending forecast compares unfavourably with the rest of the world, the Gartner 2011 CIO Agenda survey of 2,014 CIOs found. Globally, tech budgets are expected to rise by an average of one per cent.
To cope with declining or flat IT budgets, CIOs told Gartner they are planning to increase their use of cloud services - automated and scalable IT software, hardware or platform services delivered via the internet - and virtualisation technology, which allows IT resources to bepooled and efficiently shared. Read more...