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ERP top software priority among readers, says ZDNet study

ERP is the key software initiative organizations are now focused on according to the latest IT Priorities data.  The software category as a whole jumped last month from the number four top IT priority to number two, stopping short of VoIP which remained untouched as the dominant topic on the minds of IT decision makers.
Written by Natalie Gagliordi, Contributor

ITPERP is the key software initiative organizations are now focused on according to the latest IT Priorities data.  The software category as a whole jumped last month from the number four top IT priority to number two, stopping short of VoIP which remained untouched as the dominant topic on the minds of IT decision makers.

The revived interest ERP can generally be traced to a couple of trends. First, disruptive technological forces, such as service-oriented architectures (SOAs) and open source are making organizations reconsider how they deploy applications. Secondly, the changing business models of ERP vendors now offer more flexibility, such as licensing user seats and releasing smaller ERP modules incrementally.

But the spike in ERP interest wasn't the only major shift in the IT Priorities ranking this month. Web technology ousted IT management for the number five position indicating that more organizations are turning to Web services to increase business agility and streamline applications.

Sandwiched in between software and Web technology are hardware upgrades and security, at number three and four, respectively. Respondents listed SAN, server consolidation and upgrades, and blade server/virtualization technology as top hardware projects.  The results also indicated new interest in disaster recovery, making it the current top security concern, with spyware and authentication top initiatives just on the horizon. This is a big shift from previous months where virus defense and firewalls consistently dominated security concerns. Maybe they're just a part of daily life now? 

The remaining priorities; OS migration (no. 7), data management (no. 8), and application development and integration (no. 9) are unchanged from last month.       

About IT Priorities research: Every 30 days, the ZDNet Research Team selects a representative sample of 500 IT managers who work in organizations of more than 500 employees... 

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