How do these IT priorities compare to your own?

An uncertain economy and the war in the winds are sure to put a damper on information technology expenditures. Most surveys, including a report this week from Forrester Research, predict modest growth in IT spending for 2003 across the majority of sectors, except the ailing financial arena. In our just completed monthly IT Priorities survey, we looked at how larger enterprises will be spending those slightly increased IT budgets.

Every month, our research team surveys a random sample of 500 executives and IT managers among our U.S. audience who work in organizations of more than 500 employees with three open-ended questions:

• Currently, what are your IT organization's top three priorities (defined as those that have the most resources dedicated to them)?
• What are the three most important technology initiatives your IT organization plans to implement over the next 12 months?
• What technology trends do you believe will most affect your IT environment in the next 18 to 24 months?

We analyze the resulting data for statistical differences among items in the responses and across months, and we distill five to ten categories rank-ordered by time window (current issue, near-term, long-term). The top five current issues become the framework for our IT Radar, displayed in the Tech Update section of the ZDNet site. (In a video report, ZDNet's Ted Smith analyzes March's IT Radar survey.)

Current priorities
Enterprise software continues to head the near-term list of priorities, led primarily by ERP projects and followed by vertical industries, chiefly health care, retail, and manufacturing.

In the near term, cost-saving strategies also rises to the top, although it is trending downward. At some point, especially when the economy cranks up again, the fanatical focus on cost control will become more of a background process. Lessons learned over the last few years in terms of improved strategic planning, the value of business intelligence tools, and more efficient business processes will become more ingrained as part of the corporate business culture.

Networking upgrades ranks as the third priority, with a focus on mobile and wireless access, along with virtual private networks (VPN), voice over IP telephony (VOIP) and local area network (LAN) technologies. In the near term, VPNs are at the top of the list of initiatives. Server products and planning are on the upswing, especially related to upgrades and consolidation. Rounding out the top five, security remains a top priority, with areas such as intrusion detection, firewalls and virus protection top of mind.

Operating system migration is moving up the list, both for the current and 12-month timeframes. Much of the current focus in on Windows 2000 and XP, but Linux is definitely on the horizon. Other near-term priorities include data management, with business intelligence as the most prominent issue, as well as e-commerce projects under the Web technology category and application development and integration.

12-month horizon priorities
Initiatives planned over the coming 12-months are led by networking upgrades. VOIP will gain more traction among the enterprises surveyed and wireless initiatives will accelerate as issues surrounding standards, security and manageability get worked out.

Enterprise software moves from number one in the current priorities to number two in the 12-month horizon. In keeping with current priorities, companies will continue deployments of back office applications (such as SAP, Oracle, and PeopleSoft), directory services, and groupware applications centered on e-mail.

Operating system migration is trending upward in the 12-month horizon, with more of an emphasis on Windows XP transitions, followed by Linux. Both the server and Web technologies categories are trending downward historically over the last five months. Server upgrades and consolidation will continue as the main drivers for cost savings and simplification of data centers, but investment in SAN solutions is on the rise.

In the area of Web technologies, Web services will reach a level of maturity that make it more than a promise of interoperability. Based on our survey, IT managers are expecting to implement Web services solutions within the next 12 months. Other Web technologies related to e-commerce, portals, and site development were also measurable responses to the survey question.

Security, the sixth-ranked priority, is a persistent concern among IT managers. Like the awareness built up around cost controls and achieving better efficiencies with IT investments, the combination of economic, technical, and geopolitical realities have made security a core issue that cannot be ignored. It may not rank in the top five, but it is taken for granted that without a focus on security, enterprise software and network upgrade projects are in jeopardy. Firewalls, authentication services, and disaster recovery were among the specific planned initiatives over the next 12 months.

Other priorities that made the 12-month horizon list were cost saving strategies, data management, and application development and integration, with a primary focus on Java, CASE and integration and middleware.

24-month horizon priorities
Networking upgrades tallies as the top initiative impacting IT over the next 12 to 24 months. In the the next 18 to 24 months, the move to mobilize the workforce will become more critical. Remote access and wireless projects will expand, and VPN, VOIP, LAN, and WAN deployments will become key to staying competitive.

Web technologies ranks second, supporting the notion that Web services will play a vital role in the future software architectures. .Net, XML, and Java, as well as e-commerce (portals and B2B) and application interface technologies specifically were mentioned.

Looking out over the next two years, high performance servers join the ongoing quest for server consolidation and upgrades and storage area network improvements. Security ranks higher in the longer-term horizon than the other time periods as a trend that will impact IT environments.

Enterprise software is on the upswing, according to our survey results. IT managers appear optimistic that they will have the budget and confidence to invest more in mission-critical software projects like CRM. On the operating system migration front, Linux is on the radar, with diminishing focus on Windows XP.

Rounding out the list are cost-saving strategies, including IT asset management and outsourcing; data management, with an emphasis on business intelligence technologies, integration, middleware, and back-up systems; and application development and integration, largely focused on Java.

Be sure to check out ZDNet Tech Update for more information on the IT priorities. Each month, we modify the IT Radar to reflect the top five priorities and the specific initiative for each that rise to the top.

How do the ZDNet IT priorities compare to you own. Let us know what IT issues are top of mind for you in today, in the next 12 months, and over the longer terms. Leave a message in our TalkBack forum or e-mail me at dan.farber@cnet.com.