Happy Anniversary! 2004 in review

We've talked a lot about the marriage between our IT Priorities data and our new analytical tool, BT Trax--our window into which technologies IT decision makers are implementing and the kinds of information they rely on to identify, select, and buy the best solutions. As a toast to their one year anniversary, here's a look at what they taught us in 2004.

According to IT Priorities, the top projects in 2004 focused on IT management, followed closely by wired and wireless network and security implementations. The three technology categories accounted for 53% of all projects last year, each 17-19% of projects. In 2005, the distribution is a bit different, with IT executives and managers telling us that 26% of their projects will be networking, with security, IT management, hardware, and enterprise software each claiming about 15% of future plans.

BT Trax tells us that last year, our news coverage and vendor resources provided our decision makers with the kind of information they needed to stay informed and make the best choices. We sorted all the activity on CNET's B2B Portfolio sites by the IT Priorities technology categories. Here is how news interest and vendor resources consideration (downloaded white papers, etc.) break down for 2004.

As you can see the biggest technology categories in terms of news activity is hardware, followed by security and operating systems. Among vendor resources, networking issues grab the lion's share of activity, with security and hardware information forming a 2nd tier. With the complexity of networking infrastructure growing by leaps and bounds, it's no surprise that these technical resources are most in demand.