What's up with directory services? Or is it down?

Planning for directory services has been steadily declining over the last 12 months. Once representing 40% of all enterprise software planned initiatives, recent months show directory services shrinking to 20% of project plans. Based on our IT Priorities data, most plans involve Active Directory, chosen by 51% of respondents. The drop in project plans appears to be a natural outcome of successful migrations to Active Directory.

And the rest of the enterprise software story 12-months out? Check out the data. CRM and groupware initiatives are also experiencing a diminished prominence among 12-month IT plans. In contrast, ERP and document management solutions, along with specialized vertical industry and financial applications are all on the upswing. These data, collected from IT managers and executives, appear to support recent predictions that more will be happening with enterprise software in 2005. What remains to be seen is whether these software projects are going to translate intocapital expenditures or more in-house development and optimization of installed systems.