Though the year’s just beginning, a
number of IT trends are becoming
readily visible that could spell the difference between success and failure for
today’s small and mid-sized company. Why
so critically important? Because organizations are becoming more dependent than
ever on IT solutions; not only to keep the
lights on, but to drive and enhance business itself.
Such momentum toward a higher-value
role for IT is a widely shared expectation
by tech experts. Visionary among them is
Bill Nemeth, president and CEO of Mirifex,
the nation’s fastest-growing privately-held
business and technology consulting firm
with offices in Columbus.
Smart Business recently spoke with
Nemeth about top IT trends soon to play a
pivotal role in business.
What are some major trends that businesses
need to be aware of?
The major emerging trends in IT revolve
around three basic business requirements:
(1) enabling an organization to best protect
its data; while (2) making data more accessible to an increasingly mobile work force;
and (3) integrating its communications
capability in a Web-based world. As a result
of these needs, the top three IT spending
priorities for 2007 are forecast to be security, wireless and communication/Web services — in that order.
Because it’s difficult for businesses to
adequately address all of these needs with
conventional internal resources, there will
be a mass migration in the immediate
future toward managed services, where
companies purchase fractional expertise in
only the areas best suited to their needs. In
a recent study fielded by Mirifex in cooperation with Ohio State University and Smart
Business Network, a vast majority of 100
nationwide companies said they are now
— or soon will be — moving toward a managed services environment. Look for managed-service providers to create technical
support communities and customized
workgroups to add greater value to their
services.
Drawing these trends together is an up-and-coming realization that technologies
are best leveraged when grouped together.
VoIP, for instance, is simply Internet-based
telephony. Its value to an organization is
increased exponentially by integrating it
with such innovations as telepresence —
lifelike video conferencing. In this example, technology grouping begins to address
the whole communications package
required by the organization, rather than
just a piece of it.
So watch for ‘collaboration’ as a new
buzzword in IT. It’s perhaps a single word
that best captures emerging trends in total.
What trends are ‘out’ or have run their
course?
Out will be solutions that are isolated in
scope.
For example, though a high-growth
spend category for 2006, VoIP will not be
sustained as a simple cost-cutting solution
over conventional phone lines. What you’ll
see is VoIP as part of a broader collaborative communications package.
Out will be stand-alone intrusion-prevention systems, too. They will increasingly be
incorporated into unified threat-management systems.
It’s also rumored that rollbacks in Sarbanes-Oxley requirements will reduce
spending for compliance with them.
Again, look for isolated technology activities or solutions to give way to heightened-value bundled solutions.
What’s the trend in terms of spending on IT by
small and mid-sized businesses?
About half of small and mid-sized companies expect their IT budgets to increase significantly in 2007. Of those, more than a
third are planning increases of more than
20 percent. Over the past year, for example,
spending on wireless local area networks
(LANs) was up 21.5 percent. And spending
on VoIP rose 20.9 percent.
Businesses in vast numbers are seeing
these investments worthy because of the
business value IT is proving to extend. It’s
becoming a major emphasis within overall
business plans and an area where companies can differentiate themselves above
competitors.
Whether in the office or personally, spamming is creating quite a logjam for most. Is
there a light at the end of this dark tunnel?
Unfortunately not. While we hold out hope
for the government’s help, the reality is that
it is a booming industry. Consider this: in
November of last year, an estimated 75 billion spams were sent per day worldwide.
That’s up from 63 billion messages per day in
October. It’s a result of spammers outfoxing
efforts to stop them. Most recently, they have
been converting spam from text to image
formats in order to fool filters. Image spam
has doubled over the past year and now
accounts for roughly a third of spam volume.
To beat spammers, companies will need
to upgrade to next-generation e-mail security platforms capable of adapting to
changing threat vectors. You’ll see these
solutions made available through managed
e-mail and messaging services offered by
many managed-services providers.
BILL NEMETH is president and CEO of Mirifex, the nation’s
fastest-growing privately held business and technology consulting firm. Reach him at [email protected] or (440) 891-1210,
ext. 201.