2012 to be a year of rapid change for for IT pros

2012 is set to be a year in which new opportunities start to rise for IT professionals, even though budgets are tight, according to the predictions of industry participants.  But they also warned that control over technology budgets will start seeping away from IT departments.

The news comes as experts predict a strong take-up of cloud computing, and bring-your-own devices at work. The money available will continue to be strained, but the ambition for new projects is understood to be slowly returning.

The observers also pointed out that it will be a year when small businesses get a grip on virtualisation, and the demand for IT security professionals is significantly heightened.

Analyst house Gartner warned of concerns that control over system approval was beginning to seep away substantially from the tech department.

"By 2015, 35% of corporate IT expenditures for most organisations will be managed outside the IT department’s budget," it said.

"Next generation digital enterprises are being driven by a new wave of business managers and individual employees who no longer need technology to be contextualised for them by an IT department." These people would also drive more social computing to contact customers, analysts said.

The growth of cloud computing was allowing departmental heads an easier route to self-deployment of systems.

Cloud computing "applies pressure to IT economics", with the low setup costs and quick deployment, Forrester said. It defined this as the "next phase of IT industrialisation".

Workers are increasingly dumping desktop PCs for laptops, tablets and mobile phones, according to the experts. By 2016, over half of workers will have abandoned their desktop computers, Gartner predicts. "The pace of change…will be breathtaking," it said. "By 2015, mobile application development projects targeting smartphones and tablets will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4-to-1."

 Networking vendor Cisco, in a study of IT decision makers, found that IT budgets would continue to suffer, though the ambition for projects was beginning to return.

"2012 will be a year of tech ‘trade-offs’ and compromise," it said. "IT leaders will be forced to balance innovation aspirations with harsh business reality." It warned that ‘keeping the lights on’ will eat up most of people’s budgets.

Nevertheless, Cisco said IT leaders were upbeat. "In particular they see cloud, mobile device support and remote access as key priorities."

Service management will also be a focus for improvement, according to vendor ICCM, with businesses looking for more flexibility. "In recent years we have already seen significant changes in IT service management; its position within a business now reaches far beyond the focus of the IT department," it said.

The need to effectively process big data would, however, drive spending in many large organisations, analysts said. Forrester predicted that business intelligence will become much more "agile, pervasive and limitless" and executives would push for "better, faster insights".

Vendor Netuitive said the key development in analytics would be "how maths-based, IT analytics are starting to enable advanced correlation of real-time data across silos and domains, and from multiple data types – for example application data from APM tools such as CA Wily, IT infrastructure data, and business metrics".

Banks were already using "this type of visibility", it said, allowing administrators "to detect anomalies, drill down to root cause and troubleshoot proactively before they cascade into service degradation and IT outages".

Observers said the data deluge would remain a struggle, in spite of valiant efforts by IT. "In the period to 2015, more than 85% of [the largest] organisations will fail to effectively exploit big data for competitive advantage," Gartner said.

In spite of the tough job market, security skills will be in high demand as cloud computing takes off and end users increasingly use their own tablets and phones to handle corporate data.

IDG News Service

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