Firms urged to make key IT decisions now

Gartner warned that now is the time to make key investment decisions

2010 will be a key year for enterprise IT investments, according to analysts speaking at the Gartner Symposium in Cannes this week.

Gartner made a number of recommendations for boosting IT use and efficiencies, warning organisations that it is time to make key decisions about investments.

"We are now in one of the rarest and most fleeting periods in business: nearing the bottom of a recession and before a return to growth," said Ken McGee, a vice president and Gartner fellow.

"We urge organisations to exploit this unusual opportunity to question the efficacy of their IT business practices, and determine whether those practices warrant change. But they need to act now. By the time business growth returns, they will be far too busy and it will simply be too late to change."

McGee posed a series of questions designed to help companies decide which path to take, in most cases offering an "extreme" approach to change. McGee said that firms should consider both options before making a decision.

The first question was 'How to Modernise IT Infrastructure vis-à-vis Cloud Computing?'.

"Fund infrastructure modernisation only after you decide upon a cloud computing strategy," said McGee, explaining that this approach will allow executives to remove the feeling that they are "paying twice" for modernisation once cloud computing is fully and officially adopted.

Discussing the last question, Can You Solve One Enterprise Information/IT Grand Challenge by 2013?', McGee urged IT departments to challenge themselves to "resolve just one enterprise information/IT 'grand challenge'".

Here, Gartner recommends that organisations should direct research and development funding towards specifically improving or solving just one of the enterprise's 'grand challenges' in order to have maximum impact.