CIO Agenda: The 2005 technology shopping list

What's in store for IT over the next 12 months? To find out, we polled 12 members of silicon.com's CIO Jury about their outlook and key concerns for 2005. The results make up our first CIO Agenda series. Along with analysis from Andy McCue on tech priorities below, stay tuned for more results from this poll over the coming weeks.

While Christmas is a time for most people to wind down and think about what they want from Santa, the UK's IT chiefs are busy working out what technologies and strategies they'll be spending their hard-won budgets on.

With the business strategies for next year in place, CIOs need to assess how much to spend maintaining or upgrading the existing IT infrastructure as well as cutting through tech industry hype to choose the right emerging technologies that will underpin those wider business goals and give an organisation competitive advantage.

The headline figures from silicon.com's CIO Agenda poll of 12 IT chiefs show that security remains a top priority. Over 90 per cent of respondents said they will be focusing on email security, while over 80 per cent will also be spending on anti-spam, monitoring and antivirus technology in 2005.

The one area of security whose time appears still not to have come is biometrics, with just one of the panel set to use this technology next year.

Web services is another hot area identified by the respondents, which indicated a shift from the tentative internal deployments of the last couple of years to more external facing. Two-thirds (eight) said they will be focusing on internal web services while three-quarters (nine) said they will be working on external-facing web services.

Mobile and wireless is some way down our CIOs' tech agendas for 2005 with the exception of PDAs, where two-thirds (eight) indicate this will be a priority. Other 'hot' technology areas the panel pointed to include IT governance and desktop hardware.

Just outside of the technologies at the top of CIOs is a mixture of new and old. Voice over IP (VoIP) and Wi-Fi are being looked at by half of the CIO Jury in 2005, while half are also considering storage, server hardware and CRM.

Compliance and outsourcing are two areas that have been dominant this year that also look set to remain high on CIOs' agendas with seven of the panel continuing to focus on them.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are several high-profile technology areas that CIOs believe are still over-hyped.

Almost unanimously RFID tracking tags were picked out as one of these over-hyped areas, and just one of the CIO Jury will be looking at this technology in 2005. Many said RFID will continue to be over-hyped in 2005.

Phil Young, head of IT operations at Amtrak, said: "Without standards it's a turkey at the moment - forgive the pun at this time of year."

Despite the hype about Linux being ready to challenge Microsoft on the desktop, just one of our panel is set to look at this in 2005 - although a third will be looking to use open source in the server room.

Others rounded on the mobile networking area. Steve Ritchie, CIO at Investcorp, said it's still a little way off while Bill Gibbons, CIO at Abbey Group, said the benefits of wireless LANs will continue to be over-hyped in 2005.

Les Boggia, head of IT at insurance firm Carole Nash, said general mobile technology and remote working continue to be disappointing and said it is an example of technology driving requirements rather than any real need.

"In the first place, if I am out of the office, I am out of the office. My view is that the large wireless providers are losing so much money on the handsets and now low cost mobile calls that they are all tying to use this technology in another way for business. It is destined to limp along for another few years with no real place to go," he said.

Offshoring has received a lot of attention this year as it began to enter the mainstream business vocabulary and silicon.com visited India back in April to see what the fuss was about first hand. But Neil Hammond, head of IT at British Sugar and an early adopter of offshoring in his previous role at Thomas Cook, delivered something of a reality check.

"There has been a massive 'grab' for outsourcing to reduce costs that service, and finding enough resource with the right skill, has declined. I think offshoring can achieve value but what it can do is still hyped," he said.

Grid and utility computing did not make the agenda of any of our CIO panel and some tipped it to continue being over-hyped in 2005.

From the evidence of our small sample of UK IT bosses, 2005 looks set to be another year of fine balancing between the difficult issues of security and compliance and trying to exploit newer technology areas such as web services and VoIP. Against that is the continued backdrop of value for money, with IT governance now near the top of our CIOs' agenda, followed not far behind by outsourcing.

Gain more insight into what is going to be important for IT chiefs during the next 12 months in our CIO Agenda series over the coming weeks.