CIOs and boards put finger on IT's biggest problem

User organisations remain broadly reluctant to invest in cutting edge IT - though attitudes in IT departments and boardrooms are better than they have been for some time.

A survey of more than 400 CIOs and other business executives carried out between November 2004 and January this year in North America, France, Germany, Nordic nations and the UK found caution still comes first.

According to the Leading Edge Forum, the research arm of IT services giant CSC which commissioned the research, at the top of organisations' current tech to-do lists are disaster recovery, business continuity planning and system security - not a list to get the heart racing, perhaps.

David Moschella, Leading Edge Forum global research director, agreed but said: "They are, however, common sense and the reality is that they are still the priority."

The mixed group of respondents - from the IT and general business sides of organisations - agreed that one of the biggest barriers to progress is the business people themselves.

By a ratio of five to one, respondents put business people's inability to understand IT ahead of the IT department's lack of business nous.

"A lot of business people are realising they are part of the problem," Moschella said.

But while a clear majority of respondents - 70 per cent - say IT now matters more where they work than it did three years ago, there are some areas where spend isn't living up to the hype. RFID is one - some users care a lot about the tiny electronic tags but many across the sample have no interest at all - and grid computing is another.

"It is seen as primarily supplier hype," added Moschella.

The Leading Edge Forum was spun off into an outward-, client-facing unit of CSC at the start of the month after some time as an internal research unit.