Leader: Looking back - and forward

Over the past 12 months silicon.com has been unapologetic - unapologetic for another year of championing business people, public sector workers and others, however tech illiterate, over IT for IT's sake.

Our mix of end-of-year content over the past week or so brings out key themes and we hope that changes to this publication over 2005 help strengthen our position.

We're clearly no technophobes and again it looks like two tech areas have dominated the headlines, as they are likely to do in 2006 - security and mobile/wireless.

In security, the bad news is that all of us and our organisations are more at risk. While buzzwords such as spyware and phishing have been popular, it is blended threats - often from highly organised criminals - that are keeping us on our toes. Look out for lots more finger pointing.

Meanwhile, in the latter subject area advances have been rapid. Expectations are high for mobile data - a trend influenced by how we work and perhaps the success of the global cellular industry, one of the true phenomena of the past decade.

But it is in the area of the big business and technology issues that we have arguably heard the most interesting things. Our end of year CIO Agenda snapshot makes for interesting reading, not least for vendors and others dealing with the users who must deliver.

We have been told by the CIOs and other IT bosses that we speak to every week that their budgets - as a percentage of revenues - are still squeezed, contrary to some figures from experts. The good news is that, as opposed to this time last year, the squeeze is mainly on bread-and-butter IT spend, meaning more funds are being freed for spending on new technology.

Areas high on the agenda this year: IT governance (not always related to the current compliance maelstrom, mind) as well as security and mobile. But you know about the latter two already.

The tech turkeys? Well, we're not saying they're not going to be important but deemed over-hyped in 2005 were both voice over IP and service-oriented architecture, the next phase of web services software integration that will matter - in the long term.

As ever, readers of silicon.com were interested in services - IT outsourcing, BPO, offshoring, that type of thing - fitting in snugly with their roles often as decision-makers in these areas.

As in 2004, when we were award-nominated for coverage direct from the high-tech centres of India, we brought readers the latest on this subject from all over the world. Expect more next year too, from the country everyone is talking about.

In fact, so key is the services marketplace that as part of a silicon.com redesign in the summer we devoted a whole section to the subject.

And on that redesign, you've told us you like what you see. Also new, on these revamped pages, is our innovative Newsdesk Blog feature, reachable from the right-hand side of any page, and indeed our globe-trotting columnist Peter Cochrane's very own blog.

We also launched coverage by vertical sector midway through the year, picking on the two big boys first - public sector and financial services.

In government, 2005 arguably surpasses all others in terms of big projects in which IT is key. We have reported on the good, the bad and the ugly and campaigned - on pragmatic grounds - against plans for a national ID card and database. Look out for more of the same.

And finally we must mention silicon.com's second annual CIO Forum in September, which met with a standing-room only audience and brought together many CIOs and other tech luminaries. We hope in the new year to give your, our readers, more opportunities such as these to meet up face-to-face, not just online.

silicon.com will continue trying to get the ingredients right, mixing the right delivery of our content with the right content in the first place, for those who, as we say, aren't always versed in bits and bytes but know IT is key to driving the world forward. So no apologies, only hopes for next year.