Butler group predicts IT issues for 2007

SharePoint solutions will exceed expectations While Microsoft will be disappointed with the number of enterprise deployments of Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 during the coming year, deployments of SharePoint-based solutions will exceed all expectations. Microsoft’s apparent commoditisation of the enterprise content management (ECM) market could well start a price war among established vendors as they try to up-sell and compete with Microsoft. Those vendors with large ECM product portfolios will consider discounting their document and records management modules in the hope of securing more business down-the-line. Consumer-orientated Internet- and web-based technologies will continue to infiltrate the workplace, and these will cause many CIOs to re-think their information worker strategies. Richard Edwards, Senior Research Analyst Practice Area: Desktop and Client Strategy Green IT: power efficiency under the spotlight Improvements in many areas of IT infrastructure – better processor performance, higher levels of throughput and greater disk densities, to name but three – have led to a general acceptance that everything is getting better, faster and more efficient. There is, however, one area where efficiency is lagging – and that is in power performance. This leads to concern about the cost of maintaining the IT infrastructure, especially in data centres which can have power efficiency levels as low as 70%. When one considers that a domestic gas or oil central heating boiler runs at around 80% efficiency, and these are coming under close scrutiny to make them more efficient, it is clear that the whole issue within IT is now firmly under the spotlight. Mike Thompson, BPM Practice Director Practice Area: IT Policy and Strategy Legacy ERP and confusion will hold back SOA In spite of the biggest vendors’ best efforts, ERP customers will not be persuaded to upgrade during 2007, merely to gain flexibility. Genuine business needs will drive the upgrade cycle – and this must be met by delivering new functionality not dressing old applications in new clothes. Although service-orientated architecture (SOA) is seen as an essential construct for enterprise applications by the majority of vendors, it will take a number of years for the market to catch up. Teresa Jones, Senior Research Analyst Practice Area: Enterprise Applications SOA implementation methodologies will slow adoption For those that embark on ambitious SOA projects, the use of a methodology built around the requirements of SOA will become mandatory. To-date, most of the initiatives towards creating SOA methodologies have been taken by system integrators, but software vendors will start to view the delivery of a methodology as a competitive differentiator. Consequently, we could face methodology proliferation, which could add to the confusion around SOA implementations. Rob Hailstone, Software Infrastructure Practice Director Practice Area: Software Infrastructure Virtualisation to dominate the data centre The virtualisation of the IT infrastructure, including servers, storage, networks, and clients, is a key technology to improve the flexibility and utilisation of the data centre. In a competitive market, EMC is the dominant technology provider, but will be chased by other solution and service providers including HP, Cisco, and IBM. Microsoft will continue to build a diverse capability in this market, and following the acquisition of Softricity, and the recent agreement with Novell, Butler Group expects the company to extend its reach through further partnerships in order to strengthen its offering. Ardence and SWSoft are potential targets for acquiring vendors. Roy Illsley, Senior Research Analyst Practice Area: Infrastructure Management Measuring IT’s business value to remain a key challenge Although IT is maturing as a business function it still lacks some accepted methods for measuring the value it delivers, compared to other areas of the business. The outcome sought is business value, enabled by IT, rather than IT value per se. This makes it essential to establish a formal framework that can be used by both business and IT leaders to support value measurement. Initiatives such as ValIT and the IT Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF), and the broader use of project and portfolio management (PPM) tools are supporting this move, but above all it requires the development of a common language and frame of reference for describing business value, and for agreeing the appropriate metrics. Tim Jennings, Research Director Practice Area: IT Policy and Strategy The Microsoft Effect will be significant in the security market During 2007 expect the ‘Microsoft effect’ on the security marketplace to be significant. At the moment there is something of a phoney war going on between Microsoft and leading security vendors such as McAfee and Symantec over Microsoft’s Kernel management approach to the 64-bit version of Vista. Other security organisations, such as Aladdin and Sophos, believe that Microsoft is right to take this one-time opportunity to adequately protect its core. This and other incursions into the security arena will keep Microsoft in the security limelight. Andy Kellett, Senior Research Analyst Practice Area: Security The Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) will start to commoditise The factors are all in place for the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) market to start to become commoditised. There are more vendors than the market will be able to support in the long-term, and this will result in price-pressure. At the same time, open source products offering ESB functionality will start to impact the market, moving revenue away from up-front license fees towards periodic maintenance fees. Finally, SOA will become more approachable by mid-sized organisations, increasing the demand for entry-level products at cost-effective price-points. Rob Hailstone, Software Infrastructure Practice Director Practice Area: Software Infrastructure Business process management will be a mainstream technology Business process management (BPM) will reinforce its position as a mainstream technology, with a great deal of emphasis on the decomposing of processes into finer levels of granularity. The coming year will also see more importance attached to the issue of process discovery from existing assets rather than modelling processes for a green-field site. There will also be a greater degree of understanding of the benefits of business rules and how these need to be implemented as a service. This requires a separate management solution and the business rules management system space will grow in respect of both understanding and adoption. Mike Thompson, BPM Practice Director Practice Area: Business Process Management Performance Management will drive business intelligence (BI) and consolidation will continue The trend for vertical industry and ready-made solutions will continue as pure-play vendors continue with their efforts to put more distance between themselves and Microsoft. In particular there will be a number of new pre-packaged applications for corporate performance management for MiFID (Markets in Financial instruments Directive), marketing management and retail. Consolidation will continue in the supplier market with the acquisition of disruptive vendors such as SeeWhy by pure-play BI vendors. Platform vendors IBM, Oracle and SAP are likely to make acquisitions too. Sarah Burnett, Senior Research Analyst Practice Area: Business Intelligence Outsourcing will require increased flexibility and organisations will look to remote management from offshore to cut costs It will finally be clear in 2007 that few organisations will consider going back to lengthy, single-supplier outsourcing deals. The large number of existing deals reaching renewal stage will reinforce the trends towards shorter timeframe deals, regular reviews of objectives, and the involvement of multiple vendors. Organisations looking for ways to cut spiralling data centre costs will see remote infrastructure management delivered from offshore locations as a realistic option. Costs of maintaining up-to-date skills in data centres, and of investment in technology transformation such as consolidation and advanced management capabilities, are strong drivers towards this type of service. Alan Rodger, Research Analyst Practice Area: Outsourcing and Services Fixed/mobile communications convergence set to gain traction Fixed/mobile convergence is set to gain significant traction throughout 2007. Either through the use of private GSM networks, or WiFi, mobile phone usage is about to undergo a radical change. This will hand control back to the organisation and bring a new degree of flexibility and innovation, by providing the ability to integrate mobile phones into the enterprise network. Mark Blowers, Senior Research Analyst Practice Area: Mobile and Wireless Computing More emphasis will be placed on Unified Security As a result of consolidation in the security market over the past 12 months, expect to see more emphasis on the requirement for unified protection and network infrastructure security systems during 2007. One example is Unified Access Control – products that enable organisations to understand all devices that operate across their networks, and then extend to controlling how such devices should be evaluated and managed as they attempt logon – including the evaluation of device acceptability and end-user authentication. Andy Kellett, Senior Research Analyst Practice Area: Security Agile methods aid development maturity In the past application development in IT departments was typically an ad hoc process driven by a ‘hero’ (or inspired individual) – what the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) would describe as Level One (of five). Today we find Agile approaches taking the developer community by storm, and we expect 2007 to see continued growth in adoption of what are highly disciplined methodologies that developers also enjoy using – from Extreme Programming and SCRUM to DSDM. Michael Azoff, Senior Research Analyst Practice Area: Application Development RFID tags will be used at the product and item level The supply chain is an area where technology can deliver real benefits – radio frequency identification (RFID) is revolutionising the way that products are manufactured, tracked, bought and sold. During 2007 RFID tags will start to be used at the product or item level rather than on pallets and containers. Packaging this technology into applications will enable faster deployment, and will be a significant area of investment for applications vendors during 2007. This may be achieved by further acquisitions or by increased partnering in the market. Teresa Jones, Senior Research Analyst Practice Area: Enterprise Applications