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Stargazing is a cottage industry this time of year. Prognosticators from here to the blogosphere offer guidance and best guesses for the year ahead. But prediction is very difficult, especially about the future, said Yogi Berra, or was it physicist Niels Bohr? Forecasting is even trickier in technology, where the overused phrases exponential change and paradigm shift are not exaggerations.
But on the eve of 2008, CIO Decisions is going to play the guessing game anyway. Only this time, we're making a hot technology prediction in four major areas of computing: data centers, applications, processes and culture. You're just going to have to read ahead to find out what they are.
All of our predictions share a common theme: Midmarket companies are increasingly looking toward technology -- and the CIO -- to help them meet their toughest business challenges.
At a meeting of some 350 midmarket CIOs in California this fall, Gartner Inc. analyst Jim Browning detected a sea change in the relationship between midmarket CIOs and their organizations. With the rise in cost of raw materials in 2007, many companies that hit revenue projections saw profit margins slip. Increasingly, CEOs are going to their CIOs and asking what IT can do to help get their margins back.
This often means finding a "cool IT solution out there to make business better," Browning says. "That is evidence that the business is becoming more dependent on the CIO and looking at IT as a partner. I have heard that story more than I have ever heard it before."
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