Business Intelligence, E-commerce and Open Source Win, Maintenance Fees and RFID Lose.

Nucleus Research, a global provider of return on investment (ROI)-focused research and advisory services, today announced its Top 10 IT Predictions for 2005. Based on ongoing analysis of end-user clients and in-house vendor research, Nucleus Research has been able to accurately predict major IT trends for the last several years. For example, in 2004 the firm correctly predicted flat IT budgets and the continued erosion of traditional software licensing.

For 2005, Nucleus Research is predicting the following IT trends:

1. Business Intelligence to heat up the ERP market. ERP vendors to offer expanded BI capabilities to lure in new customers.
2. Maintenance fees become the next battlefield. Customers are tired of paying for upgrades they may never need, licenses they rarely use, and will now get tougher on negotiating fees. Vendors won't want to give up the attractive profit margin, but will have little choice as customers turn to competitors for a better price.
3. Hosted CRM is reconsidered. Although the hosted model works in some situations, companies will begin to reconsider the ongoing cost of hosted CRM agreements and look at hybrid and other models that they can use in maturity without paying for in perpetuity.
4. E-commerce is the new "hosted CRM." More and more companies look to outsource their e-tail channel instead of maintaining and updating costly on-premise e-commerce and catalog applications.
5. Open Source marches on. Not yet on the desktop, but despite "independent" analyst white papers that may predict otherwise, Open Source continues to gain ground in the minds and infrastructures of IT managers.
6. Consolidating for savings. Companies are undergoing infrastructure audits to identify and clean out redundant or unnecessary IT assets. The payoffs will be big for systems auditing and analysis tool providers.
7. SPAM explodes. Until Microsoft gets better at keeping it out, those clever spammers will keep sending it out. Organizations will continue to receive spam in spite of their existing deployed spam filtering software until vendors catch up to spammers' intelligence.
8. Wireless piggybacking and piggyhacking become commonplace. Back to the good old days of cell phones, when you needed different phones for coverage in different areas. Expect a new round of software apps that help road warriors share the wireless wealth – whether they know it or not.
9. Sarbanes-Oxley and other compliance regulations drive investment in content and records management. Organizations have no choice but to invest into robust content management technology in order to maintain the appropriate level of control over their data and comply with the law.
10. RFID hangovers - the morning after, we often have regrets. It will still take us some time to get tags right; after all, it's not about cost, it's about reliability.

"Nucleus Research analysts conduct thousands of end-user interviews and write hundreds of case studies each year," said Ian Campbell, CEO of Nucleus Research. "End-users share their top IT concerns with Nucleus Research and with this information we are able to accurately predict where these organizations intend to spend their IT budgets over the next 6 to 12 months."

About Nucleus Research

Nucleus Research is a global consulting and advisory company that provides CFOs, CIOs and their staffs with the real-world information they need to maximize the business returns from their technology investments. Its analysts blend financial analysis and case-based investigations with comprehensive technology expertise to deliver factual return-on-investment (ROI) data to organizations worldwide. The company uses an uncompromising set of processes and tools to evaluate the financial return on IT assets and is the only firm to gain certification by the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy. Nucleus Research has analyst experts across the entire enterprise software and hardware space and provides clients with ongoing advice to help with both short-term technology decisions and long-term strategic plans. For more information, visit nucleusresearch.com