Expect a greater focus on enabling end users, stronger threats to traditional IT vendors

Nucleus Research today announced its Top 10 IT Predictions for 2007. The annual report has accurately predicted major IT trends for enterprise end users and vendors for the past three years. Nucleus predictions are based on analysis of both vendors and thousands of corporate end-user case studies.

"We see an exciting new year ahead – especially for companies embracing new technologies – with two larger trends emerging from our top 10 predictions. First we see the empowerment of the enterprise end-user as on-demand offerings and SOA drives more functionality down to the end user. Second, we see a growing challenge to traditional IT vendors through new technologies and models, including data virtualization, the integration of data mining tools and the ongoing evolution of IP and wireless technologies," said Rebecca Wettemann, Nucleus Research.

Nucleus predicts the following for 2007:

1. Adoption of on-demand solutions and expansion of existing on-demand solution environments will continue as IT increasingly embraces on-demand as a way to reduce ongoing management hassles and accelerate project delivery.
2. Broader adoption of service-oriented architectures (SOA) will drive greater ROI and change how IT infrastructure is evaluated.
3. Data visualization and analysis tools for business users will drive greater adoption and more rapid decision making, while challenging the traditional business intelligence approach.
4. Content management consolidation will drive down prices and make rapid deployment, usability, and ongoing TCO key decision factors for migration efforts.
5. More and more organizations will look to integrated data mining to achieve ROI by reducing marketing costs and better targeting customer interactions.
6. Agent, filtering, and collaboration technologies (Knowledge Management) will become more prevalent in CRM, ERP, and other applications – as will other features designed to make them more intuitive and easier to use.
7. To win, cement, and expand customer relationships, successful vendors will enhance their services offerings to provide blueprints, templates, and other prescriptive guidance – free of charge.
8. As technology options become more accessible and affordable for organizations we’ll see a rise in the adoption of low cost and quick returns solutions like predictive analytics and on-demand in the public and nonprofit sector – driving greater demands for accountability in government IT spending.
9. BPO 2.0 leverages on-demand technology and secure remote network access to employ a distributed labor force, enabling more flexible, higher quality, more agile, and more focused customer interaction on a global basis.
10. Continued adoption of IP telephony and free tools like Skype will challenge traditional carriers’ pricing models and drive public broadband efforts.”

Nucleus analysts are available to discuss any of the IT predictions listed above. The full report is available at NucleusResearch.com.

About Nucleus Research

Nucleus Research is a global provider of IT advisory and research services that provides CFOs, CIOs and their staffs with the real-world information they need to maximize the business returns from their technology investments. For more information, visit NucleusResearch.com.