“It’s the economy, stupid” will be the dominant theme for 2009. A recession, consumer and corporate anxiety, and constrained IT spending will challenge rational thought.
Although most IT budgets have been approved for 2009, don’t be surprised if they are spent cautiously in the beginning of the year. They may even be cut further if there’s panic in a company’s industry or about the economy in general.
Even with this backdrop of anxiety and budget constraints, business intelligence, data warehousing and data integration will continue to grow in 2009. Some will argue that because BI and DW provide such business value they will be exempt from the budget cuts. But do not be naïve, if you are fighting to survive, even items labeled as essential in good times become luxury budget items in bad times.
Not every company is in dire straits though. Companies that are frugal but not fighting for survival may stick to their normal priorities. And some companies will use these times as an opportunity to invest in key initiatives to grow market share or revitalize themselves in the marketplace.
But, no matter what a company’s circumstances, the economy is challenging even healthy firms to do things differently. This is the second theme for 2009: IT behavior will be forced to change from its “buy and hold” strategy. What IT builds, how they build it and who they purchase from will be altered this year. This will significantly impact BI and DW in 2009. There will be some mistakes made along the way, as there are with any change.
These changes will not happen overnight, but will continue long after the recession is over (and it will end eventually!)
The important trends affecting our industry this year:
1. Economic concerns distorts IT budget decision-making
2. Business intelligence expands
3. IT expands its BI vendor shortlist
4. Data integration continues healthy growth
5. Data integration breaks out from the “Magic Quadrant”
6. Incremental beats out big bang projects
7. “Good enough” replaces best-in-class
8. SMB BI demands outstrip a constrained adoption
9. Industry consolidation continues
I’ll blog about all of these trends during the next few weeks.
+Rick Sherman
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