Mark O'Loughlin

2009 was a tough year, there's the good news. The bad news is that 2010 may well be tougher for those that choose not to respond.  Often it is the resisting change and not the change itself that is the harder act.  It could be argued from one perspective that the well oiled IT machine has over last few years stabilised, we are after all at ITIL v3.  IT is in many ways predictable, performs okay in many organisations and from a CFO point of view has managed to get a reasonable control of costs.  In 2009 many IT departments survived through costs cutting, doing the same for less and managing to resist deeper, underlying change.  IT managed to survive shaving a few percentage points off the operating expenditure and got through 2009 without severe casualty.  The problem is that if IT continues to  think like this then it is thinking in a vacuum.  The underlying problem remains and that is in 2009 the markets and business arena fundamentally changed.  The information system that is IT has to also respond, it is required to provide the information needs of organisations who now operate in a more connected and agile world.  In 2010, in my humble opinion, we will start to see reactions to the changes in the business arena from many large organisations.  Traditional market watering holes have shrunk and in order to survive organisations will need to follow customers/suppliers to find new ones.  Those organisations hoping the storm has passed without their world changing may be resisting change which may leave them to find themselves left behind.  Pockets of ‘green shoots’ are likely to emerge in 2010 if they have not already - interesting, niche companies, exploiting new gaps in the market and hungry to make a yard on established players.  Established payers have no choice but to respond and react to new competition and one of the key enablers to support this response is through information - IT.  Up-to-date, configurable, real time information will need to be available on the move across organisations.  It is in my view the time for IT to embrace change and again underline its value-add over and above commodity services in the boardroom.  There are threats on the horizon to IT through consumer based technology,  social technology and a born-connected generation are all converging on the business arena, meaning that customers, suppliers and users are changing and emerging with new expectations of IT.  We now approach the festive period, and after the challenges of this year it is a welcome time to reflect upon 2009 and gain energy and focus ideas for 2010, the questions is coming back next in 2010 how will you respond?