3 IT Strategies You’ll Be Adopting in 2012
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While your IT department is humming along now, it is always important to gear up for the next wave of strategies and implementations. We spoke to experts to narrow down some of the top IT trends that will impact your business in 2012 and beyond.
Integration of mobile devices
While iPhones, iPads, smartphones and other mobile devices have been available for personal use for what seems like eons, IT departments have been hesitant to adopt these devices as a way to access corporate data due to security and support concerns. But observers expect the tide to turn in 2012.
“IT departments have been moving away from the command and control philosophy and I predict that we will see it die in 2012,” said Tim Crawford, CIO of All Covered, an IT services company. “They will start accepting chaos and making mobility a key element of their technology strategies going forward,” he said.
Virtualization
Better tools are making this technology worthy of attention from CIOs, according to analysts at Gartner. This technology partitions a server into smaller parts, with each part running independently with its own software and operating systems. This can help balance the IT budget, as less hardware is required.
Virtualization will transform how IT is managed, what is bought, how it is deployed, how companies plan and how they are charged, according to a report from Gartner.
Gartner vice president Thomas Bittman even predicts that the days of the monolithic, general-purpose operating system will soon be over.
“Traditionally the operating system has been the center of gravity for client and server computing, but new technologies, new modes of computing, and infrastructure virtualization and automation are changing the architecture and role of the operating system,” he said.
Cloud computing
“The market for cloud computing exploded in 2010 and continues strong in 2011, and I see even greater adoption 2012,” said Ed Laczynski, vice president of cloud strategies for Datapipe, a provider of IT management services. He said that many businesses have moved some of the “low-hanging fruit” such as email to the clouds, and the trend will continue.
“As more and more IT departments have success with cloud computing, the more comfortable IT managers will be with the security and viability of this technology and the more they will put it to use strategically in their organizations,” he said.
Among the benefits of cloud computing is that it is standardized and works over the web, he pointed out. “It is essentially the same pipeline have in your office today, so you don’t need to invest too much on reconfiguring your in-house infrastructure. In addition, in a disaster, your data can be accessed from virtually any location," Laczynski said.
He noted that the uptick in mergers and acquisitions will fuel even more interest in cloud computing. “This provides an easy way to hand over the keys in terms of data ownership.”
