Morgan Keegan's Threadgill agrees, saying that spending on storage and security will be his top IT priorities for 2009. "Our biggest spend next year is going to be storage. Data doubles yearly," he says. "With what's happening in the last 30 to 60 days, we also might see new regulatory requirements and have to keep our data forever."
2. Business intelligence: Niche analytics
As data continues to accrue, the need to glean insights from it grows, agree analysts from Forrester, Gartner, and IDC.
CIOs will keep spending on general business intelligence, but more resources will go toward very focused analytics, explains Andrew Bartels, principal analyst at Forrester. The "analytics that help companies identify and retain their most-profitable customers will be key," he says.
Gartner fellow and vice president Jackie Fenn adds that companies always need behavior analytics. In the supply chain, for instance, analytics that trigger alerts when suppliers are running into problems, such as delaying supply or payment, can deliver real value to companies.
"The broader range of data sources will lead to greater need for analytics," Gartner's Fenn explains. "There are many different masters, as companies tap analytics to cut costs, avoid errors, predict behavior of customers before they lose them, grow market opportunities."
Michael Khan, CIO of international eye care service Specsavers, adds that he is continuing to invest in technologies that improve customer insight and retention because "it's easier to keep those customers now, even at a cost, than to try and win them back later."
3. Virtualization: Optimizing resources
Virtualization is the datacenter version of getting the most out of what you already have. Up-front investment in virtualization tends to be fairly low, but can deliver quick and substantial returns. "Virtualization will continue to be popular because it allows companies to defer other costs -- in this case, that's mostly hardware," IDC's Gens says.
Specsavers began tapping virtualization before the downturn. "Virtualization is a key tactic we've been doing for some time to minimize hardware acquisition costs," Khan says, "and that will continue."