IT budgets will be redeployed to enhance firms' information flows

Businesses will continue to trim back technology projects started during the dotcom boom up until the third quarter of 2002, a technology analysts said yesterday. But firms will invest in structures that enable information to flow more quickly through an organisation.

Mr Mark Raskino, e-business research director with Gartner Dataquest, told an audience of business leaders in Dublin that Gartner had identified the period between the second quarter of 2001 and the third quarter of 2002 as a gap year.

Speaking to The Irish Times before his speech, Mr Raskino said companies could do a good deal of tidying up during this period because there was less pressure from start-ups and currently more new technology than they knew what to do with.

"During 2000, we saw a third of enterprises appoint tzars in charge of e-business, who became programme builders charged with making sure the company had a lot to say about e-business," he said. "Now, companies are appointing tzars for tidying up their business."

Many enterprises had too many websites, multiple content management solutions and competing projects. There needed to be consolidation, said Mr Raskino. However, he does not see IT budgets being cut dramatically or e-business being cut out. Rather, companies will look for a return on investment in two years rather than in five.

"A lot of times, firms will not kill a project but, rather, they will endeavour to get some value out of it. Perhaps they can bring the new competencies and skills from individuals in their e-business spin-offs within the organisation."

A new wave of technologies, such as peer-to-peer, Web services, mobile and bluetooth, will in time become important, but real-time information will become key in the short-term, according to Mr Raskino.

"The idea that in 2001, despite all the e-business investment it still takes weeks to know what your sales are like in the current quarter, is ridiculous."

Companies still have not pulled all the pieces together and many have old, slow information dissemination. The internal process is a key theme now.

Dell and Cisco both have extremely good real-time information systems, but it took the downturn to highlight this to chief executives, he said. "The more fleet of foot you are, the quicker you can make decisions," Mr Raskin pointed out.