"Applications are the big winner for budgets in 2005," said Pohlmann. Nearly six out of every ten enterprises will pop for new or updated applications this next year, compared to 54 percent which named security as one of the major themes for the year's spending. Among the most popular applications for 2005, said Forrester, will be business intelligence and content management, the latter perhaps the "killer app" of the year. Purchase plans for the category, which manages Web content, documents, e-mail, records, and other digital assets climbed by 15 percentage points compared to 2004's plans, with 38 percent of North American companies saying they would invest in such solutions.
Also on the spending list for 2005 were replacing or upgrading PCs (37 percent of the companies said they named it as a priority) and upgrading Windows on the desktop (33 percent).
Other technologies will draw interest in 2005, said Forrester's Pohlmann, including server virtualization and automated provisioning. The former garnered news this year with EMC purchasing VMWare early in 2004 and Microsoft finally entering the market with its Virtual Server 2005 this summer, and will be on 29 percent of the surveyed firms' buy list next year. EMC/VMware holds close to a 4 to 1 advantage over Microsoft in that market, however, as the vendor which will be considered the most.
Finally, Forrester estimated that about one in five corporate PCs will be replaced in 2005, with Dell remaining the clear leader as the most likely vendor. HP, however, has already gained on Dell this year (it's made up eight percentage points) and may make up additional ground next year if the IBM sale of its PC unit to the Chinese Lenovo Group disrupts the channel.
And Linux aficionados should take heart: Forrester's projected that 2005 will match the Mac's penetration in the enterprise, while it will blow by Apple's operating system in 2006.
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
