Two Out of Five Executives Say Company Data Volume is Increasing in Size and Becoming Unmanageable
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were amended 18 months ago, requiring that companies have the ability to access quickly an inventory of various electronically stored information in the event of litigation. Yet, a recent online poll, conducted by Deloitte, found that nearly two out of every five executives (39.7 percent) felt that data volumes in the organizations they’ve worked for are increasing in size and becoming unmanageable. In fact, 17.5 percent of executives surveyed said their companies are not ready to handle complex discovery requests.

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2008 IT Market Compensation Study Projects a Decline in IT Hiring
Although the recruitment and retention of skilled IT professionals continues to be a key issue for organizations, even under the current economic conditions, IT organizations will be cautious about their hiring plans in 2008 and 2009 in response to potential IT budget cuts, according to an annual survey by Gartner, Inc. Nearly 58 percent projected an increase in IT staff levels (including full-time employees and contractors as supplementary staff) during the survey time period (March 1, 2008 through February 28, 2009). However, this is a notable drop from 66.3 percent reported in the 2007 study.

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Security and Privacy Risks of Telecommuting Not Effectively Being Addressed
Telecommuting and the virtual office put sensitive corporate data, including the personal information of customers, at risk of compromise, according to a report released by the Center for Democracy & Technology and Ernst & Young. According to the report, more than 46 million people are expected to work at home at least one day a week by the end of 2011. That increase of telecommuting workers heightens the need for robust security and privacy policies.

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Worldwide IT Services Market On Track to Grow 9.5 Percent in 2008
Despite the uncertain economic situation, the IT services market is expected to remain strong as worldwide IT services end-user spending is forecast to exceed $819 billion in 2008, up 9.5 percent from 2007, according to Gartner, Inc. Analysts said results in the first half of 2008 have shown mixed results. Core outsourcing (IT management and process management) remains the highest growth area in the market. In 2008, core outsourcing services are on track to represent 42 percent of total worldwide IT services end-user spending.

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Technology Will Play a Key Role in Helping CFOs Deliver Business Growth
Technology will play a key role in helping chief financial officers (CFOs) deliver on an increasingly complex agenda and understand what drives corporate performance and value, according to Gartner Inc. However, increasing economic uncertainty means that the urgency to deliver this understanding is even greater, coupled with the need to reduce costs and optimize operating efficiency wherever possible.

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Workforce Collaboration and Web 2.0 - A Powerful Combination
New research from the Aberdeen Group found overwhelmingly that Best-in-Class organizations prioritize workforce collaboration and a majority of these organizations infuse the use of Web 2.0 technologies in those efforts to achieve impressive performance gains in areas such as problem resolution, project completion, and workforce productivity, including a 34% average reduction in project completion time and a 26.7% increase in revenue per employee.

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More Than 50 Percent of Users Will Be Dissatisfied With the Slow Rate of IT Change in Their Enterprises by 2013
More than 50 percent of users will be dissatisfied with the slow rate of IT change in their enterprises by 2013, up from 30 percent in 2008, according to Gartner Inc. Gartner predicts that users' dissatisfaction with the speed of enterprise IT change will worsen in the next five years as users' willingness to use Web-based alternatives over and above what their IT organization directly provides (already a significant factor) continues to rise and user skill levels and comfort with using technology rises for employees of all ages.

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IP Telephony Holds Strong in the Face of Unified Communications (UC) Hype
Despite escalating buzz and hype around the unified communications (UC) solutions from Microsoft and IBM, these solutions have had minimal impact on the growth of IP telephony lines, which recorded shipments of 30.9 million in 2007, a new study from IDC reveals. Cisco, Avaya, Nortel, and Siemens were the leading four vendors in the worldwide IP PBX market based on their market results for end-user revenue in 2007, IDC's report shows. In the IP PBX market, Cisco gained the most market share while Alcatel-Lucent lost the most market share relative to 2006. The other IP PBX vendors had nominal changes in market share year over year.

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IT spending slips, virtualization rises
Goldman Sachs has bad news for most of the IT economy: IT spending will slip from 7 percent growth to 5 percent growth in 2008. While not yet recessionary, the outlook is dipping dangerously close to that. Expectations of budget growth remain down significantly on a year-over-year basis, with many CIOs limiting their purchases to projects with a high and fast ROI. They continue to believe that 2008 IT spending will decelerate to 5 percent from 7 percent in 2007. Demand for discretionary IT projects dropped to its lowest point in the history of the survey, with caution beginning to spread to the offshore providers.

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Research Finds Business Needs Customer Experience Management
Most businesses today have not advanced very far in how they manage their customers’ experiences with them, according to newly released benchmark research from Ventana Research. The research confirms that businesses are only beginning to advance towards managing the customer experience across the broad set of customer interactions that occur every day. The new research evaluated the maturity of customer experience management and found that only 12 percent of organizations are truly mature in their focus on ensuring the optimal customer experience.

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