Three quarters of Irish chief information officers have said reducing telecoms spending is their top priority for the coming year, a new survey has found.
Findings from the Dublin-based IT research firm iReach have shown that the convergence of information technology and telecoms will have knock-on effects on investment in hardware and software.
The company polled 250 IT decision makers across companies of all sizes in major sectors including financial services, government, retail, manufacturing, telecoms and media. According to 75pc of respondents, cutting telecoms spending is the main priority for the coming 12 months.
The report author Diarmuid O’Connell, an analyst with iReach, said that the emergence of voice over internet protocol (VoIP) as a realistic option as well as the continued growth in mobile services is driving this issue. Anecdotal evidence from technology suppliers suggests that many Irish businesses are finally beginning to adopt VoIP and some are rolling out systems on a large scale.
iReach also found that investment in business continuity continues to grow, prompted by legal requirements and shareholder expectations. For similar reasons, risk management remains a high priority task due to the influence of strong business continuity principles, which in turn are due to legislative obligations.
Seven out of ten respondents said they intend to invest in projects which improved support directly to business projects. “Whereas IT was often seen as a standard organisational function, organisations now proactively push strategic IT projects in order to directly assist business projects,” said O’Connell.
He added that security would continue to be an issue for CIOs in 2006. He pointed to concerns over phishing and anti-virus management, which is being dominated by issues such as zero-day events and patch management.
By Gordon Smith
