Research reveals 2005 strategic IT agenda

Mercury Interactive Corporation, the global leader in business technology optimisation (BTO), announced results from a research survey conducted for Mercury by the Economist Intelligence Unit, and a study commissioned from IDC on the top information technology (IT) challenges and priorities. Each report details the IT impact from compliance mandates, strategic sourcing and application complexity.

The Economist Intelligence Unit report yields data for 21 individual countries throughout Asia Pacific, Europe and the Middle East. In addition, the report reveals the top IT investment areas and priorities for a cross-section of industries including finance, manufacturing, high-technology, pharmaceuticals, retail, distribution, telecommunications, utilities and business services.

This report is based on a global survey of more than 750 IT executives and is titled, "Driving Business Value from IT: Three key optimisation challenges for CIOs". It provides insights into the role of business technology optimisation strategies in helping companies to address top IT challenges and initiatives. Key findings include:

* 64% of survey respondents cited IT quality as an important or critical challenge for IT management.

* Respondents believe the key benefits of compliance are accuracy of financial reporting (61%), improvements in their visibility of enterprise risk (56%), and better IT governance (50%).

* One in every three respondents from large companies (more than US$8 billion) listed application management as their number one investment priority - and half of all those surveyed ranked application management as their first or second priority in investment plans.

"Increased complexity in the application environment, the impact of regulatory compliance, and new models for IT outsourcing create the need for tighter alignment between IT strategy and business results," said Gareth Lofthouse, European director for executive services at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The IDC study, based on its global research data, is titled "Optimising the Business Value of IT - Three Key Challenges." The IDC findings detail IT`s ability to manage risk from strategic sourcing initiatives, compliance mandates, and application complexity. IDC findings include:

* More than 40% of IDC survey respondents cited custom, Web and legacy application development as IT services planned for offshoring.

* In North American companies with more than 1 000 employees, 44% are developing business processes and applications to address compliance requirements, and 27% have an IT executive leading the overall compliance efforts.

* The top three reasons why applications fail are lack of project management processes, poor application performance and failure of applications to evolve with the business.

"The pressure on IT to deliver greater value to the business with flat, or nearly flat budgets is forcing IT executives to rethink the way they prioritise, deliver and manage business applications," said Melissa Webster, research director at IDC. "IT organisations that adopt best practices to improve their operational process will be better able to allocate their IT resources and deliver greater business value."

"This insightful research uncovers the forces behind the rapid adoption of BTO," said Christopher Lochhead, chief marketing officer at Mercury. "Compliance and governance, application change and complexity and new sourcing models are driving the change in the IT agenda for 2005."

Mercury will make detailed data from the reports available to journalists upon request.