What Worries CIOs in 2002?
What will keep CIOs awake at night during 2002? Giga Information Group has compiled a top-10 list of their concerns heading into the new year. The list is influenced heavily by, among other factors, the troubled economy (cutting costs), the Sept. 11 attacks (shoring up security), the rising costs of software (budget allocation), inaccurate perceptions about the role of IT in the organization.
Giga’s top 10, which it calls a tool to help CIOs define which issues should dominate their to-do lists, includes:
- 1. Cutting/stabilizing costs
- 2. Aligning IT investments with business direction
- 3. Building strong IT service delivery
- 4. Selective outsourcing, offshore outsourcing and balancing of external service providers
- 5. Management of internal and external resources
- 6. Security, including disaster recovery and business resumption planning
- 7. Enterprise architecture
- 8. Systems integration (Web-based systems, legacy systems, B2B systems, etc.)
- 9. Building credibility for the value of IT’s services
- 10. Prioritizing IT investments and formalizing the planning process
Coming Soon To Your Inbox: Video E-Mail
On the heels of two recent announcements from providers of video e-mail, IT research firm the Yankee Group of Boston says the expanding interest in the technology holds implications for corporations and consumers, and it offers insight into the trend.
In the first announcement, SpotLife Inc. and Yahoo announced that Yahoo Mail users can use its technology to and send personalized video e-mail messages to co-workers, family and friends. Separately, Talkway Communications, which provides Java-based streaming video solutions for corporate users and consumers, said it raised $5.2 million in venture capital to expand sales and marketing strategies of its distribution technology.
Yankee Group says the potential for increased video e-mail deployment in corporate and consumer sectors presents these opportunities and challenges:
- Corporations choosing to deploy video e-mail as a sales and marketing tool should do so in a strategic manner rather than using a broad-based approach. For example, video e-mail can be used to send new product announcements to sales channel partners as part of a company’s promotional efforts to stimulate awareness.
- For consumers, video e-mail will generally be used as a novelty communications tool, such as sending video e-mail as a supplement or alternative to using live chat.
- Recipients should be given the choice of whether to view the video or not.
- Providers of video e-mail technology must gain a critical mass of PC video camera users to create the video e-mail. And they must establish a viable revenue model for deploying video e-mail that will be sustainable over the long term. Yankee says ad revenue “presents very limited potential in the enterprise marketplace” and widespread deployment of video e-mail among corporate users will not occur for at least two to three years.
Dot-Com Deaths Doubled in ’01
Internet shutdowns and bankruptcies more than doubled between 2000 to 2001, but the dot-com shakeout may be nearing a bottom, according to a report by M&A research outfit Webmergers.
The year-end survey said at least 537 Internet companies shut down or declared bankruptcy in 2001, more than twice the 225 that shuttered operations in 2000. The count as of late in December brings the two-year tally to 762 since January of 2000, Webmergers said.
But the data also suggest a bottoming out of the dot-com shakeout that essentially began in March of 2000. Webmergers found that during November and December, there were 21 Internet-related shutdowns and bankruptcies, the lowest number since August of 2000, and less than half of the 49 dot-com deaths it counted during the prior December.
In addition, Webmergers said the fourth quarter of 2001 saw only 78 shutdowns versus 135 in the same period last year.
-This item from atNewYork, an internet.com site.