Cutting Back to Get Ahead

Desktop PC virtualization is the most sought-after technology among CIOs, with 45 percent showing interest, according to the latest CIO Technology Priorities Survey. That’s up 10 percent from this January.

The survey, conducted in June, questioned nearly 300 IT leaders about the technologies they plan to focus on in the coming year. Nearly half indicated they were researching cloud computing services and network virtualization.

Server virtualization (57 percent) and mobile and wireless solutions (56 percent) topped the list of tech in production at all business levels. Both have increased more than 10 percent since the last survey.

Jeanine Buford, vice president of information services and technology at Keystone Human Services, says mobile applications are essential to her nonprofit company because most employees are not office-based. “We have people working out in the community and need to record their work where they are.” Laptops, she says, create a physical barrier between workers and clients, but smartphone applications are ideal.

Thirty-seven percent of respondents said they’ve been looking into business-process management solutions. Robert Oyung, CTO of the Superior Court of California, said it’s the main technology he’s eyeing. The court processes over 360,000 cases a year, most of them on paper. He’s researching scanning technologies to convert paper files to digital ones that can be stored electronically.

Thirty-five percent of respondents plan to shift investments toward business-process innovation in the next year, but only 14 percent plan to invest in creating revenue growth.

“If we can make a 5 percent reduction in what we need to do, then we have a 5 percent surplus to do something else,” explains Craig Dreher, CIO at Walla Walla Clinic. “[It] will drive resources that can be pointed toward top-line growth.”