IT management market changes on the horizon

Industry analysis by Beth Schultz, plus the latest news headlines.

IT executives in the past year have learned how to make the most out of their existing tools as economic conditions put a stranglehold on IT budgets. Yet industry watchers argue the recession also served to kick-start IT organizations toward revamping their approach to delivering optimized IT services and meeting the most critical business needs.

5 must-have management technologies for 2010

Forrester Research recently declared that IT management software would evolve, and now analysts say enterprise organizations and vendors are poised to respond to the evolution.

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

IT executives in the past year have learned how to make the most out of their existing tools as economic conditions put a stranglehold on IT budgets. Yet industry watchers argue the recession also served to kick-start IT organizations toward revamping their approach to delivering optimized IT services and meeting the most critical business needs.

5 must-have management technologies for 2010

Forrester Research recently declared that IT management software would evolve, and now analysts say enterprise organizations and vendors are poised to respond to the evolution.

“The new decade has begun with an emphasis on the need to reduce costs while preserving the previous gains in IT management, and this need will continue to prevail going forward, making global IT efficiency the critical objective for IT organizations,” reads a recent Forrester Research report.

Not only will IT management software become financially aware and mature, but IT departments overall will also more directly address the needs of the business as independent operational entities not just cost centers, Forrester analysts suggest. And disciplines such as network management and server management will adapt into broader infrastructure management disciplines as new areas such as IT financial management grow in importance.

“The most significant growth is still very tactical, consistent with slow market recovery: application performance management; capacity, provisioning; and virtualization management; as well as IT asset management will be the major growth categories,” according to Forrester. Newer areas of focus such as “service catalog, financial management, integrated planning of data center resources (including the green IT movement), and contract management” will also have “strong presence,” the research firm states in the report, but those technology areas “will become the engine of growth only when the economic situation lets IT organizations think strategically rather than in terms of immediate pains.”

These new demands among IT buyers will force vendors to refocus their product strategies. For example, many large IT management software makers will adopt software-as-a-service (SaaS) models, as many already have, and look to embed lower level IT management disciplines into platforms via partnerships. Also big management vendors by the end of this decade will want to focus development on products in service support and resource management, considering the current growth of virtualization and interest in cloud computing, Forrester says. As for smaller vendors and innovative start-ups, the research firm suggests partnerships to survive, though further market consolidation via acquisition is inevitable.

“Small vendors must seek partnerships to develop ecosystems with other vendors in order to cover the space seamlessly with a virtual management framework, ensuring success not only in the midmarket but also in the large to very large enterprise market. Solution delivery will adopt the same models as the ones used by the megavendors: SaaS, appliance or embedded solutions,” Forrester states.

Schultz is a longtime IT journalist. You can email her or find her here.