The Year in Review and Looking Toward 2005

by Robert J. Benson, Tom Bugnitz, and Bill Walton

Sifting through the e-mail advisors, magazines, and in talks with clients, friends, business associates, and so on, it is clear that 2004 was a time of oxymoronic pressures for business and IT. The demand for IT services rose to pre-9-11 levels for many businesses, while business continued to constrain IT budgets and asked for more with less. IT was asked to provide more and easier-to-access systems at the same time that business, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), and the government required tighter security and more restricted access to networks. Tighter budgets demanded careful priority setting and resource allocation, but higher demand for IT made seat-of-the-pants management the easiest course for some IT departments.