Emerging Technologies 2004: What’s the Business Case for New Technologies?

The active pursuit of emerging technologies is on the rise in corporate America, according to this month’s CIO Insight survey of 371 top IT executives. This year, more respondents saw themselves as early adopters, and cost-cutting fell to the No. 3 reason for deploying a new technology, behind improving business processes and productivity. Technologies especially poised for growth include Voice over IP, desktop videoconferencing, Linux and business process management. But new-technology deployment won’t become a free-for-all any time soon: Even the most gung-ho early adopters say new technologies must bring with them a clear business case, and half say they must pay for themselves right out of the box. But working closely with their business-side colleagues brings clear benefits. And with fewer respondents than last year saying their companies have missed a golden business opportunity through failure to adopt a new technology, their efforts don’t seem to have been in vain.