Study: Web Services Lead Growing IT Investment

DALLAS—Web services have come out of nowhere to emerge as the top technology for 2006, according to a survey of senior IT execs.

In a poll of 139 members of the Society of Information Management conducted in May 2006, the respondents placed Web services at the top of their technology to-do lists. Web services were not among the top six technologies in the previous year’s survey.

The results of the survey, revealed at SIM’s annual SIMposium conference here, also showed increases in IT budgets and salaries, reflecting a continuing bullishness for IT in general and a reversal of the bearishness surrounding IT from 2001 to 2004.

“The tide has turned; the economy is great; we’re hiring and paying more to ourselves and our staffs,” Luftman said in a presentation to the SIM members. Luftman said the survey sample represented a cross-section of SIM members in a variety of different businesses and from companies large and small.

Security, which had been at the top of the list for two years, dropped to third place, said the study’s author, Jerry Luftman, professor and associate dean of graduate IS programs for the Stevens Institute of Technology, in Hoboken, N.J., and SIM vice president of Academic Community Affairs.

Luftman said the lessening in interest in security probably reflects the progress that IT pros believe they have made in the past several years to make their IT systems less vulnerable to attack.

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