CIO top priorities in 2009: Productivity and cost reduction

A new list of top priorities for IT leaders was revealed on Monday at the SIMposium 09 event in Seattle. IT/business Alignment, a perennial top concern, was bumped out of its No. 1 spot from 2008 and replaced by “Business productivity and cost reduction.” We’ve got the list of the top 10 priorities plus the top six applications that are getting the most investment.

The data comes via the IT Trend Survey from the Society for Information Management, one of the largest and most influential professional organizations for CIOs, IT directors, and aspiring IT executives.

Here were the top priorities that CIOs cited for 2009:

1. Business productivity and cost reduction
2. IT and business alignment
3. Business agility and speed to market
4. Business process re-engineering
5. IT cost reduction
6. IT reliability and efficiency
7. IT strategic planning
8. Revenue generating IT innovations
9. Security and privacy
10. CIO leadership role

Here are the top six application and technology investments that CIOs reported for 2009:

1. Business intelligence
2. Server virtualization
3. ERP systems
4. Customer/corporate portals
5. Enterprise application integration/management (EAI/EAM)
6. Continuity planning/disaster recovery

ERP, Portals, and EAI/EAM were all new to the list in 2009. SIM noted that this points to a trend of IT leaders trying to quickly “deliver new services that can reduce the cost of doing business.”