PPM a Bright Spot in Gartner’s 2012 Software Spending Forecast

 

GUEST POST by Ian Knox

Gartner recently updated its 2012 global IT spend forecast. There are a number of concerns which caused them to revise their forecast downward from 4.6% to 3.7% for 2012. These included:

(1) Global Economy: Private-sector deleveraging and public-sector austerity in mature economies and lack of political leadership on fundamental sovereign debt issues

(2) Eurozone Crisis: Uncertainty in resolution of Euro debt crisis, which creates business uncertainty for business investment and consumer spending

(3) Thailand Floods: Hard disk drive supply contraints affecting consumer and enterprise server and storage markets.

Gartner also updated its enterprise software spending forecast (see slide above) and predicts a 5 year CAGR of just over 7%. The three areas Gartner sees strong growth above the average include: (1) Project and Portfolio Management, (2) Web conferencing and team collaboration, and (3) Enterprise Content Management.

We don’t think this should come as a surprise. In our recent post on 2012 predictions for PPM, we noted PMOs will evolve from being tactical, support-based organizations to become a strategic player within the enterprise. Given the tough investment and cost optimization decisions being made in the current economy, PPM is a critical business capability for success.

In addition, there is a growing trend for successful PMOs in IT to expand to an EPMO, covering business investments as well as IT strategy and planning. A Daptiv customer who has successfully made this transition is Mercy, a health care system with over 25 hospitals and 200 clinic locations, which incubated their PMO in the IT organization before creating a very successful Enterprise Project Office.

Even though the economic outlook is uncertain for the next year, we’re confident Daptiv can help our existing and prospective customers navigate the difficult choices ahead and emerge stronger as the economy improves.