Smart businesses are always looking for ways to be more productive and cost effective by leveraging industry trends. Serena surveyed IT professionals and business executives in late 2012 on what they viewed as their top IT priorities for 2013. You may be surprised at the results!
The results of our third survey - conducted at Gartner’s recent Application Architecture, Development and Integration (AADI) Summit (for 2011 and 2012 we polled executives attending the ADDI Summit on the same questions) - revealed delivering applications faster and aligning IT to business goals were the highest ranked IT priorities for 2013.
These findings underscore the trend that online enterprises have elevated themselves past departmental IT concerns. Instead, the results show they are now focusing on the competitive goals of the business itself. In fact, in contrast to the last two years where it was one of the lowest rated priorities, aligning IT to business goals was this year’s second highest priority.
It’s interesting to see a contrasting shift in IT priorities, as both reducing application costs and moving applications to the Cloud were reported much less of a priority in 2013 compared to 2012. Both of which fell multiple spots on the one to ten number scale of priority.
The 2013 survey also uncovered that release management continues to be a major challenge, especially important due to IT’s priority of meeting the increasing demands from the business. Almost two-thirds of the respondents reported they release more applications, yet feel the process is less than optimal. In fact, 11 percent reported more than five times the number of releases than last year. Another 47 percent reported they are actively improving their release management systems.
The survey also covered top Application Development initiatives for 2013. For the third year in a row, managing applications as a business process came in as the most important initiative for the coming year. End-to-end traceability and application development tool integration remain unchanged from last year’s survey, coming in at number two and three respectively. While priorities have shifted over the last two years from cost-focused to business-focused, the research shows a process-based approach remains paramount for IT success.
Other survey results revealed:
- 59 percent of respondents cited delivering applications faster as the top application development priority in 2013
- 48 percent cited better alignment to business needs as the top priority, more than double the percentage of last year’s survey
- 62 percent of respondents cited managing application development as a business process as “very important to extremely important” to their organization
- 61 percent said having end-to-end traceability (from code in production back to the business requirements) is “very important to extremely important”
- 36 percent cited developing mobile applications as an important development priority in 2013.
Almost 100 participated in the survey – many senior level IT executives from financial services, public sector, IT services and healthcare organizations.
Do you agree with these 2013 priorities? What are your priorities for this year? I would love to hear your thoughts. Clich here to email me: Miguel Tam
ABOUT Miguel Tam
Miguel Tam is Serena Software’s Senior Product Marketing Manger. Tam has over 20 years of experience in the enterprise software and manufacturing space, helping high-tech, cleantech, and services firms launch successful new products. He has deep expertise in software development practices and new product development, including experience at Oracle, CA Technologies, and Ernst & Young Consulting.
Related Links:
Infographic summarizing the survey findings
Application Architecture, Development and Integration (AADI) Summit