2008 saw a number of significant changes in IT trends globally, the most distinctive being the rise of social media in 2008. Chris Crum of Web Pro News takes a look at the Year in Social Media. It is quite obvious that there was a lot of activity in the world of social media.

There were also quite a number of changes in SEO trends in 2008, most notably Google’s Custom Search, and toolbar update, which saw a number of websites lose and gain PR.

As far as global IT trends for 2009 are concerned, there have been a number of predictions, especially on the growth in “Tech Spending”. Quoting the Wall Street Journal blog;

“Businesses and other organizations in the U.S. will spend $573 billion on computer software, hardware and services next year, just 1.6% more than they spent in 2008, according to new data out Tuesday from Forrester Research Inc. In contrast, U.S. tech spending grew 4.1% in 2008 and 7% in 2007. Earlier this year, Forrester predicted U.S. tech spending would grow 6.1% in 2009.

The results are based on several factors, including real gross domestic product growth and how technology is valued by businesses, says Andrew Bartels, an analyst at Forrester.

Despite forecasts that show real GDP declining, tech spending will grow slightly because “businesses have become more dependent on technology”

As the baseline mag puts it ;

“.. enterprises with a forward-thinking approach and a solid grasp of technology trends will have a distinct competitive advantage. The following technologies trends in areas like SaaS, virtualization and project portfolio management, among others, are likely to shape IT and business in the coming year, and they can give your company the advantage it needs to do business in this challenging economic environment.”

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Expected global IT trends for 2009

• Saas- Software as a Service
  Cloud computing environments will contribute to the expansion of SaaS into areas beyond ERP, CRM and HR management systems. Rob DeSisto, analyst for Gartner, says organizations increasingly see the benefits of moving large-scale software expenses from the capital budget to the operating budget.

• Document management and E-discovery
  Systems that retain, manage and retreive documents and data quickly and seamlessly will continue to rise in 2009.”Today, anything electronic is discoverable as any part of litigation,” Forrester analyst Kyle McNabb points out. “Developing rules and procedures is essential, and it is going to receive a lot more attention in the coming year.” Not surprisingly, the focus is rapidly moving beyond ERP and enterprise systems and into the broader realm of all documents and communications.

• Virtualization
  was a huge trend over the past 2 years, and will continue to expand in storage, desktop and data center technologies in 2009.According to industry estimates, 50 to 60 percent of all servers are now virtualized. The goal is to reduce server inefficiencies and lower costs. It is now moving into the realm of SMBs, and is also extending into storage and onto the desktop, says Moosa Matariyeh, enterprise storage specialist for CDW.

• Energy efficient Data Centers
  Data-center hardware in conjunction with virtualized systems, will continue to reduce power needs with more green componentry and infrastructure.Chip and PC manufacturers are moving toward more energy-efficient components including improved memory and resource management, but the big action in 2009 will be in the areas of virtualization and storage. Businesses are quickly recognizing that they have little margin for error, and energy costs are now a huge variable, says Anil Desai, an independent IT consultant.

• Security, Risk and Compliance
  Expect risk and compliance to be automated in intrusion, detection, authentication, patch management and security analytics.

• Enterprise mobility
  Being secure and synchronized to live data while on a host of pocket computing devices will continue to expand and improve in 2009.

• Social Networking
  “the champion of 2008″- Social Networking will continue to expand in customer relationships with brands and corporate team building efforts as ways to help the bottom line.Organizations are increasingly looking to next-generation social networking tools to conduct sophisticated business intelligence and analytics. In many cases, they are mining data and looking for trends and patterns, such as which salesperson has the relationships to pull off a deal or which customers seem to have the biggest influence with others online.

• Web 2.0
  Applications built-on Web technologies will continue to prosper and proliferate in new and more cost-efficient ways in 2009.

  Some organizations are now exploring Twitter or Facebook-like applications that allow individuals to push information out and create a simpler, organic communications structure. Others are using Web 2.0 tools to handle everything from asset management to business intelligence and analytics. Tim O’Reilly, CEO of O’Reilly Media. says “We are seeing the Internet become a preferred platform for app development.”

• Project and Portfolio Management
  Robust Portfolio management systems that offer collaboration tools, business-process rules support, advanced reporting capabilities and governance tools will expand in 2009.
  
  PPM is evolving and bringing greater order to business-level decision making. Applications such as Daptiv PPM and Primavera are providing tools to mesh diverse workgroups, such as finance, marketing, human resources and IT–all while viewing groups of initiatives, conducting detailed analysis on them, and understanding underlying relationships across organizational roles and teams.

• Web and Video Conferencing
  Bigger pipes and converged data and voice networks will help spur more, cheaper video conferencing and use of video for connecting with new and existing customers.Collaboration tools are poised to go mainstream and further change the way business is conducted. According to the Boston-based research firm Aberdeen Group, 63 percent of companies say they will be using videoconferencing and so-called telepresence systems (essentially, a form of videoconferencing with high-quality images and audio) by the end of 2010.

There you have it. The future looks bright enough.

Seems the global recession played out differently for the IT industry. African firms and businesses will have to prepare themselves to meet these global IT trends, as the results would no doubt be a more productive year for business.

In an earlier post on this blog, we discussed the challenges facing the use of IT infrastructure in some parts of Africa. Recent studies have shown a slight improvement, but we aren’t there yet.

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