Spend your euros on mature IT, says Gartner

European businesses should be looking to exploit the strong Euro to refresh their desktop infrastructures, take up broadband and implement voice over IP.

These are some of the recommendations that Gartner has outlined for chief information officers at its annual European IT symposium in Cannes.

Gartner research chief Steve Prentice believes that many CIOs can finally stop focusing on cost cutting and can start investigating new technologies to support business growth.

But not everything is ready just yet, newer technologies like 3G, utility computing and grid computing should still be avoided for a few more years while they mature.

'We're starting to see an improvement in IT spending, although it's important to realise which technologies can really deliver value today and which should be avoided for a few more years,' he said.

Prentice believes that between 2003 and 2006, the market will see massive consolidation and fundamental technology changes.

'The primary trends we're seeing are a strong move towards the virtualisation of the computing infrastructure, converged networks and more structured IT architectures.'

'Budgets will be increasingly allocated towards business process owners, rather than just to various business units.'

What's urgent and what can wait

Gartner has outlined some of the areas that IT leaders should be acting on today, while also highlighted no-go zones to be avoided for a while longer.

Take up today * Broadband: exploit cheap, fast bandwidth where possible * IP telephony: deploy when clear management and cost benefits exist * Server and storage virtualisation: evaluate now * Desktop infrastructure: take advantage of a strong Euro to refresh * Outsourcing: define a strategy, include offshore and near-shore components * Wireless networking: deploy now, or your users will do it anyway

Keep on hold * 3G: irrelevant until 2007 * RFID: good for retail, but nothing else yet * Commercial grids: application development too difficult for now * On-Demand: marketing still ahead of delivery * 64-bit desktops: unneeded before 2008 * Smartphones: still got management and security problems