1. Planning for economic uncertainty
New Zealand is officially out of recession, which, says IDC, if we believe current commentary, will mean “a brightening outlook for 2010, although volatility remains a risk… as was recently proved by the debt crisis in the Middle East.”

For ICT, this will mean that “investment...[will be] better integrated and aligned to business priorities.”

2. Consolidated buying as government cuts costs
IDC believes the government is about to consolidate its procurement of IT equipment and services. It says pressure is building to reduce the deficit and make procurement more transparent.

The need for better public service productivity is also behind this. Government has looked overseas and found that, internationally, savings of 15-30 percent have been made through consolidating and outsourcing.

3. ‘Unconventional allies’ for growth
IDC believes telecoms networks will become open access, with competition shifting to the services layer. This will manifest itself in New Zealand by the continuation of alliances between established players, such as these between Datacraft/Cisco, HP/Microsoft and FX/Datacraft.

“These natural affinities will reach a new level in 2010, extending to unconventional allies from different sectors.”

4. ICT: role in reducing climate change CO2 gases
IDC says: “The target for greenhouse gas reductions has been set. Now the rhetoric will shift to the reality of just how these targets can be achieved, with ICT and agribusiness solutions in the spotlight.”

The analyst believes ICT will play a critical role by “supporting solutions that combine greenhouse gas reductions with productivity gains.”

5. Restructure of ultrafast broadband plan
IDC says the UFB plan is likely to be overhauled, either overtly or covertly, over the next 18 months, because the current one is so bad. “We believe [it] is seriously flawed in its current form.”

“[However] this is not a challenge to the Government's objective of a national fibre network…but rather the complex and fragmented implementation plan that has been devised.”

6. ‘Fibre for schools’ policy under spotlight
Also over the next 18 months, IDC believes debate about connectivity to schools “will widen to consider how the significant cultural, training and school funding barriers” can be overcome “to ensure fibre becomes a powerful education enabler, rather than an under-utilised pipe.”

7. Customer care strategies will move to the forefront
Customer care and retention will become a critical priority for organisations in 2010, says IDC. This will see vendors look to “smarter bundling, enabled by advanced analytics; the use of cloud technologies to get closer to the customer, and Service-oriented Architecture (SOA).”

8. Mobility set to grow
With the move to ‘always-on’ connectivity, driven by social networking (particularly from YouTube, Facebook and TradeMe), business will be driven by the need to increase business mobility and productivity, says IDC. It adds that its survey results show that 28 percent of respondents plan to spend more on mobile broadband next year and 25 percent plan to increase spending on mobile data.

9. The cloud – a hybrid approach
Cloud computing has attractive benefits, but poses real challenges, says IDC, which expects customers to start taking a hybrid approach to the cloud next year. This will mean vendors will have to be cloud-capable but also be able to cater to the needs of internal IT infrastructure transformation.

10. ROI and the ‘business outcome'
“With increased business-alignment when it comes to IT spending, and CFO involvement in measuring the ROI of IT services, IDC expects risk-reward contract terms to become more business outcome-oriented,” it says.





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