10 CIOs Of Midsize Companies Share Their '09 Budget Plans

ChannelWeb polled 10 CIOs at the Midsize Enterprise Summit in Grapevine, Texas, on what their IT budget will look like in 2009 and what projects they expect to spend money on.

While there are pockets of good news -- one respondent said his IT budget will increase 30 percent next year, compared to 2008 -- several CIOs expect their IT spending to decline or remain flat. In other words, solution providers may have to work just a little bit harder to win those dollars next year.

"We'll be slightly above '08, in the 5 [percent] to 10 percent [increase] range. It's exactly what I needed. We're looking at a CRM solution and our BI [solution] needs to be replaced. That will keep us busy."

- Gary Lee, vice president, data center, for Carfax, of Columbia, Mo.

"Our budget will be about 15 percent down. We've just made a big investment moving off our legacy platform, an old AS/400 custom system, to Oracle. We're also interested in server consolidation, virtualization. Any time you have an economic shakeup [like Sept. 15] it affects our company, our customers."

- Terrie McComb, vice president of information technology at Hines Horticulture, Irvine, Calif.

"We'll have about a 30 percent increase. We've had an increase for the last four years, but this was the largest. It's mostly around business continuity, storage, virtualization."

- Joel Wolfe, director of information technology, shared services-information systems, at J-W Operating Company, Dallas

"We're not sure, but it won't be vastly different from last year, about [a 3- to 5-percent increase]. We changed every major system we had in 2007, so we're still trying to absorb what we got. In 2010, we are looking to change our accounting system and based on the price points I've seen here at the [MES] show, we may be able to squeeze it into the 2009 budget."

- Jeff Winter, director of information services at Interstate Waste Services, Ramsey, N.J.

"Our budget is flat. It's been flat for the last three years. Salaries have increased over that time, but materials and services have been flat. Actually, they've been cut so [overall] we're flat. We've had to cut services that we used to have for our [county workers]. If they want a printer, we have to tell them they'll have to fork over [money] themselves. I'd want to add to our ERP system, but we can't afford it."

- Tom Frey, deputy director of the information technology department for Marion County of Oregon, Salem, Ore.

"We'll have about a 3 percent increase -- and [in a contingency plan] about a 5 percent decrease. We have to prepare for cuts. We're kind of on hold."

- Bill McCloskey, director of client support, information and technology services, for Northern Health, Prince George, B.C.

"We're the same. We're provincially funded, so we're waiting. You start to hear about the budget in February. You think you know what you'll have in July. The decision is made [later in the year]."

- Debi Katnich, manager of IT for Fraser Health, Vancouver, B.C.

"For us, it's a significant decrease. We invested so much in 2008. We basically rebuilt our entire infrastructure, with Cisco, HP blades. Our Cisco equipment was end-of-life. That was a one-year spike, which accounts for us being down [for '09]. We're focused on VMware to fit into a couple of racks. That will make the CFO happy."

- James Fielder, vice president of technology for Farm Credit Services of Illinois, Champaign, Ill.

"We're up a little bit, a 7 percent increase for '09. We were down 5 percent for '08, [compared to 2007], we've come back. We anticipated the fall this year. We went down in '08 for safety reasons. We're looking at IP telephony to go with collaborative messaging. It will keep me busy."

- Scott Stoskopf, computer services administrator for Butler County Computer Services, El Dorado, Kan.

"The short answer is it's much smaller, but we're consolidating into corporate, so the overall budget will be larger [by 5- to 10 percent]. We're completing our ERP implementation by the end of the week. We'll look to do phase two of that [in 2009]. Were also looking to strengthen our CRM and extend our channel partner portal to allow our channel partners to buy engines online."

- Jim Moberg, president of Momentym, Macon, Ga., and acting as temporary CIO for Waukesha Engine, a Dresser Company based in Waukesha, Wis.

"It's lower, probably. We're state government. We've taken one cut [from last year's budget] and we expect to take another. That's what happens. We're finalizing a SharePoint project so we hope to implement that in 2009. In the last 18 months, we've done some BI stuff so we hope to continue that project, and [see] how we can expand into virtualization."

- Joe Moore, director of information technology services for the Office of the Auditor General, State of Arizona, Phoenix.

"It's flat. Typically, we buy banks and one third of [our IT budget] is merging them into the company. I don't think [Monday's failure of Merrill Lynch and other financial news] will affect us. It has more of an emotional effect than a material one. We're going to do server consolidation, virtualizaton [in 2009]. We haven't done any of that yet. We're waiting for our software vendors to support it."

- Paul Ballew, information technology director for GB&T Bancshares, Gainesville, Ga.