10 Technologies High On The Minds Of Midmarket CIOs

Solution providers want to know what their customers are thinking about, so here are some answers. In preparation for the Midsize Enterprise Summit in Los Angeles next month, Everything Channel asked midmarket CIO attendees to rate their interest (high, medium or low) in a number of different solutions. Here are the top 10 categories, ranked by those who received the most votes for "high interest."







Virtualization (53 percent)





It's no surprise that virtualization rates high with midmarket CIOs, as 53 percent selected that solution as a high priority for them. Businesses of all sizes are looking to leverage virtual technology, such as that offered by VMware or Microsoft, to help cut their IT costs.

"We're looking to implement something for [disaster recovery]. Virtualization is a cost-effective solution. If we can implement DR at one-half or one-third the cost, that's the kind of thing that will catch management's attention," said Michael Pate, director of IT at Complete Production Services, Houston.

CIOs need business intelligence solutions that are not only feature rich, but also not cost prohibitive.

Complete Production Services' Pate said he's looking to replace an Oracle (formerly Hyperion) solution because his maintenance costs have increased 18 percent in the last two years. He's unsure if he'll look at IBM, Microsoft, SAP or other companies. "We're actively looking to tier two or less expensive products. For the modules we are using, the costs are too much. That's a recipe to look for another product and the Big Three aren't the only game in town anymore," Pate said.

If there's one technology likely to be permanently etched into the fabric of a CIO's mind, it's security. After all, what's more important than protecting a company's data and proprietary customer information? That said, while other projects may get higher priority, security suites from companies such as Symantec never stray too far from CIOs' thoughts.







"We're just trying to stay in tune with what product is easy and available and to find out if anything coming to market is better or more automated than what we have," Pate said.

While this list represents what solutions most interest midmarket CIOs right now, that interest won't always immediately translate into a project deployment. Such is the case for at least one MES attendee regarding unified communications.









"It's not going to be a hot topic for me for a couple of years because of budget constraints, but it's always nice to hear what's going on at that level," said Keenan Lersch, technology manager for American Railcar Industries, St. Charles, Mo.







Even if an end user isn't ready to deploy, say, a Cisco Systems solution, it's best to remain educated on that technology in order to make a better and quicker decision when that time comes, executives said.

As the size of the mobile workforce increases, so does its IT needs. CIOs no doubt want to make their employees more effective in the field through laptops from vendors such as Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Dell.

"Only 25 percent of our employees are in the office. We have a massive number in the field. I need to keep my eye on the mobile workforce," Pate said.

Collaboration tools, which could include social networking solutions such as Facebook or LinkedIn, are starting to draw more interest from CIOs looking for a business case for the technology.







"The interesting thing is [social media] is free as a marketing tool. We own these tools and as our customer base becomes younger, we have to figure out a way to get our name out there," said James Fielder, vice president of information technology at Farm Credit Services of Illinois, Mahomet, Ill.

Most midmarket customers have legacy ERP systems that aren't going anywhere for a while. But they still need to keep up on the latest offerings from SAP, Oracle and others.





"If I could get a 30-minute overview on where people are going, that would be great," Lersch said.

IT management applications, such as IBM Tivoli, CA Unicenter, HP's OpenView and BMC Performance Manager, are still key ingredients to keeping IT costs under control, and interest in them is a reflection of the economy, according to CIOs.







Server management, application management and asset management tools help midmarket enterprises ensure they're running as lean and as efficiently as possible.

Although CRM is not as high as other technologies on this list, it's drawing interest from end users who want more bang for their buck from existing solutions from vendors such as Oracle, Microsoft or Salesforce.com.







"We're well invested in infrastructure. We're about making our CRM system more robust. We're trying to leverage applications we have as best as possible," Fielder said.

Speeds and feeds no longer have the allure that they did a decade ago, which accounts for a 10th place showing here, but CIOs keep an eye on the latest computing infrastructure from HP, IBM, Sun Microsystems and more.





"It's always interesting to hear what's going on, what's on the horizon," Lersch said.