Finextra’s story this morning on HSBC’s investment in energy management technology shows that with cost-cutting programmes comes IT opportunity.

There was a very interesting view on this from Egg’s ex-CIO, Tom Ilube when I interviewed him last week on what he would be doing if he was still a CIO in the current economic climate. Subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed or subscribe via email to be the first to receive Tom’s interview transcript, coming soon. 

Spending on IT security will continue to grow next year, according to new data unveiled by Forrester Research. 21 percent of respondents expect to increase their IT security budgets in 2009, while nearly three-quarters of those surveyed expect no cutbacks in their security spending.

Only 6 percent of respondents anticipate having to cut their security budget next year despite the current economic uncertainty.
http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/1863297/

The research also says security makes up 10 percent of overall IT operating budgets in 2008, up from 8 percent last year.  Nearly 50 percent of respondents report to a board/CEO or an executive committee – security is clearly no longer embedded within IT.

Another post in our “IT Boomhunter” series – helping you find growth IT markets in fast-changing times.

This McKinsey report that shows how remote infrastructure management is predicted to be a boom area. “While other offshoring services have grown rapidly, the management and maintenance of core infrastructure from afar has been slow to gain popularity. Only a sliver—about 7 percent—of the addressable market is being captured. But our research suggests that this is about to change. Shifts in customer attitudes and economics could trigger rapid growth for these services, known in the industry as remote infrastructure management.”

“34 percent of CIOs say they expect to offshore some infrastructure services over the next three years—a sharp increase from 19 percent in a similar survey a year earlier.” McKinsey.

The PDF of the report is here.