Despite many private sector businesses now seeing a much improved economic outlook, many still consider the cuts in both manpower and budget restraints made during the last 2 years will remain tightly controlled throughout the next 12-18 months.

Through several discussions both with businesses and with other IT consultants, Andrew Bettany from the University of York draws the conclusion that businesses will continue to look for further cost reductions through some or all of the following:

efficiencies – using technology to make a quicker ROI outsourcing where possible rather than employing skills automation of repetitive tasks rental rather than purchase of assets/software virtualisation to reduce expensive server acquisition recruiting only when necessary and seeking employees who can “hit the decks running”

Naturally training budgets as traditionally an easy area to be cut back. However during 2009/10 many early adopters and more agile companies are seeing tangible ROI from their prudent up skilling of key staff so that they realised some of the gains posed by the challenges listed above.

Training in the area of Virtualisation, Windows Server 2008 and Office 2007/2010 suites reap almost instant benefits and have bucked the trend of current training cutbacks.

This session explores the above outlined priorities and will facilitate an interactive discussion with attendees to establish the TechEd 2010 list of priorities and discuss them amongst our peers.