August 29, 2005
(IDG News Service)
Share members who responded to an online poll this month said they expect complying with the mandates of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to be the least effective or most wasteful use of their IT resources in coming years, followed by the deployment of unproven technologies.
The results of the poll, which was conducted from Aug. 4 to 15 among people who had preregistered for Share's Boston conference, were released last week as part of the event.
Twenty-eight percent of the 444 respondents cited Sarbanes-Oxley compliance as a time waster, while 23% chose the installation of unproven products. Another 19% opted for purchases of unneeded technologies, and 17% picked continued support of outdated hardware and software.
Share President Robert Rosen said he wasn't surprised that Sarbanes-Oxley is proving to be a major headache for IT managers and staffers. "It's occupying a lot of people's time, and they can't figure out what the return on investment is there," he said.
Heightened information security is the emerging trend most likely to affect business computing over the next five years, according to 31% of those who answered the Share poll. Two other significant trends identified in the poll are the shortage of qualified enterprise-class IT professionals, and outsourcing or offshoring of application development and maintenance.