It was ironic that Computing editor Bryan Glick should have called yesterday's blog posting 'An outbreak of honesty' - because he actually stole the concept for the column from someone else.

Computing's resident ideas thief admitted the heist this morning. After recognising his error, Glick edited his posting and added the following line: "Thanks to a in-depth conversation with my good friend and Computing features editor Mark Samuels for the inspiration behind this blog entry. Happy now, Mark?"

Well, yes, I guess I am. But it is with a sense of sadness that I accept Glick's apology. After all, BG has also admitted he only added the addendum to - in his words - "stop me moaning". Honestly, you should hear him whinge about Liverpool Football Club...

Merry Christmas and all that. See you in 2008.

Who is the smartest guy round these parts? Which technology expert has the ability to react quickly and succinctly to the news - and offer a pithy response? Who, in short, really has the knowledge?

The answer, given my most recent posting about content predictions for 2008, is principal Alan Pelz-Sharpe at CMS Watch. In the posting, I was quick to slate the analyst firm for their confusing trends: "To be honest, I don't understand many of the predictions."

More fool me. For there was more to the press release than a simple list of trends and catchphrases. As Pelz-Sharpe helpfully pointed out in a friendly comment on my recent posting: "You know we did publish seven pages explaining each prediction in detail on our web site."

Which is true - even the confusing buyers' market and valley of disappointment are explained. So, I'm whispering it quietly, but once you get past the marketing speak, CMS Watch's trends do include a series of useful content predictions for 2008.

Those useful analyst guys, eh?

The CMS Watch content predictions in full: http://www.cmswatch.com/Feature/172-2008

Analyst CMS Watch has unveiled a series of twelve trends it believes will shape content technologies next year - but to be honest, I don't understand many of the predictions:

1. Archiving becomes a prime focus for enterprise content management vendors
2. Google will make a bid to become the world's content repository
3. SharePoint enters the valley of disappointment
4. Return of the buyers' market
5. Web 2.0 exhaustion
6. Social software vendor collision
7. Facebook backlash in the enterprise
8. Security and identity management trump fu nctionality for buyers
9. Finally bridging web analytics and online marketing
10. Search is dead....Not!
11. Productisation of search platforms
12. CMS Watch says it will have 12 new predictions at the end of 2008

Point three - a valley of disappointment - what is that; where is that? Point four - return of the buyers' markets - when did it go and what is it? Is it like the French market that visits my high street every so often? And if so, what's it got to do with content technologies?

The trends seem to include a lot of big words, like collision, exhaustion and backlash. Which sound jolly exciting. And search is "not dead" - which is good, seeing as I search the worldwideinterweb about 500 times a day.

"Perhaps just as noteworthy is what we do not predict," says CMS Watch Principal Theresa Regl, possibly confusing matters further. "We are not predicting rampant vendor consolidation, dramatic technology innovation, or Microsoft/Google hegemony – rather the trends we see for 2008 tend to revolve around executing better with the technologies already close at hand."

OK, then. The last prediction, by the way, is apparently tongue-in-cheek. "Analyst firms love to make predictions, and we're no different," says CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne.

Those crazy analyst guys, eh?

UK IT faces a Catch-22, according to Sam - an individual that recently posted a comment on this blog. Sam was responding to Duncan Aitchison, partner at outsourcing advisory specialist TPI, who says demand for bulk IT skills is depressed locally and that UK IT professionals should migrate towards management skills. Sam is not convinced by Aitchison's theory:

• He believes that as firms outsource technology work, fewer UK workers enter IT, which in turn causes a shortage
• Such shortages mean firms need to outsource more technology work, which inevitably leads to fewer and fewer people entering UK IT
• But Sam also believes UK technology workers cannot become management workers without first acquiring more basic, heavy-lifting IT skills

And therein lies a significant problem - with a significant UK IT skills gap, where will the next generation of technology managers come from?

The escalating skills crisis in the UK IT industry is growing five to eight times faster than other sectors and the sector needs 150,000 new entrants each year.

Many students have already realised the futility of studying computer science, with the number of students choosing IT-related degrees almost halving from 27,000 to 14,700 between 2001 and 2005. Mathematics and computer science also have the highest university dropout rate in the UK.

Over to Sam, again - who summarises succinctly, from his point of view, the intractable nature of the challenge: "Pretty soon, the driving and management will have to be outsourced as well," he says. "When that happens, the outsourcing price advantage disappears leaving you with same or higher cost structure than in-house, with none of the advantages of in-house."

Such postulations are forward-looking, extreme even. But is it really too outrageous to believe that chief information officers - operating under increasing financial and skills pressures - will search offshore for talented IT managers?

This week's Computing - out tomorrow (13 December 2007) - features a full interview with Duncan Aitchison, where the partner at outsourcing advisory specialist TPI suggests talks at length about multisourcing and future destinations for offshoring.

In the piece, Aitchison says he expects any remaining hesitancy surrounding offshoring to subside because of an increasing requirement to source specialist workers.

The ability to tap into a broad skills pool at a financially attractive price means more UK firms will look overseas for external service provision:

“Cost is clearly significant. But do not underestimate the skills issue. We generally do not have enough skilled talent in the West any more.”

Demand for traditional, bulk IT skills is depressed locally. And Aitchison advises UK IT professionals to migrate towards process-oriented specialities, rather than heavy-lifting skills:

“These days you have to be able to drive and manage projects ­ and these are skills that firms are much less likely to outsource."

Full interview with Duncan Aitchison: IT directors must consider a range of outsourcing options

You read it here first - and it turns out Duncan Aitchison was right. A few weeks ago, the partner at outsourcing advisor told The Knowledge that India was still king of the offshoring destinations, but that a bunch of other destinations were biting hard on its heels.

Now analyst Gartner has released research that comes to similar conclusions, suggesting India remains the undisputed leader in offshore services - but that countries such as China, Russia and Brazil are providing increasingly credible alternatives.

Gartner predicts offshore spending will increase by 60 per cent in Europe, and 40 per cent in the US, next year. The analyst's top 30 locations for offshore services are:

• Americas - Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico and Uruguay
• Asia/Pacific - Australia, China, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Vietnam
• Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) - the Czech Republic, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Northern Ireland, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey and Ukraine

Interesting stuff from Gartner. But some of Aitchison's more far-out predictions for offshoring growth - Ghana and Mauritius - fail to make the analyst's list.

One thing they do agree on, however is Aitchison's comment: "Everyone across the world is looking at offshoring."

Green computing is likely to dominate CIO agendas in 2008 - but where as 2007 was the year of theory and postulation, next year will see leading-edge technology leaders creating far-reaching strategies that help the business cut carbon emissions.

Mark Raskino, research vice president and Gartner fellow, presents the analyst's estimates and suggests IT directors looking to cut carbon emissions should use technology to target three areas - lifecycle management, monitoring policies and societal behaviour:

"Gartner calculates that business IT and telecommunications contribute about two per cent of carbon emissions worldwide. That might not sound like much, but it is about the same as global aviation and if left unchecked it will grow faster.

"It is also a conservative number for IT which excludes consumer electronics devices, like set-top boxes. Broadly speaking there are three areas where IT leaders can help. First, reduce the direct impact of IT operations by setting specific targets for electrical efficiency improvement and equipment lifecycle management.

Second, propose ways IT and communications systems could help to better monitor, measure, manage, curtail and control polluting business processes.

Finally, for those who are truly visionaries in long-term industry and public policy, consider IT as a possible way to re-shape societal behaviour to meet environmental goals. For example, do we really need planners to permit more large out-of-town shopping complexes now that e-commerce is so well established?"

With Raskino suggesting emissions have the potential to grow faster, such visionary targets should be seen less as far-sighted ideals and more as the basic principles of good IT management.

Euan Davis, principal analyst at Forrester Research, says latest estimates calculate that energy consumption globally from IT accounts for between two and four per cent of carbon emissions - and in the UK between 10 per cent and 12 per cent. He says that IT definitely has a role to play if the UK government has any chance of hitting its ambitious climate change goals:

"CIOs must work to reduce the environmental impact of computing right through the business from back-office data centres to the corporate desktop. Carbon audits, reconfiguring data centres, deploying equipment with power consumption sensors, upgrading power supplies all help but only scratch the surface of what needs to be done.

Long-term goals around server and infrastructure virtualisation, data centre outsourcing, thin client computing, tough supplier benchmarking and even building incentive schemes that reward IT for low energy consumption, should appear on the CIO agenda.

The UK government has a role to play and should give closer consideration to actions currently in play by a number of US states and public utilities that offer fiscal incentives such as tax credits and energy-efficient product rebates."

IT directors, then, will need to attack the big resource-sapping areas: data centres, desktop computing and power supplies. As this blog has already identified, certain technology leaders are already taking steps to address such areas (JP Rangaswami says green computing drives BT).

Are you in line with JP's targets - which includes reducing BT's emissions by 60 per cent between 1996 and 2006 - or do you have a longer road to travel? If the journey seems more circuitous, 2008 will be the year to give your green computing strategy more direction.

I met Avanquest managing director Chris Thompson the other day and we talked about issues of semantics and the problems of naming convention in the IT industry.

You know the sort of thing, how IT companies struggle to find snappy names for software products. Applications are often lumbered with a mixture of consonants and numbers, sometimes because the only remaining web available address is: www.sdoifjsdf.com. Or the like.

Software companies also usually term their products 'solutions', which is problematic at two levels because:

1. A solution is usually a mixture of two or more substances, usually a liquid
2. Or it is the perfect answer to a known problem

As my old mate Bryan Glick wrote in his blog recently, vendor presentations invariably cover "ideal solutions to users’ business requirements". But if an application was available that really provided a perfect answer to a known business problem, wouldn't we all be using it?

As for an application that is a mixture of two of more or substances, bring it on. The liquid application will make Web 2.0 look very old hat.

With its adaptable applications that allow users to post video clips and interact with friends, it might seem to some that Facebook offers little more than a souped-up version of standard email.

Many chief executives are becoming hot under the collar as employees spend more time “poking” than working.

The reaction is often draconian, with firms issuing guidelines for use ­ or worse, total bans during work hours.

This seems odd, seeing as the whole world is apparently going Web 2.0. A quick Google News search shows there have been more than 16,000 news stories written about Facebook in the past month.

More to the point, digital natives: the next generation of workers to enter the workplace have grown up using social networking technologies and will expect to be able to use Facebook, Bebo and Second Life.

In an age when businesses are quick to spot a new online opportunity and thrash it to within an inch of its life, are chief executives being rather short-sighted when it comes to Facebook and Web 2.0 applications?

Lessons from past transgressions are not hard to find. After shying away from online commerce in the immediate aftermath of the dot com downturn, firms now see a strong web presence as a given.

So, maybe a little bit of patience and foresight is required, with technology leaders required to sell the benefits of social networking to the business.

Take storage space, for example. Consultancy Detica says that employees who chat over email and share photographs of their personal lives are creating the a risk of an information overload.

The answer lies with Facebook. Just as small firms are giving workers free Gmail accounts to save storage space, allowing employees to send messages and photographs through Facebook could stop workers hoarding data on business systems.

Technology leaders who are keen to adapt to the business options offered through social networking, meanwhile, will have a leading edge over their competitors.

Facebook launched Facebook Pages last month, allowing users to connect with specific businesses and to post restaurant reviews, buy tickets for a film or talk about a new promotion.

Such initiatives are just the start of an ongoing movement towards all things Facebook.

You can either join in with the natives, or be a social networking outcast. For the sake of your business, make the right choice.

IT leaders are continually being told - or are telling others - that technology is one of the key factors during a successful merger and acquisition (M&A) initiative. Technology should be crucial, I guess - two organisations, with two different methods of working, bringing together two different sets of systems and information.

And in the wonderful world of web 2.0, the test of successful technology M&A integration is only set to become increasingly complicated. More and more unstructured content will reside in collaborative formats, such as email, web conferencing and social networking.

All of which makes new research from Bloor, NCC and Informatica - that demonstrates the impact of IT on the M&A process - both worrying and surprising. In short, the research shows technology leaders face a problematic period:

• As much as 79 per cent of M&A activity ignores IT integration
• Fifty per cent of IT leaders said their newly merged entity had no integration within three months
• More than one-third did of chief information officers (CIOs) did not expect integration to be complete within two years of the M&A deal, or could not say when integration would be complete
• Poor documentation of systems, a lack of metadata, diverse and uncontrolled data sources and poor data quality were all reported as significant problems by 54 per cent of CIOs

So, the big problems are: M&A activity ignores IT; integration is slow - very slow; and there is a large amount of poor quality documentation and data. The answer, says Graham Nugent - IT legacy and strategy manager at parcel delivery specialist UPS, is a broad mixture of due-diligence, team-building and strategising. Do not, he says, underestimate the people side:

"You will be combining two sets of workers with totally different company cultures and visions. Communicate everything twice, and when you have done that, do it again just to make sure everyone is on board and feels as if they are part of the new team. Then you will reap the rewards," says Nugent.

M&A integration without tears: How to make a success of integrating an acquisition’s IT

Last week’s star letter by Robert Stevens was significant for a number of reasons. Rather than pussyfooting around the issue, Stevens went straight for the jugular and attacked chief information officers (CIOs) for their woeful performance.

He also slated technology leaders for their lack of credibility and business imperatives, and was pleased to see evidence that the CIO tag might be passing into oblivion.

Was Stevens right to take such a strong line, or are CIOs an essential element of the executive line?

Well, change is afoot. High street giants Boots and House of Fraser recently announced plans to scrap the IT director role following major infrastructure overhauls.

And last week, Tesco IT director Colin Cobain revealed his plans to leave his role after successfully expanding operations on the other side of the Atlantic.

Cobain’s tenure ­ he had been with the retailer since 2000 ­ is longer than most. Research from service provider EDS and survey specialist Populous shows the average CIO stays in position for just 38 months.

Maybe, then, the CIOs’ work is done. In a tough economic climate ­ where chief executives are looking to cut costs ­ a long-term aim of aligning business and IT will sound pretty hollow.

Computing Business recently polled IT directors on the future of the CIO. Opinions ranged from defensive to aggressive, with IT directors eager to demonstrate the influence of a good CIO on wider business strategy.

Other experts, however, are more uncertain, with Henley Management College’s Sharm Manwani suggesting chief financial officer is the only role that remains safe at board level.

Leaders will be forced to fight for their innovative projects, with Gartner suggesting IT directors should target a decrease in IT spending of at least 10 per cent for 2008.

Under such conditions, experts believe an increasing variety of organisations will be keen to place responsibility for IT with the finance director.

As this week’s extended feature on the future of the CIO (see page 23) demonstrates, those who are transformational technology leaders will be best-placed to survive the cull. Are you ready for change ­ or are you set for the chop?