Consolidating and getting the best out of the existing IT set up is likely to be the top priority for Indian CIOs this year. According to IT research firm Gartner, in the year 2007, majority of Indian CIOs will look to maximize return on the investments already made in terms of technology purchase.

Partha Iyengar, research vice president, Gartner believes that IT managers will look to revamp their existing infrastructure in a big way this year and one of the key ways of doing this will be consolidation.

"Consolidation, be it at the desktop, server or application level, will be the driving force behind a lot of CIO moves in ’07," said Iyengar. "Storage will be one of the key areas where a lot of attention will be paid. Indian organizations by and large have been lagging behind the global trend of moving towards SAN and NAS based storage. However, the tremendous data growth and the challenges associated with managing this data has made them realize the advantages that these evolved forms tend to bring to a storage setup. Hence we’ll see a lot of Indian companies investing in acquiring such technologies."

Year 2007 is also expected to witness the second wave of enterprise application investment. Organizations that couldn’t reap the benefits of their earlier investments in software applications due to the dot com bust will once again look to buy ERP, SCM and other enterprise software applications.

"Enterprises are slowly starting to regain their confidence after the initial ERP boom of the nineties and the slump that followed the dot com bust. As a result of this, we’ll see businesses spending greatly on enterprise software and related projects, not just in India but globally," said Iyengar.

According to Gartner, this will also be the year when bigger businesses and tire-I companies in India will look to leverage the skills and capabilities of Outsourcing services providers.

"This won’t be as much of a technology issue as it’ll be a question of these organizations developing the maturity levels to hire the services of outsourcing service providers and leverage external expertise to support their company’s growth initiatives and manage business operations," concluded Iyengar.