What’s on your organization’s Christmas list?

I have a daughter who is missing all of her front teeth; however she has opted against asking for front teeth for Christmas and is pushing Santa Clause for a Princess Diary with Lock and Keys. I think many organizations are hoping Santa brings them more stable economic times, bigger budgets and some relief from the austerity of the last few years. I hate to be the Grinch but unfortunately, I just don’t see it ending up under the tree. The climate in both public and private sector is that IT has to do more with less. I don’t want to leave you feeling like Charlie Brown, I think there are three things every technology IT executive should put on their list in order to make 2014 a better year than 2013.

Troux-as-a-Service: Get a better understanding of your application portfolio and make better decisions in 2014: Getting results from Enterprise Architecture has been on many technology executives Christmas list for years. Enterprise Portfolio Management and associated disciplines are becoming more mature. So is the software that supports them. Traditionally, software packages in this space that came with strong records of implementations ending in ROI also came with big price tags. Now many of these vendors have software as a service models available. I talk about Troux-as-a-Service in this video.

Salesforce: Despite the hype, most executives and organizations are not getting to the cloud or getting to the benefits of the cloud yet. 2014 may be the year as many factors including increased maturity from service providers, better understanding by internal IT folks and the business case come together to make cloud an inevitable part of the story for most organizations in 2014. I believe this charge will be led by vendors like Salesforce that have developed platforms that enable third parties to securely deliver specific capability to organizations “just like yours.” The appexchange model which iTunes and the AppStore have made so prevalent in the consumer market is fast taking hold in the public sector with 2,126,132 enterprise class installs to date (today).

Millsapps, Ballinger & Associates: Ok so getting some exciting new clients under the tree that are focused on making 2014 a year of change is actually on my list. I think we should be on yours because we are experts in the first two things on this list and more importantly because we really are “focused on outcomes.” One of the things I believe separates us from the pack is that we measure ourselves by our clients success. With both our Troux 90 day portfolio offer and our ExAM4Enterprise.com offerings our focus is always on getting you to value fast.

So that’s what I think should be on your Christmas list this year. What actually is on the list?