InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

Companies must focus more on using social networking to build external ties to customers, suppliers and partners -- not just among employees.

Want our advice? Throw out your enterprise social network. Our survey says just 13% have meshed internal and external communications, and only 21% have seen significant ­reductions in email volumes. Meanwhile, 62% have yet to integrate any external social media into internal applications. Start fresh and think social technologies, not platform silos.

Tech spending is looking up, but IT must focus more on customers and less on internal systems.

Our Outlook survey finds 71% of companies with rising ­demand for IT projects, just 8% cutting IT staff and 60% expecting higher IT budgets than in 2012. But IT’s priority list ­continues to trend toward IT-centric projects and needs to focus more ­externally on projects that affect the customer directly.

Our 2013 Big Data Survey shows we're not lacking facts, figures, or tools to wrangle them. So why do just 9% of respondents rate themselves as extremely effective users of data?

Our 2013 Big Data Survey shows we’re not lacking facts, figures or the tools to wrangle them. So why do just 9% rate themselves as extremely effective users of data? And how do we expect to improve when just 31% have a wide array of business users accessing information and just 20% plan to grow their dedicated analytics teams?

IT is coming around to the benefits of the consumerization of IT, our survey finds.

IT isn't fighting employees on the consumerization of IT anymore. More than half of companies now consider themselves proactive or accepting of consumer-centric tech; 51% already support iPads, just two years after their introduction. Security remains the No. 1 worry about consumer tech, but companies are accepting and even supporting it like never before. Here's how IT can embrace consumerization on its own terms.

Four steps IT should take to help the sales team increase revenue.

IT’s jumping into cloud services with way too much custom code and way too little planning, our annual State of Cloud survey finds.