New Year revolutions

it's like to eat a nice cheese or walk through the entrance of the Taj Mahal but it's not the same as doing it yourself."

6. Start taking cloud computing seriously

Cloud computing uptake offers the prospect of a completely new way of provisioning IT so it might pay to work on understanding it now, especially as cost saving is a key promise of the model.

"Some organisations are already well down the road but the mainstream will be still in the trough of disillusionment," Mahoney says. "The cloud is susceptible to the conclusion that this is not terribly productive in the short term. Our strong feeling is that this is not something you can leave until later."

Theme Three: Survive in 2009 without collateral damage

7. Stop ignoring people and opting for soft targets

It's natural that CIOs will pressurised to take decisive action and the natural, default option will be to cut long-term projects. However, there may be a away to keep on visionaries.

"If you're working for a company driven by quarterly performance and stock performance, one of the things the CIO will be asked to do will be to contribute to metrics. The short-term achievements of business process designers or enterprise architects might be difficult to demonstrate but if you're under pressure to demonstrate their short-term sustainability, explain the situation and get them working on some short-term projects so you can defend your desire to keep them through the downturn."

8. Start offering your vendors a free lunch

Tragically, Gartner advises that CIOs should say 'no' to courtesy trips and instead invite them for no-frills lunches to show their thrift and seriousness.

"You're sending a message that you're doing everything you can to sustain this business and keeping a level of interaction with senior people at major partners," Mahoney says.

9. Stop fearing the future and start driving it

That said, there's no need to take them to the nearest "greasy spoon", Mahoiney notes. "Don't be ridiculous about it. I knew a chairman who said that lunches should be provided by staff internally, CIOs should also reflect conspicuous frugality but not be defined by it. They should resolve to occasionally and visibly splash out a little -- where it really matters to staff moral such as training courses or software development tools. Work on real money saving like flying economy instead of business class -- but avoid empty-gesture cost cutting such as taking cookies off the plate at management meetings.

Theme 4 and Resolution #10: Newer technologies to get experience of in 2009: With so much work to do, Gartner reminded CIOs that they need to protect the time to stay in touch and get 'hands-on' with some key technologies in 2009:

-- e-book readers

-- Google Chrome

-- Building mini cloud applications

-- YouTube as a default search engine for a day

-- HD teleconferencing

To conclude, Mr Raskino said: "It seems inevitable tough times will hit most sectors at some point in 2009, so CIOs shouldn't wait for instructions to act. There's plenty they can do to protect assets and thrive on the change opportunities -- but they must start planning their way out right now."