This time of year it’s traditional to sharpen a pencil and jot down a ‘must do’ list for the 12 months ahead. So, what’s made it onto yours?

Throughout the economic gloom of the past 12 months, most organisations kept a laser-like focus on cutting costs and improving efficiencies. For the IT department this meant battening down the hatches and extracting more out of existing resources.

Now that the worst of the GFC storm appears to have passed, hopefully attention can now shift to more forward-looking activities. In many cases this will involve assessing existing infrastructures and figuring out how they can be improved.

For this reason, I’m thinking many lists could include:

* Cloud computing: figure how much (or how little) to embrace the hottest trend in computing

* Virtualisation: save some more money by reducing server numbers and boosting the usage levels of those that remain

* Standardisation: finally get away from multiple operating systems and bewildering numbers of applications

* Mobile security: take control of the growing number of mobile devices in the organisation and make sure they’re not creating new avenues for fraud and attack

Sure, they’re big areas, but they also represent the most effective way to have a dramatic impact on your business or organisation.

What else has made it onto your first list of the year?