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IDC Says IT Industry Headed
for Gradual Recovery in 2002, Led by Software and Services
November 13, 2001 - The
impact of the terrorist attacks of September 11, the slowing global economy, and
the telecommunications supply-demand mismatch have come together in a "perfect
storm" to create the worst year ever for the computer industry around the
world, according to IDC. In new data and forecasts that take into
account the impact of September 11 on the computer industry worldwide, IDC
predicts total Worldwide IT spending will increase by only 1% this year,
compared with 12% growth in 2000. In 2002, growth will recover slowly to 5.5% by
year-end.
Worldwide hardware spending will decline by 9% this year, and a
further decline of 1% will follow in 2002. Software and services spending growth
will recover, to some extent, in 2002, with an upturn in the second half of the
year expected to produce 2002 worldwide growth rates of 11% for software and 9%
for services.
"The 'perfect storm' of 2001 has caused an unprecedented decline
in IT spending around the world, particularly in the US," said John Gantz,
IDC Chief Research Officer. "Hardware shipments have suffered most
dramatically, as is always the case in an economic slowdown. This year, due to
other factors, things have been even worse than anyone predicted." The US
slowdown has clearly spread to other regions, most notably Western Europe.
Hardware spending in Europe will show a decline of 4% this year and will decline
by a further 2% in 2002. In Japan, PC spending is declining by 16% this year. "This
is no longer just a US story," Gantz said. "This is a worldwide
slowdown, impacting vendors in every region."
While 2001 will go down as the worst year on record for the computer
hardware industry, there are reasons for optimism. Software spending will
recover to the strong growth rates of previous years, driven by investment in
ebusiness and other leading solution areas. IT Services remains the bastion of
the IT industry, recording 9% growth worldwide this year despite the industry
slowdown.
...IDC profile |
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Marketing and technology: a
mix made in hell
November 13, 2001 - a new
article on it-analysis.com eloquently reflects the abysmal state of
marketing in most IT companies. ...it-analysis.com
Editor's
comments:- for many years I thought I was the only person lamenting the quality
of marketing as executed by most IT companies (advertisers excepted). Seems I'm
not alone. It takes a recession to sort out which companies were just lucky
during the boom times and got sucked along in the upwards vortex, and which
companies really had an understanding of what they were doing. The former are
mostly crashing back to earth, while the latter are still doing surprisingly
well. |
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CSG Systems, Inc. Unveils
Intelligent CRM Tool For Converging Communications Companies At Western Show
Englewood,
CO - November 13,2001 - CSG Systems, Inc., a leader in customer care and
billing solutions, today announced it will demonstrate its new predictive
analytics technology geared toward combating customer churn and increasing
profitability at the California Cable Trade Association's Western Show in
Anaheim Nov. 28-30. CSG ProfitNow!™—a first in intelligent CRM
(iCRM) designed specifically for converging communications companies—aims
to reduce customer churn, a challenge that costs service providers an estimated
$9 billion in lost revenue every year. ProfitNow! uses predictive analytics
technology to identify which customers are at risk of flight and recommends
tailored solutions customer service representatives can use to retain those
customers before it's too late.
ProfitNow! also includes a product that enables service providers to
identify appropriate cross-sell and upsell opportunities to improve
profitability on a customer-by-customer basis and target services based on
individual needs. Information generated by ProfitNow!'s entire product suite is
continuously fed into a provider's own customer care system to increase the
modeling engine's accuracy in identifying which predictive measures will result
in higher profitability and fewer customer defections....CSG Systems
Editor's
comments:- it's amazing what a good CRM system can help you do nowadays. On the
upside, predicting who will most likely buy your newest product gets all the
sales votes. On the downside, the data may show that some of your current
customers are uneconomic and either have to be ditched, or offered new terms of
doing business. The sales manager always says "no" to that kind of
proposition. "Over my dead body...etc." Which is why successful CRM
projects need the buy-in of the most senior management who can decide these hard
cases and make the whole thing work. |
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STORAGEsearch.com Sizes
Competing Backup Technologies
November 13, 2001 – ACSL,
publisher of STORAGEsearch.com revealed today that the category for web based
storage has overtaken tape libraries for the first time. "As the number
of alternative methods for data backup continue growing, I thought it would be
useful for readers to see how their interests measure up" said publisher
Zsolt Kerekes. "I sometimes reveal this kind of information to vendors, and
thought that a wider public airing could be helpful."
If we
restrict the analysis of data backup methods to those which have already been
established categories for several years on this web site, and if we call the
set of those backup technologies 100% to simplift the ratios, then we get the
following breakdown of interest among our readers, measured by pageviews during
the last 3 months...
During the past year,
RAID systems have also
emerged as an alternative backup method. RAID hasn't been included in the above
figures, because this type of application is too new, and there's no easy way to
distinguish in our statistics between RAID being used as the primary disk server
technology, or as a backup, such as the
InfiniSAN D2D backup from
Nexsan Technologies.
As we currently have over 400,000 unique
readers using STORAGEsearch, this kind of analysis provides useful information
on marketing trends which is not easy to obtain from other sources. During more
than 5 years of being a dotcom publisher, we've also observed that our
readership pageviews also tend to be predictive of buying behaviour, rather than
historic. It's clear that web storage and optical have both emerged as
mainstream alternatives which will put pressure on traditional tape technology.
...ACSL profile
See
also:- Market research |
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BackWeb Hosts Web Seminar
on Portal ROI with Leading META Group Analyst
SAN JOSE, Calif.-
November 8, 2001 - BackWeb Technologies (Nasdaq: BWEB), the leading
provider of ProactivePortal™ technologies for the enterprise, today
announced that leading META Group analyst, David Yockelson, will discuss how to
improve the return on corporate portal investments with BackWeb CEO, Eli Barkat,
in an upcoming Webinar on November 15. The interactive Webinar will
address:
- Enterprise portals today - their uses and benefits
- Must-have technologies/elements for enterprise portals
- Real-world examples of Fortune 1000 companies who have improved ROI
- How to determine the ROI of your enterprise portal
- How to improve the ROI on your enterprise portal.
By 2004/05, more than 90% of Global 2000 organizations will have a
portal, with typical deployments adding up to more than $1 million. (META
Group). Given such significant financial investments it is imperative that
companies are able to measure and maximize the ROI on their portal and IT
investments.
"The value portals bring to enterprises is strongly evidenced by
the recent surge in portal investments," said Bob Braham, vice president of
marketing, BackWeb Technologies. "However, portals are passive in nature:
they do not guarantee usage of critical content nor do they provide offline
access to mobile users. The result is that must-have content is regularly
ignored, compromising portal ROI. We look forward to discussing the significant
challenge of guaranteed usage and the solutions and technologies that address
this challenge during this Webinar."
To register for the Webinar please go to
www.backweb.com/ROI or call (888)
800-1115.
Editor's comments:- if you judged most computer companies by their
web sites, you wouldn't feel confident enough to buy from any of them. Most
survive DESPITE their home pages, as a result of traditional communications and
direct sales contact. Your web site is an opportunity to create relationships
and good impressions not only with customers, but with other synergistic people
like journalists looking for your latest press releases, investors, potential
marketing partners selling complementary products etc. I would say that 98% of
computer companies could do a lot better and would benefit from the above kind
of Webinar. |
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The X Internet Will Let
Businesses Do More With What They Have, According To Forrester Research
Cambridge,
Mass. - November 8, 2001- More than 500 senior business executives have gathered
today at the 14th annual Forrester Research, Inc. Executive Strategy
Forum to hear how to survive and thrive in the X Internet age. Forrester's
Forum, "The X Internet: The Next Voyage." As the Internet
expands, two new waves of innovation, constituting what Forrester calls the X
Internet, are already eclipsing the Web: an executable Net that greatly improves
the online experience and an extended Net that connects users to the real world.
An executable Net that supplants today's Web will move code to users' PCs to
captivate consumers in ways that static pages never could. The extended Internet
is reshaping businesses through Internet devices and applications that sense,
analyze, and control what is going on in the real world.
During this
two-day Event, industry leaders and Forrester analysts will help companies
understand how the X Internet will change their business. Richard Belluzzo,
president and COO of Microsoft will discuss .NET and how Microsoft fits into the
new X Internet landscape. Dr. Jim Mitchell, VP and director of Sun Laboratories,
will talk about Sun's X Internet ambitions.
Additionally, OnStar
President Chet Huber will discuss the lessons he has learned creating an early
instance of the X Internet. "The ability to leverage the automobile as a
platform to deliver extended Internet services will play a vital role in the
next generation of the Internet," says Huber. "Americans spend more
than 500 million hours per week in vehicles, and they want to be able to use
that time productively."
Also at the Forum, Forrester Research Director Charles Rutstein will
highlight his top five executable and top five extended X Internet vendors. The
executable vendors in order are Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, AppStream, Altio,
and Curl. The extended vendors are GE, Cisco Industrial Networks, IBM, Opto 22,
WhereNet, and eMation.
...Forrester Research |
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Web Advertising Strategies:
quick and dirty checklist
November 8, 2001 - a
new article on MarketingViews provides a web advertising checklist based
on your annual budget. You will already be doing a lot of the things listed
here, but this checklist enables you to see if your promotion strategy is
unbalanced. You may be spending too much time and resources on some things which
don't really matter so much while not spending enough time on activities which
have much higher leverage. |
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Portal Secrets: browse next
page
November
6, 2001 - a new article on MarketingViews shows how a simple navigation
mechanism originally designed to help reader stickiness, has also been used to
boost the pageviews of advertisers with great success for many years. |
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Outsell Releases Annual
Report on the $95.8 Billion News & Trade Information Content Market
BURLINGAME,
California, November 5, 2001 - According to a study recently published by Outsell,
Inc., the leading information content industry research and advisory firm,
the industry slowdown in 2001 has left Primary Publishers struggling to find and
exploit new electronic distribution channels, and prompted News Aggregators &
Infomediaries to reposition themselves as full-service providers of content,
proprietary technology, and other services. The Outsell report, part of a
massive market sizing initiative on the business-to-business portion of the News
& Trade (N&T) segment, identifies 146 companies in this sector. The
market is segmented into two business model types: News Aggregators &
Infomediaries, who aggregate and/or syndicate content from multiple publishers;
and News & Trade Primary Publishers, who create original news content for
printed news publications such as newspapers, trade journals, and magazines.
Primary Publishers also include newswires and news services.
Outsell estimates that the 2000 worldwide market for N&T
information is $95.8 billion, an increase of 5.2 percent over the previous year.
"The 2000 market size numbers paint quite a different picture
compared to the downturn and subsequent fallout that took place in 2001,"
said David Curle, Director & Lead Analyst at Outsell. "Publishers'
expectations of spinning Internet-based subsidiaries into moneymaking IPOs has
all but eroded, leaving them with the task of folding those units back into
their core operations. Also, the slowdown in advertising spending has compelled
several major players to announce layoffs and cost-cutting measures, and search
for new ways of electronically distributing their content via secondary channels
to generate new revenue opportunities."
"Primary publishers can no longer rely on the aggregators and
infomediaries to syndicate their content," Curle said. "As a result,
many publishers are consolidating their media holdings, as well as rebuilding
their own internal organizations, to efficiently distribute the right content at
the right price, and effectively deliver the most bang for the advertising buck."
According to the Outsell study, the rapid dissolution of the dot com
market, once flush with venture capital and eager to add content to their sites,
has cast a pall over the News Aggregator & Infomediary segment of the
market. With iSyndicate being acquired by Yellowbrix, Screaming Media recasting
itself as an infrastructure company, and COMTEX undergoing staff reduction, the
remaining core companies in this sector are increasingly trying to become
full-service providers by offering different combinations of content, software,
and technology that can be combined into enterprise processes, tasks, and
decisions.
"News aggregators are turning toward the enterprise market for
more stable sources of revenue than are available on the open Web," added
Curle. "By providing software and services along with content, aggregators
enable their customers to more easily integrate and embed external content feeds
into corporate Web-based interfaces. Unfortunately, this development comes at a
time when most enterprise budgets are tight, and many projects are being blocked
by economic limitations." ...Outsell
web site |
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Gartner Dataquest Says PC
Shipments in Western Europe Declined 11% in Third Quarter of 2001
EGHAM,
United Kingdom, November 1, 2001 - Demand for personal computers in Western
Europe fell sharply during the third quarter of 2001, causing PC shipments to
decline 11% over the third quarter of 2000, according to Dataquest Inc
PC shipments across the wider region of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA)
totaled 8.66 million units in the third quarter of 2001, a 6% decrease compared
with the same period last year.
"Western Europe felt the full impact of the global economic
climate during the third quarter, causing a double-digit decline in both
business and home segments," said Brian Gammage, analyst with Gartner
Dataquest's Computing Platform group. "Orders from large customers were
cancelled or postponed as public-quoted companies struggled to hit quarterly
targets. Demand from smaller businesses was also down. With businesses and
consumers re-examining their investment priorities, PC's were relegated to the
'don't need it now' category."
The leading vendors felt the biggest impact, with Compaq, IBM and
Fujitsu-Siemens all recording double-digit shipment declines. Hewlett-Packard
continued to benefit from its clear channel strategy and maintained third
quarter PC shipments at the same level as in the previous year. Dell was the
only top-tier vendor to report a shipment increase from the same quarter in
2000, and it reduced Compaq's lead to less than three percentage points.
|
| EMEA
Personal Computer Shipment Estimates for 3Q01 (Thousands of Units) |
| Company |
3Q01
Shipments |
3Q01
MarketShare (%) |
3Q00
Shipments |
3Q00
MarketShare (%) |
Growth (%) |
| Compaq |
990 |
11.4 |
1,220 |
13.2 |
-18.8 |
| Dell |
749 |
8.6 |
709 |
7.7 |
5.6 |
| Fujitsu
Siemens |
638 |
7.4 |
838 |
9.1 |
-23.9 |
| Hewlett-Packard |
623 |
6.8 |
621 |
7.0 |
-0.3 |
| IBM |
462 |
5.3 |
663 |
7.2 |
-30.4 |
| Others |
5,200 |
60.0 |
5,157 |
56.0 |
0.8 |
| Total
Market |
8,661 |
100.0 |
9,212 |
100.0 |
-6.0 | |
In EMEA, PC shipments in the
professional segment declined 4.3%, while shipments to the home market decreased
by 10.7%. The professional segment accounted for 75% of the PC market in EMEA
during the third quarter of 2001, with shipments of 6.5 million units. PC
shipments to the home segment in the same quarter totaled 2.1 million units.
Shipments of notebook PCs grew by 6.8%, whilst shipments of desktop PCs declined
by 8.8%.
The three largest country markets, Germany, the United Kingdom and
France, recorded shipment declines of 15.2%, 12.2% and 12.4%, respectively. Of
the larger Western European markets, only Italy bucked the trend with growth of
10%. Russia continued to show the region's highest level of growth, with PC
shipments up 50.4% over the same quarter in 2000.
"With four of the five leading vendors losing market share, the
difficult conditions have favored some of the smaller PC vendors," Gammage
said. "The resurgence of these local assemblers demonstrates a general
reduction in brand sensitivity in some parts of the PC market, especially for
home users. It also shows that there are still opportunities out there for PC
vendors that can identify and satisfy market requirements. Good logistics and
the ability to respond quickly are currently the keys to success in the PC
market, which means you don't need to be big to win business."
Additional information on the European PC market is available in
Gartner Dataquest's PC Quarterly Statistics Europe program. To subscribe to this
program, please call 800-419-DATA, or 408-468-8009. |
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Catalyst CRM Methodology -
white paper released
UK - November 1, 2001 - the
Catalyst Foundation, a
group of leading CRM trainers, comsultants and practitioners based in the UK,
have published an updated version of their Catalyst CRM Methodology white paper
which was first published on the ECCS
CRM portal earlier this year.
|
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| today's news etc from
MarketingViews | |
|
Other news on this page
IDC
Says IT Industry Headed for Gradual Recovery in 2002, Led by Software and
Services
Marketing and technology: a mix made in hell
CSG
Systems, Inc. Unveils Intelligent CRM Tool For Converging Communications
Companies At Western Show
STORAGEsearch.com Sizes Competing Backup
Technologies
BackWeb Hosts Web Seminar on Portal ROI with Leading META
Group Analyst
The X Internet Will Let Businesses Do More With What They
Have, According To Forrester Research
Web Advertising Strategies: quick
and dirty checklist
Portal Secrets: browse next page
Outsell
Releases Annual Report on the $95.8 Billion News & Trade Information Content
Market
Gartner Dataquest Says PC Shipments in Western Europe Declined
11% in Third Quarter of 2001
Catalyst CRM Methodology - white paper
released
earlier
news (archive) |
|
 |
Serial ATA on
STORAGEsearch.com |
| Megabyte's
Auntie, Wanda Spellerbyte, liked to use a mixture of traditional and new
technology when gadding about her relations. | |
|
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Nibble Re:
Solid State Disks
Readers of
STORAGEsearch have increased their
interest in Solid State Disks (SSDs) this year by a staggering
500%.
- In January/February 2001, 1.3% of readers visited the SSD
pages.
- In October 2001, over 6% of readers visited the SSD pages.
As we've got a larger readership than any other enterprise storage
portal, and because SSDs are a well established feature on this site (since
1998), it's reasonable to assume that the growth in reader interest is
significant and probably indicates a real market trend.
SSDs are not
new (the first SSDs appeared in military systems in the 1980's), but I'm
speculating that there are two likely reasons for the recent surge in interest.
- the increasing use of SANs. SAN's give higher throughput
and better network utilisation of storage assets, but... response times are
slower than using directly attached storage. SSDs enable users to cache time
critical parts of their network storage to overcome this problem.
- the Sun installed base of servers has been
starved of faster
processor clock speeds in 2001, with most new SPARC systems typically
offering 900MHz instead of the 2GHz which the market actually needs.
Traditionally many Sun users would have upgraded their servers by now. Market
data shows that has not happened. The Sun server market declined much more
steeply than the Intel Pentium server market. The only realistic options for Sun
users who needed application speed ups have been to buy more of the (slower)
processors, or tune their system performance using products like SSDs.
The first analysis above (SAN), suggests that SSDs will eventually
become mainstream network storage tools. The second (lack of fast enough SPARC
upgrades) would result in a temporary increase in SSDs as a system speed up.
We'll report on this again later to see how the trend is going.
See
also:- Solid state disks |
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