Bladewatch.com

http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2011/02/08/245322/39We-have-not-been-pessimistic-enough39-expert-tells-UK-IT.htm

The IT market will continue to shrink for at least the next two years, and may only recover in 2013, according to a specialist UK market analyst.

TechmarketView managing partner Anthony Miller (pictured) said the firm had produced downbeat predictions before. “We have not been pessimistic enough,” he told delegates to the annual Intellect Regent conference in London.

Anthony Miller said the market had shrunk 5% in real terms, and would continue to decline for two years. He expected the IT market to grow at below the GDP rate, despite huge sales of end user devices, especially mobile ones.

An interesting article which I have to say I am not convinced by, one of the things IT is very effective in doing is re-inventing itself, and we’re seeing this now sweeping through the industry from the small to the larger enterprise. The market is changing, we’re seeing the shift from box selling to a combination of product and service delivery in a way which meets the business or end user requirements most effectively in terms of cost, agility, compliance and delivery. The interest is shifting away from I need a data center, I need a server or storage array to one in which I say I need a thing, this facility to earn revenue, what is the lowest cost, best fit scenario, do I buy it in from the cloud or as a service, or do I purchase and supply it in house.

Is the market set to shrink for the next two years. No it’s going to change, and here are where the opportunities are:

• Shift from selling technology, servers, pcs and laptops or storage and networking – to end user empowerment – what is it you want to achieve and we’ll help you get there
• Service delivery – what services do you want and would you buy them from our cloud, our data center or infrastructure
• White labelling – where I buy in the bits I need and supply it to whoever is paying, what matters is the functionality, the delivery, who supplies it (outside of compliance and competition) is less of an issue
• Automation and smart outsourcing – automating the bits of the IT space and delivery that do not work as effectively as I would like, combined with buying in the bits that I don’t want to be doing – can anyone supply a driver/firmware and layered component upgrade project as a service – my guys could spend all year upgrading all the various bits of the server space regardless of platform (anti virus / security patches / drivers and firmware / storage components / backup tools and layered middleware)
• Empowerment of the purchasing chain and being operationally smarter, realizing the value of the assets I have purchased, looking at operational cost, than keeping every asset until it’s economically no longer viable – if I can buy a laptop for £800, keep it for a year and sell it for £400, doesn’t that mean my price per seat is £40 (or just under) rather than £800 for life – and effective fixed cost, combined with the fact if it’s replaced every year, it never gets old enough to require support calls, rebuilds and component upgrades – less support calls, and system management.

As one of those people that believes you control your destiny, that what you perceive to be true becomes the truth, let us focus on the positive, realize the opportunities and see how social media, how real end user participation combined with empowerment can create opportunities. With virtualization, with cloud, with economic downturns and everything else, the existing rules of engagement remain, my costs are still (and always going to be) too high, and my infrastructure not agile to fast enough, with this in mind, renewal (replacing legacy infrastructure), re-configuration (getting things working and configured as they should be) combined with right working (making communication, processes and workflows work) remain the objectives. What changes are the methods of achieving this, the individual technologies and the ‘sale message’, not that the server is green, (green IT) nor that it’s fast (grid), but that the return on investment is in so many months or that it works with your existing platforms.

We will have to see, regardless of what I’ve written about, do check out the article and see what you think.

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