Assetic, MatrixGroup, Message Stick Communications, Revolution IT, SpeedScan, and Whispir - six more Australian companies making a name for themselves
Call it what you will - On-Demand Software, Software as a Service (SaaS), Hosted Software, Agile Enterprise, Business-on-Demand, or the Adaptive Infrastructure -- it's changing the nature of IT. The idea is very simple; rather than buying, implementing, maintaining, and then upgrading software in-house, you gain access to solutions that are developed, hosted, and maintained by third parties and you pay only for what you need. It sounds too good to be true.
Len Rust takes a look at what local firms got up this past week.
The worldwide audio conferencing market will be worth more than $US1.8 billion, with a total of 26.7 billion minutes, in 2007 according to Ovum Research
Australians are on track to spend a record five billion dollars on digital devices by the end of 2007, according to recent research for the Canon Digital Lifestyle Index. Sales figures for January-June of this year showed Aussies have already spent more than $A2 billion -- the highest figure ever for this period. The July-December retail period, which includes Christmas and the end-of-year sales, traditionally outperforms the first-half by several hundred million dollars.
Remote or home workers are becoming an integral part of a company's workforce, according to a survey of 224 managers in Australia and New Zealand. However, concerns remain about the impact of the remote workforce on effective team-building, productivity, and network security.
Australian listed ICT companies are enormously diverse in nature and their boards of directors must operate in ways suited to an individual company's shareholder base and the scale and nature of its business, as well as the particular circumstances it faces.
Although the ongoing slump in the US economy is already having a negative impact on the growth of global IT spending, worldwide spending on technology will not be hurt drastically by the downturn in the US according to IDC.The researcher is forecasting that growth in US IT spending this year will be seven per cent, down from 11 per cent in 2000. However, worldwide IT spending will stay healthy with growth of nine per cent this year.
Despite the recent slowdown in the economy, the worldwide B2B Internet commerce market is on pace to total $US8500 trillion in 2005, according to Gartner Group. While B2B Internet commerce is poised for strong growth, the long-term forecast has been impacted by the economic downturn, especially in the United States, which is projected to be most heavily affected.
There were 3.8 million Internet subscribers registered in Australia at the end of the September quarter 2000 and they downloaded more than one billion megabytes of data during the previous three months, according to figures released recently by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Of these 3.8 million subscribers, the 400,000 who were registered as business or government subscribers accounted for 43 per cent of the total data downloaded
Enterprise demand for tighter and more efficient buyer and supplier management functions will result in a technology-enabling market sized at more than $US20 billion by 2003, according to recent research undertaken by Aberdeen Group
The most connected Asian countries are almost as well wired as the leading European and North American countries and actually lead in adoption of several categories of non-Web Internet use, such as chat, games and audio/video, according to a study carried out by NetValue SA.
Poor online customer service from a click-and-mortar retailer will drive 70 per cent of online buyers to spend less money at the merchant's offline store, and only 18 per cent of click-and-mortar retailers are capable of accessing a customer's consolidated account activity across all sales and service channels (online and offline).
Mobile portals searching for sound revenue models will draw few users and will disappoint companies expecting them to drive traffic, according to a recently released report from Forrester Research
Researchers know that the market depends on them to provide accurate, balanced information, and that their audience rightfully expects that information to be carefully researched and faithfully presented.
The problem with all this is that just about anyone can claim to be an IT researcher without being required to secure a license or certain credentials in order to practice. Anyone with sufficiently deep pockets can start a research consulting company, hire the research staff of their choosing and profess to be in legitimate technology research pursuit. That's when the problems begin