AT ITCandor we’re preparing a new set of ‘expectations’ for the ITC market in 2011, so thought it was time to do some self-assessment on how well we did in our set of predictions last year. We publish these to stimulate debate and help CIOs, industry execs and end-users to prepare for the complexities and changes in market focus in the year ahead.
We were right on the money in forecasting that the strongest regional growth would be in Asia/Pacific and that the Enterprise Network war would continue, but wrong by under-estimating overall ITC and PC growth. We didn’t spot the shift from gaming applications to smart phone and smart tablet applications. For our other forecasts we were largely right and have given ourselves an overall average of 7/10 for last years predictions. If you have time, please revisit last years document and tell us if we helped you focus on new issues in 2010.
Table 1 – ITCandor 2010 Expectations – How Well Did We Do?
| No. | Expectation | Comment | Score/10 |
| 1 | The World ITC Market Will Grow Zero Percent | We underestimated the recovery – our current forecasts is for a 5% growth in 2010 | 4 |
| 2 | Asia Pacific Will Lead Regional ITC Growth | We were right on this, A/P grew 11% v 6% in the Americas and 3% in EMEA | 10 |
| 3 | Cloud Computing Matures To Become A Profitable Delivery Mechanism | We were certainly right on this one – every supplier has a real Cloud strategy now, many are making money | 8 |
| 4 | New Analytic Techniques Will Emerge To Handle The Upsurge In Digital Data | Again we were right on this one – IBM, Oracle, Ingres and others pushed us beyond data warehousing to online analytics in 2010 | 9 |
| 5 | Government ITC Spending Will Come Under Greater Pressure | Right again, austerity budgets (by the new coalition government in the UK for instance) began to cut back the surge in government ITC spending during the recession | 8 |
| 6 | Business And Industry Expertise – Not Logistics – Define Third Party Channels | Mostly right here, although it was the re-emphasis of local suppliers on managed services which better describes the movement: in addition Apple, other PC and smart phone suppliers proved that physical distribution is still an important skill | 6 |
| 7 | The Enterprise Network War Will Intensify | HP bought 3Par, Cisco continued to grow its UCS business, IBM bought Blade Networks, the disposal of Nortel continued, Nokia Siemens Networks bought Motorola’s network assets: we were definitely right here | 10 |
| 8 | Higher Electricity Prices – Not Legislation Or CSR – Will Drive Improvements In Data Centre Efficiency | Right again, only the UK and Japan pushed through CRC taxes, other countries laid off to encourage economic recovery, electricity prices continue to increase, data centres demonstrated new cooling and UPS techniques | 7 |
| 9 | Gaming Applications Will Continue To Out-Perform Other Software Areas | wrong on this one at least as far as Nintendo, Sony PS3 and Microsoft Xbox 360 were concerned (the aging platforms put paid to that); smart phone apps from Apple and Android made up, although these expanded beyond just gaming of course | 5 |
| 10 | The PC Market Will Grow By 1.5% , But Device Diversity And Desktop Virtualisation Continue | Wrong on this one, annual growth will be 12% bringing the market back to near 2008 levels; physical clients beat virtual ones during 2010 | 3 |
Source: ITCandor, December 2010
We’ll revisit market forecasts and major trends in our upcoming ‘ITCandor 2011 ITC Expectations’, so let us know what you would like to be covered and any specific observations you have about the coming year by commenting on this post.
Filed under: Hard Disk Drive, IT Service, Software, Telecoms Service Tagged: | Americas, Asia Pacific, EMEA, hardware, IT Service, ITC, software, Telecom Service
