All: Interestign article on 1998 Corporate IT spending:
joey
Tuesday November 18, 2:06 pm Eastern Time
Information technology spending growth seen easing
By Richard Melville
BOCA RATON, Fla., Nov 18 (Reuters) - Managers of information technology budgets expect to spend more money in 1998 than
in 1997, but the rate of growth is epected to slow, according to a survey presented at SoundView Financial's technology outlook
conference.
Among the findings of the SoundView spending survey: Year- to-year budget growth will slip to 9.5 percent in 1998 from 10
percent in 1997, and a large slice of the spending will go to year 2000 projects.
One in four respondents ranked millennium compliance as the top area to which they would dedicate budget resources next year,
making the category ''a runaway winner'' said SoundView research director Russ Crabs.
In a potentially troubling finding for mainframe companies, spending on the year 2000 will displace spending in other areas at 48
percent of companies surveyed. At those companies planning to divert costs from other areas, 59 percent said they would pull
costs from their mainframe-related expenses.
Respondents ranked Microsoft Corp (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) as the company whose products and services on which they were
most likely to spend more money next year, with Cisco Systems Inc (Nasdaq:CSCO - news) and Oracle Corp (Nasdaq:ORCL -
news) second and third.
Dell Computer Corp (Nasdaq:DELL - news) and Sun Microsystems Inc (Nasdaq:SUNW - news) also had strong showings in the
category.
Three companies were cited as likely to face reduced corporate spending: Digital Equipment Corp (NYSE:DEC - news), Novell
Inc (Nasdaq:NOVL - news) and Apple Computer Corp (Nasdaq:AAPL - news).
In contrast to the consumer market, where personal computer prices have declined sharply as vendors move to sub-$1,000
systems, executives said they expect average corporate desktop prices to remain basically flat next year.
However, the power of those systems is expected to rise dramatically, with increases of 31 percent in processor speed, 57 percent
in memory capacity and 47 percent in disk capacity.
Dell is expected to gain the most market share for personal computers in both the desktop and laptop categories, according to the
survey, although Compaq Computer Corp (NYSE:CPQ - news) is expected to remain the top vendor overall. |
