Confidence Crucial for European IT Prospects. Spending in Western Europe to rise 3.6 percent in 2005

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Europe Gartner:; Global spending on information technology (IT) will reach $2.6 trillion in 2005, representing year-on-year growth of 5.6 percent. In Western Europe, however, growth in overall IT spending continues to lag behind other regions. Overall IT spending in Western Europe of $697 billion in 2005, or 3.6 percent year-on-year growth.

Hardware : Key decision: When to allow non-enterprise owned devices to access corporate systems? that by 2007, employee-owned notebook plans will be adopted by at least 20 percent of A-Type companies as PC and server processors and the operating systems that run on them will no longer be inextricably linked to each other. In addition to allowing multiple operating systems to run on the same device, this new wave of hardware and software-delivered virtualisation also will permit the guest machine to have a locked down corporate image while the host domain may upgrade and load hardware and software at will. What made good sense on the desktop computer of a dedicated white-collar employee who learnt computing at work may not be the right balance for the always-on generation with laptops, multiple home computers and PDAs, etc. - who learned to use a computer before they could even write. Software: Key Decision: When to stop investing in today's enterprise applications? That automatic investment in the software status quo can choke future business success and advised businesses to adopt a deliberate rather than a passive path. Tthis approach has huge implications for the way in which software is created and the skills required to deliver it. We will witness the creation of a new generation of application via mainstream adoption of services oriented architectures (SOA). We will soon reach the point when more than half of all newly created applications will be built this way, and rely upon millions of existing modular pieces of software with well-described interfaces. This will in turn lead to a greater migration of application developers away from user enterprise payrolls.That by 2009, the number of application developers directly employed by enterprises (other than those in the software industry) will fall by 30 percent. Networking:Key Decision: When to change the way your business communicates? Åredicts that by 2008, 80 percent of all enterprise desktops in EMEA will be connected to a communications server capable of supporting IP telephony. More than one hundred years of circuit switching platforms have served us well. In the future, however, these will be replaced by Internet protocol (IP) based solutions in our homes and offices, as well as the local, national and international network services offices of global carriers. 1) the technology group to understand technology's capabilities and 2) the business groups to understand the business's problems. As a result of this migration to IP based solutions, businesses will have to decide in the next two years when to buy their last private branch exchange (PBX) system. IT Services and Management: Key Decision: When will your default source for IT Infrastructure operations be external? That by 2012, 25 percent of application demands will be delivered through a real time infrastructure (RTI) IT utility, in-house or from service providers, a rise from three percent in 2005. That before the end of this decade the default question about outsourcing IT operations would change from "if" to "when. The future is in fulfilling IT business process, application and infrastructure requirements from resource pools - rather than dedicated resources - via IT utility infrastructures. The beneficiaries of entirely outsourcing IT operations would grow from a few early adopters to the mainstream majority by 2015. In the long-term only a few very large user organisations will maintain in-house data centres and that the transformation will be long and complex, making advanced planning essential. These decisions have to be made in the next two years. This is neither a story about technologies in a laboratory nor emerging technology trends. There is no denying that many of the new technology paths that await us will be more complex than their predecessors. Economic conditions today may be far from ideal, but IT organisations must have the confidence to make key decisions on new technology if they are to move from being a business enabler to a business contributor and play a central role in future business strategy. Gartner speech Publ 20050523 IP telephony?