Shakeout seen for high-tech businesses
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Industry watchers say a report that IBM Corp. has put its once-dominant personal computer business up for sale could signal the first move in a broader consolidation destined to shrink the number of PC manufacturers by about a third over the next couple of years.
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Analysts speculate that company is a possible target to be acquired and that big operational changes are in store for the 16,557-person technology consulting firm.
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Learn to identify companies ready for a breakout.
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Industry superpowers are left scrambling to keep up with a fast-changing tech world that is seemingly  about to leave them behind.
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Tables are turning for IT buyers with new tech trends that have given shoppers the upper hand.
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Profits and cash flows are within reach for this high-tech upstart.
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The company is facing challenges as it changes its business from one focused on PDAs to one that specializes in smart phones.
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Blog: Eldercare service providers point to changing their business models with the aid of technology.
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Blog: Industry leaders are worried that evolving technology may be getting a bad rap.
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After years of hearing that investing in IT was a smart strategic plan, business executives seem to have gotten the message, according to a new Gartner CIO survey released today -- but only when the dollars are going to technology efforts that have visible benefits for the bottom line, primarily externally facing initiatives involving customers or partners.The good news is that, despite the softening economy, IT budgets are going up 3.3 percent across the nearly 1,500 companies that Gartner surveyed. The data that matters for IT execs: Budgets for companies focused on bottom-line-oriented efforts are increasing 4.9 percent, said Mark McDonald, a Gartner Group vice president. Those organizations whose IT strategy involves only an efficiency focus will typically see budget increases of just 1.7 percent.The survey shows that a sea change has occurred in IT priorities, McDonald noted. The top three priorities in 2008 are improving business processes, attracting and retaining new customers, and creating new products and services. The sea change is the third priority, which was the No. 10 priority in 2007. Gone from the top three is reducing enterprise costs, which has slipped to No. 5. The decline of cost-cutting as a priority and the rise of innovation show the sea change that has occurred, McDonald says.But IT managers hoping for a return to the 1990s glory days of annual budget increases of 15-plus percent will be disappointed, McDonald said. In that era, IT budgets were driven by technology initiatives done almost for their own sake, as businesses both experimented with the new Internet and began to use technology widely within their walls. "Today, it's more about specific business needs," he said, "We're seeing strategies well grounded in business operations changes, not chasing a fad."And it's not CIOs driving the budget growth; it's the C-suite executives who now finally see IT as a business enabler, McDonald added. If anything, CIOs who promote IT as a force for business change were typically dismissed as self-interested. He noted, "Calling attention to yourself is never very positive."Although there is a mounting possibility that the U.S. economy may be entering a recession, McDonald doesn't believe IT will see its budgets slashed, as happened in the 2000-2001 recession. That recession came after years of unbridled IT spending whose specific business benefits were often unclear. The more moderate budget growth predicted for 2008 won't give businesses the same easy cuts they had then, he noted. "If you cut IT's budget by 10 percent, you might just see a 0.2 percent effect on the whole budget," McDonald explained, "You can get more bang for your buck by lowering [overall] operations costs through investing in better IT." That's why businesses are looking to increase IT spending for bottom-line-oriented initiatives, he said.
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With its open-source model, the company has the potential to shake up the industry, one analyst says.
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Learn to identify companies ready for a breakout
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Thanks to technological advances, it may be easier today to pull off the impression that a company is bigger.
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SANTA CLARA, Calif.--The business of selling software is due for an extreme makeover, industry executives said at the SoftSummit conference .
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Semiconductor chips that can manage a good bit of their own upkeep are moving closer to reality.
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The companyâs acquisitions in growth platforms mean more technologies to tap into for use in its other businesses.
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