Thursday, May 27, 2010

Software R&D globalization

Zinnov, meaning Zeal in Innovation, the leading management consulting company, has recently provided a study - “Software R&D and Globalization Insights”. The scope of the study is to conduct a global software R&D spend analysis across a group of software product companies. To gain insights on the topic multiple stakeholders such as Vice Presidents, Senior Directors, General Managers, were interviewed.

Some of the findings of the survey are:

• The impact of the economic uncertainty was visible on R&D budgets as companies planned to optimize on the investments over the last 12 months. Some of the small to midsized companies (less than USD 1 bn in revenue) have been able to keep the R&D investments low, as they offshore a significant portion of their R&D to low cost destinations such as India and China. For larger companies, most of the R&D investments (about 80%) are kept in the US.

• Most large companies are now looking towards keeping R&D budgets flat while increasing their investment on new products. This has led companies to invest more on new development related activities in the product development life cycle. As a result, the quality of talent has become critical and companies are now laying emphasis on hiring talent so as to maintain effective staffing ratio. The focus on quality mandates increased investments on R&D related workforce for a majority of companies.

• More development and QA/testing related work is expected to be sent to offshore locations hence reducing the total investment on mature products

• Most large companies are now looking towards maximized value, rather than a pure cost arbitrage in terms of their relationships with product development service providers. However, the percentage of outsourced projects is still pretty low meaning there’s a bright future awaiting outsourced product development (OPD) industry.


Source: Zinnov

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Vertical IT Spending to Go Upwards

According to a new report from IT research and advisory firm Gartner, IT spending across all industry markets is forecast to exceed $2.4 trillion in 2010, an increase of 4.1% compared to same period last year, with banking and financial industries leading the way. Government agencies and health care providers are also expected to boost their IT this year.

The report says that IT spending by banking and financial industries will grow by 4.6% to $396.9bn in 2010, while total IT spending by communications media and services market is expected to reach $394.2bn, marking a 4.4% increase from the previous year. National and international government will show the strongest growth in 2010, with an increase of 6.2% in IT spending. Manufacturing and natural resources, and wholesale trade will experience the weakest growth through 2014, growing at 2009-2014 CAGRs of 3.0% and 3.1%, respectively.

"2010 will see IT spending in all major industries returning to growth, although that growth will vary by individual sector", Gartner analyst Kenneth Brant said.

Source: CBRonline.com

Friday, May 14, 2010

European IT Services Market Growth

According to a recent report provided by the International Data Corporation (IDC), the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets, demand for IT services is anticipated to grow by 2.2 per cent for the year 2011, with IT outsourcing being the main driver behind this.

The study shows that IT budgets have stabilized along with the easing of economic conditions, resulting in some companies to slowly start increasing spend again. Laura Converso, research manager, IDC European Software and Services, said: "Demand for outsourcing will pick up towards the second half of 2010."

She also added that the need for IT services will be most prominent this year in the UK, Germany and the Nordics.


Source: ihotdesk

Friday, May 7, 2010

Healthy Growth of BI Market

According to a new report from market research firm Gartner, Inc., the business intelligence software market was one of the segments that significantly outperformed the overall enterprise software market in 2009.

The study revealed that the worldwide market for business intelligence, analytic applications and performance management software saw revenues exceed $9.3 billion last year, a rise of more than four per cent compared with 2008 revenues of $8.9billion.

“Even though growth was nowhere near the levels of 2008, and by no means immune to the recession, BI showed that it is not as cyclical as many other software areas, recording healthy growth in one of the toughest years recorded in software history," said Dan Sommer, a senior research analyst at Gartner.

BI was one area of IT that businesses were not prepared to push aside due to cost pressures. Mr. Sommer explained that “organizations have generally continued their BI projects, hoping that the resulting transparency will allow them to cut costs and improve productivity in a bid to remain competitive”.

Source: ihotdesk