Stories by Len Rust

Aussies worth watching

LEADTEC is a business-to-business e-commerce solutions provider and consulting firm that focuses on the promotion of pervasive e-commerce applications and programs into the retail and automotive industries. Leadtec provides services to more than 1000 companies throughout Australasia, including Woolworths, the Coles Group, Retravision, Toyota, Ford, Healthscope, and Johnson and Johnson.

Consumers waste money on gadgets

Australians are increasingly spending their hard-earned income on technology they don't know how to use. Moreover, two-thirds of the Australians surveyed (67 per cent) admitted to putting up with technology they believed was not performing, according to a report by Galaxy Research titled The Gizmo Household Technology Study.

Navigation devices at home in Asia

Lower-priced personal navigation devices (PNDs) and GPS-enabled handsets helped the Asian navigation market to prosper in 2007, and total shipments topped 39 million for the year. That figure is expected to exceed 185 million in 2012, according to a forecast by ABI Research.

Record everything

Sixty per cent of knowledge workers in the US, UK, and Australia will have effectively stopped deleting documents, e-mails, audio, and video files from their hard drives by 2010, and we will soon see this taken to another level with widespread proactive recording in the workplace, according to Australian research company S2 Intelligence.

Asia feels effect of US slump

Recurring news of further deterioration to the outlook of the US economy has raised concern over the potential impact on the stability of the IT Market in the Asia/Pacific region, including Japan (APJ). In a review of the most recent economic indicators, current IT forecasts, and the economic linkage of APJ and US economies, IDC developed two scenarios of worsening US economic outlook for lead factors associated with IT expenditure. In the first scenario, IDC's research depicted a moderate 1.7 per cent and 0.9 per cent erosion of its current forecast APJ IT market growth for 2008 and 2009, respectfully, should the US conditions worsen. In dollar terms, this means $US4.8 billion and $US7.5 billion less market potential in 2008 and 2009.

Telco services more critical than hardware

The telco services market hit $65 billion in 2007, including product, network, and IT-related service spending. Network equipment providers (NEPs) accounted for approximately 60 per cent of that total, according to Ovum, which recently published 2007 service business results for network infrastructure vendors.

A/P leads the way in new media

Asia is leading the way in new media and interactive marketing, according to Ian Rowden, chairman and CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Asia/Pacific. "Internet users have topped 160 million in China and 50 million in India.

Strong presence for virtualisation

The virtualisation software and services market in Asia/Pacific will grow at an estimated CAGR of 42 per cent to reach $US1.35 billion by 2010 as CIO interest in the technology steadily increases, according to Springboard Research. Virtualisation services, expected to grow to $US1 billion by 2010, will form the major portion of this market as organisations will spend up to three times as much on services as on software.

Aussies worth watching

The Frame Group, Conjugate Systems, Mig33, Perisoft, Powerhealth Solutions, and The Nous Group come under the microscope

Making the right impression

The team has been chosen for the 2020 Summit. When Canberra plays host to 1000 participants on April 19 and 20, the ICT industry (our industry), will be represented by a mere handful of people.

Bet big, stay focused

THE PAST IS THE PAST: it is there for us to reflect on and learn from, but we can only live in the now and prepare for the future. Objects in the rear-view mirror hold many lessons and many experiences, but objects in the road ahead and the route that we choose will define our future and ultimately who and what we will become.

Aussies worth watching

3Q Systems -- which has its origins as a point of sale (POS) and head office solutions provider for retailers -- develops, sells, implements and integrates retail technology solutions and services for a wide range of clients, operating in the fashion, electronics, furniture, general merchandise, and discount variety industries. The main business regions the company operates in are Australia, New Zealand, Asia, and the US.

CIOs detail their 2008 wish lists

Who would believe that service-oriented architecture would dominate the shopping lists of CIOs this year? Yet according to IDC's Forecast for Management (FFM) Survey, half of responding CIOs have SOA in their 2008 budgets. "This is interesting as many IT industry participants first saw SOA as another standards and application development paradigm wave that would just fade away," said Melissa Martin, an analyst with IDC Australia.

New technology to marginalise IT's BI role

By 2012, emerging technologies will make it easier to build and consume analytical applications, reducing the role of the information technology (IT) department in building these applications, according to Gartner.

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