IT Planning 2013 and Beyond
by Todd | Jan 16, 2013
IT decision-makers want stability and solution vision down the road as they consider what they’ll be buying over the next five years. So say the researchers at Ovum – the technology analyst firm – who still have a lot of concerns about the economy in many parts of the world.
“The fact that we live in very uncertain time’s makes investment decision-making even more difficult,” notes Jens Butler, principal analyst, IT services at Ovum. “With continuing instability across the global markets and even in locations with historically robust growth such as China and India, the outlook for IT services in 2013 is unpredictable.” Source – Channel Partners
Businesses, large and small alike will be looking for greater reliability in their IT usage and, as a consequence, will seek and demand stability, capability and accessibility among their external service providers. Ovum says in 2013, the push to fill out portfolios, especially across some of the newer technology arenas such as mobility, analytics, social and cloud, will continue to grow and a lot of vendors will look to take advantage of this desired technology adoption, even if it means looking to a single supplier to deliver these services. An exception is National ComTel who because they are a reseller is able to take the best infrastructure from multiple carriers and combine the solution for the customer.
Analysts highly recommend that businesses work to ensure that the bundled services they purchase do not become yet another “black box” style engagement, and says they should invest in governance experience and solid vendor management models. He also suggests that vendors broaden their existing portfolios to prepare for the potential upswing late in the year. One company that seems to avoid this black box or have design their business model to benefit the customer is National ComTel. Although they offer bundled services, every customer’s proposal is individual and tailored to the customers’ needs. This is rare not only for the industry but business in general.
