As 2009 draws to a close, there has been a definite upswing in the amount of $$$ being spent on new IT initiatives. For many of us in the industry, this is the first bit of good news we've had since, well, Microsoft quietly announced that you could still downgrade Vista to XP (albeit at the 'discount' price of $99).
This has been a very tough year for integrators and consulting firms. Drops of almost 50% in revenue were not surprising; companies who had, for years, been on the 'cutting edge' of technology found suddenly that 'cutting edge' was coming in for 'cutting back' and technological advantages took backseat to company survival. And all of us who service such companies found their paychecks drastically curtailed.
Initial signs for 2010 are promising. Windows 7 looks *finally* to be the worthy successor to XP; messaging integration is here; virtualization is taking off by leaps and bounds; and 802.n wireless is spreading from the largest, to the smallest, networks.
A colleague of mine, who works as a senior network architect at IBM, recently told me that he is booked up for the next six months. Compared to this time last year, when he was working about 20 hours a week, he didn't even have enough time to schedule a vacation this year. And he is not alone - I've heard several such exclamations at a recent CIO conference I attended in New York.
Let's be optimistic - 2010 should show a welcome return to profitability for our industry.
They deserved it. Too many companies are TOO cheap on their disaster planning
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