As promised, here is the video replay of IDC Asia/Pacific’s panel on “Generation Y and the Emerging Power of User-Generated Content”, featuring IDC moderator Claus Mortensen, and four prominent young bloggers from the region: Victor Isaac Cheung (Hong Kong Phooey), Kenny Sia (Kenny Sia), Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan (The Compulsive Confessor), and Daryl Tay (Unique-Frequency).

[This is a 4-part PLAYLIST. Simply click the above to play all four parts.]

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I’ve posted a note about IBM’s 1Q08 earnings, reported Wednesday afternoon, over on idc.com (subscription required). Here are some excerpts:

IBM reported strong financial results for the first three months of this year, with 1Q revenues up 11%, income from operations up 26% and gross margin up 1.3 points. IBM had a positive view of market demand, driven by: 1) Corporate customers still “spending to save” (i.e., investing in IT that helps reduce operating costs); and 2) Emerging markets continuing to increase IT investments rapidly.

IBM’s formula for achieving these results were virtually identical to those of earlier quarters (2Q07, 3Q07, 4Q07): […read more…]

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For you night owls, tonight (tomorrow a.m.) my colleagues in IDC A/P are going to live stream an interesting panel discussion from the grand ballroom of Singapore’s Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel among some prominent young bloggers from the region, moderated by IDC analyst Claus Mortensen:

Generation Y and the Emerging Power of User-generated Content
What makes younger generations tick? How do you reach them as a company and why is self-expression in the form of user-generated content becoming so important to today’s Internet generation? Claus Mortensen moderates a panel of prominent young bloggers from around the Asia/Pacific region to get their perspective on these issues and more. This panel will give the audience a great opportunity to understand what motivates today’s “Generation Y”.

[…read more…]

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I saw an interesting post yesterday from Dennis Howlett: Google and Salesforce.com: does it make sense?. The post was driven by fresh rumors this week about more ties developing between these two companies, and the vision of an end-game in which Google uplifts its online business applications and services offerings by acquiring Salesforce. [We first talked about Google as a business applications and services platform in 2005, and talked about the wisdom of a Google/Salesforce marriage in 2006, again in 2007, and most recently in IDC Predictions 2008.]

Dennis’ post reasonably questions the sense of this match, in part because of information privacy worries tied to Google’s Terms of Service (does Google really lay claim to ownership of all content produced with its apps?), as well as his assessment that Google’s current software is still functionally primitive compared to the best packaged software out there. […read more…]

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Last week I spoke at IDC’s Middle East CIO Summit in Dubai. We hosted 120 of the top CIOs in the region - from Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) - for two days of dialogue about their IT leadership priorities and challenges.

As we discussed in IDC Predictions 2008, this is one of the fastest-growing economic regions on the planet - as evidenced by the rising, crane-filled Dubai skyline. The region’s 2007 GDP growth rate of 5% was over two times that of the U.S. and Japan, and over three times that of Western Europe. This economic vitality is fueling rapid IT investment, with IDC projecting over 11% annual growth in IT spending through 2011. […read more…]

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This morning I’m presenting at IDC Directions 2008 in San Jose on “Enterprise IT in the ‘Post-Disruption’ Era”. Among the research I’m sharing are findings from a recent IDC survey of line of business executives (LOBs) and CIOs about their biggest “wants” for 2008.

Here are two of the slides, the first looking at what LOBs want from their CIOs, the second looking at what CIOs want - in turn - from their IT suppliers: […read more…]

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Real-life experiences of Global 100 companies putting Web 2.0 to work - as a core part of their business strategy - are not that common yet. At IDC’s European IT Forum in Berlin last September, Procter & Gamble VP Patrick Arlequeeuw spoke about the company’s experiences in using Web 2.0 technologies and business models to increase the collaboration of P&G researchers with each other (InnovationNet) and outsiders (Connect and Develop), as well as between P&G and its customers (B2B Portal).

Here is a video excerpt:

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Not surprisingly, business IT spending is typically driven by CEOs’ priorities. Accordingly, to understand the drivers of business IT spending for 2008, IDC surveyed business executives about their CEOs’ top agenda items for the coming year.

In both our 2006 and 2007 surveys, Customer Care and Product/Service Innovation ranked #1 and #2, respectively. This year, given widening economic concerns, it is not surprising that Sales Productivity (which ranked #4 last year) has jumped to #1, just marginally ahead of Customer Care, and nudging Product/Service Innovation to #3. […read more…]

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Last Friday’s unsolicited proposal from Microsoft to Yahoo!’s board of directors was unquestionably Topic A for many of us in the industry over the weekend. The consensus, if there is one, is that if this marriage is consummated, it is either going to be a very potent challenge to Google’s rising power, or a waste of $44 billion.

There are many precedents for large mergers not working, so predicting certain success would be very, very foolish. But over on idc.com, my colleagues and I have posted some key reasons why “Microsoft+Yahoo” makes sense. This chart from the IDC analysis shows one such reason: […read more…]

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At IDC’s European ICT Forum in Berlin last Fall, Dr. Klaus Töpfer , environmental politics expert, and former Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) gave a presentation entitled “Green IT - Fashion or Challenge?”.

Dr. Töpfer’s key message was that - in the near future - prosperity (and peace) will require economic development of the heavily populated and economically underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, and that the huge scale of this goal will require much more energy- and material-efficient resourcing - i.e., “green” approaches. Therefore, he says, “Green IT” (and “green”, overall) is not just about the environment: “it is much more - it is economically necessary”.

Here is the video of his speech at the IDC Forum: […read more…]

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