IT Demand Trends and Freebies
December 2nd, 2004 by Adam Cuothe
Since I found Aberdeen’s free trial yesterday, I decided to see what free trials I could get from other analyst firms. In the process I got sidetracked with an interesting little comparison. Gartner has something they call their IT Watch Technology Demand Index. No free trial and they really bury any information about what the potential cost might be–must be exhorbitant, but a bit of teaser info is offered up-front. For instance,
Demand for IT products and services will strengthen in 2005. Optimism expressed by respondents for increased 2005 budgets is growing stronger as year-end approaches. Budget decision makers in small businesses (fewer than 100 employees) are the most optimistic.
Typical Gartner bubble-head prediction. What is interesting is what they base it on. According to the web site “Gartner surveys over 75 CIOs and key decision-makers every week about their IT spending. Then Gartner analyzes data and determines if IT spending is more or less than anticipated for the current fiscal quarter.”
Compare that to the freebie I found at Technology Evaluation Centers, namely their “Q” report (they do offer a complimentary copy, albeit an old one). It tells us quite precisely (in the PDF teaser)
Key Findings for Q3 2004
- Globally, 42.2% of global inquiries had budgets of less than $100,000 (USD).
- In the Americas region, 52.9% of inquiries are from the manufacturing sector.
- In the Americas region, 54.2% of inquiries named Windows as the server platform of choice.
- In Asia-Pacific, 38.8% of inquiries are large multinationals with five or more locations, an increase of 9.9 percentiles from Q3 2003.
And those juicy bits, they say, come from over 5,000 global technology decision makers. Well it doesn’t take much effort to see which of these reports is more useful. I like some hard information as opposed to some nebulous predictions. And while not cheap, at least these guys were up front with their costs.
While I continue to have some weird fun with free analyst trials, I’m enjoying a good beer. Maybe I’ll see what Forrester has brewing next.
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