ING to cut 3,000 jobs by integrating IT systems

DutchNews.nl, November 25, 2014

Financial services group ING is to reduce its workforce by nearly 3,000 over the next three years as it streamlines its online services.

The bank said it is scrapping the jobs at its retail banking headquarters, in its administrative department, call centres and in IT. The cuts are due to the integration of the different IT systems which are currently used for its mobile app, website, call centre and branches. The changes should lead to annual savings of €270m from 2018, the bank said.

Unions shocked

ING has cut thousands of jobs in the past few years and currently has a workforce of some 53,000 worldwide, of whom 16,000 are in the Netherlands.

Banking unions told news agency ANP they were shocked by the job losses, which are larger than had been expected.

In a statement, ING said it is making the changes ‘in order to improve the customer experience and enhance operational excellence’.

Google Apps: A Love Story

How the BI-LO grocery chain found happiness in the cloud.

InformationWeek, by Thomas Claburn, March 16, 2011

After exiting from bankruptcy last year, BI-LO got serious about saving some money on information technology. The grocery retail chain, based in Mauldin, South Carolina, needed a new e-mail system to replace an aging, unsupported version of IBM Lotus Notes.

"It was eating us alive from storage costs and support costs," explained CIO Carol Dewitt in a phone interview.

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But change is seldom easy. Implementing a new e-mail system was seen as a significant disruption to employees and to the company's business. "We kept postponing and procrastinating until we got to the point where we were having lots of issues with the system," said Dewitt.

Finally, something had to be done and the company decided to consider cloud-based options, including Google Apps.

There were concerns about security, at least initially. BI-LO has pharmacies, so it has to maintain HIPAA compliance. It's a tier one credit card merchant, so it has to maintain PCI compliance. And the company tries to maintain SOX compliance, even though it's a privately-held company.

"We went through rigorous testing and evaluation and we found out that Google was actually more secure than we were," said Dewitt. "We just thought we were secure."

Dewitt says there were also concerns that Google Apps might represent too much of a change. But the prospect of having access to applications like Docs and Sites proved enough to overcome those reservations. Gmail would save money for BI-LO, on the order of $200,000, and the company might be able to derive some benefit from other Google services.

Those benefits only became clear after BI-LO, with the assistance of Cloud Sherpas, a Google reseller, turned on Google Apps and migrated data for 1,500 corporate employees over the course of about three months. Now, says Dewitt, communication and collaboration have gotten much easier.

Dewitt says the company only trained a few power users but found usage soaring almost as soon as Google Apps became available.

"All of a sudden the adoption rate went crazy," she said. "I was just astounded at how quickly people stopped using desktop office productivity tools and started using Docs, just because it made their lives easier. They could share their information and track the changes. And it was that easy. No training. They just started using it."

Blame the consumerization of IT. BI-LOs users learned how to use Google Apps and similar Web applications in their personal lives. According to an internal company survey, 30% of employees already used Gmail at home and another 25% used a different Web-based e-mail service, like Windows Live Hotmail or Yahoo Mail. That familiarity translated into prior training -- training the company didn't have to pay for -- and pre-existing affinity for the cloud.

Google also made the transition easier by creating Docs in Office's image.

"It's so close to Microsoft, it was not that hard for them to do that transition," said Dewitt.

Microsoft may still dominate large enterprise accounts, but its popularity appears to be shakier among smaller organizations like BI-LO. Office 2003 is still being used at BI-LO but its future looks bleak. "I don't have any plans to upgrade [Office 2003], except for a small group of people," she said.

Thus does an observation made last year by Dave Girouard, president of Google's enterprise group, seem less like wishful prophecy and more like inevitable destiny: "I think all companies will have Office; they just won't have as much of it," he said. "Office will become something like Photoshop, something that a few users need. It's not really the right tool for most people."

Excel remains perhaps the greatest anchor for Microsoft. It's used widely and deeply and, for some, fanatically. But at BI-LO, Dewitt says that most people only use a fraction of Excel's capabilities. For most of her users, the spreadsheets in Docs are enough and bring the added benefit of mobility.

"You can work on projects from home," said Dewitt. "You're traveling and if you need to access something, you don't need to lug your laptop with you. We find that people are using other mobile devices. That's been our biggest excitement; it's given people the freedom to use other devices. iPads are prevalent here. We actually supply them to our executive committee."

In fact for Dewitt, the most significant problem with Google Apps is that it's too appealing.

"Our big issue is keeping people from using it too much," said Dewitt. "They like to create their own little sites. And then you find information that's pertinent or important to the company, you don't know where it is anymore because they weren't thinking in terms of the broader picture. So we've had educate people about what's appropriate and what's not. But the good thing with Google is they give you tools so you know who did what."

Related Article:

Google expands social collaboration features in Docs

Goodbye Outsourcing, Hello Insourcing: A Trend Rises

More IT groups are ending outsourcing deals and bringing certain work back in-house. Is this the answer to your cost, control and quality issues?

CIO, By Stephanie Overby, Thu, February 17, 2011

CIO — Looking back on the last twelve months, most outsourcing analysts agree that the level of IT services deals sealed has held relatively steady, year-over-year. The total value of outsourcing contracts signed in 2010 was $62.4 billion, according to outsourcing consultancy TPI, a figure that's pretty consistent with their last five years of total contract value data. The number of IT services deals inked in 2010 grew by six percent, according to outsourcing consultancy Everest, noting that eight of them were so-called mega-deals of $1 billion or more. About half of IT service providers polled by outsourcing consultancy EquaTerra reported growth in their business pipeline, despite expectations for a much stronger year-end close. Deal flow was uneven in the fourth quarter, EquaTerra reported, and subject to delays.

But what's most notable to David Rutchik, partner with outsourcing consultancy Pace Harmon, is not the deals that are getting done. It's the deals getting undone.

Rutchik says he has seen insourcing decisions gaining steam within the last year and expects that trend to continue to increase in 2011. "Companies are still outsourcing significant projects and transactions," he says. "But they are strategically assessing subsets of broader outsourcing relationships and determining whether to pursue a best-of-breed provider approach or take it back in-house completely."

Why to Pull the Plug

Among the reasons IT leaders cite for pulling the plug on outsourcing deals—or subsets of their contracts—are poor service quality, failure to meet business objectives, and the desired for more control over the future direction of the IT function, according to Rutchik. "Another reason is that some companies were working with more generalist outsourcing providers who had been managing areas outside their core competencies," Rutchik says. "In some cases the results were less than stellar."

Not all "backsourcing" will remain in-house ad infinitum. While some IT leaders are intent on a more permanent insourcing arrangement, others are employing insourcing "as a way to get a fresh start before pursuing a new outsourcing engagement," Rutchik says.

Some IT leaders report big savings bringing outsourcing IT back in-house. But repatriating IT services can be as complex and costly process as outsourcing them in the first place; it's not for every company or function.

For more advice on when to insource, see CIO.com's "Questions to Consider Before Insourcing Outsourced IT"

End-user computing support and network management are most likely to be successfully "backsourced" — or brought back into the corporate IT fold, Rutchik says.

While there's no lack of data on outsourcing deals each quarter—total contract value and number of deals broken down by any number of variable from corporate size to geographic location to IT function—insourcing information is virtually untracked by sourcing consultancies who may or may not be involved in corporate backsourcing decisions. Rutchik says his analysis is based on the collective activity he has seen in the industry rather than any formal research or data.

As the Sun Awakens, NASA Keeps a Wary Eye on Space Weather

NASA Science

June 4, 2010: Earth and space are about to come into contact in a way that's new to human history. To make preparations, authorities in Washington DC are holding a meeting: The Space Weather Enterprise Forum at the National Press Club on June 8th.

Many technologies of the 21st century are vulnerable to solar storms. [more]

Richard Fisher, head of NASA's Heliophysics Division, explains what it's all about:

"The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity. At the same time, our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms. The intersection of these two issues is what we're getting together to discuss."

The National Academy of Sciences framed the problem two years ago in a landmark report entitled "Severe Space Weather Events—Societal and Economic Impacts." It noted how people of the 21st-century rely on high-tech systems for the basics of daily life. Smart power grids, GPS navigation, air travel, financial services and emergency radio communications can all be knocked out by intense solar activity. A century-class solar storm, the Academy warned, could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina.

Much of the damage can be mitigated if managers know a storm is coming. Putting satellites in 'safe mode' and disconnecting transformers can protect these assets from damaging electrical surges. Preventative action, however, requires accurate forecasting—a job that has been assigned to NOAA.

"Space weather forecasting is still in its infancy, but we're making rapid progress," says Thomas Bogdan, director of NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.

Bogdan sees the collaboration between NASA and NOAA as key. "NASA's fleet of heliophysics research spacecraft provides us with up-to-the-minute information about what's happening on the sun. They are an important complement to our own GOES and POES satellites, which focus more on the near-Earth environment."

Click on the image to play a 39 MB movie about space weather and NASA's heliophysics fleet. [more]

Among dozens of NASA spacecraft, he notes three of special significance: STEREO, SDO and ACE.

STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) is a pair of spacecraft stationed on opposite sides of the sun with a combined view of 90% of the stellar surface. In the past, active sunspots could hide out on the sun's farside, invisible from Earth, and then suddenly emerge over the limb spitting flares and CMEs. STEREO makes such surprise attacks impossible.

SDO (the Solar Dynamics Observatory) is the newest addition to NASA's fleet. Just launched in February, it is able to photograph solar active regions with unprecedented spectral, temporal and spatial resolution. Researchers can now study eruptions in exquisite detail, raising hopes that they will learn how flares work and how to predict them. SDO also monitors the sun's extreme UV output, which controls the response of Earth's atmosphere to solar variability.

On April 19, 2010, SDO observed one of the most massive eruptions in years. Earth was not in the line of fire ... this time. [full story]

Bogdan's favorite NASA satellite, however, is an old one: the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) launched in 1997. "Where would we be without it?" he wonders. ACE is a solar wind monitor. It sits upstream between the sun and Earth, detecting solar wind gusts, billion-ton CMEs, and radiation storms as much as 30 minutes before they hit our planet.

"ACE is our best early warning system," says Bogdan. "It allows us to notify utility and satellite operators when a storm is about to hit.”

NASA spacecraft were not originally intended for operational forecasting—"but it turns out that our data have practical economic and civil uses," notes Fisher. "This is a good example of space science supporting modern society."

2010 marks the 4th year in a row that policymakers, researchers, legislators and reporters have gathered in Washington DC to share ideas about space weather. This year, forum organizers plan to sharpen the focus on critical infrastructure protection. The ultimate goal is to improve the nation’s ability to prepare, mitigate, and respond to potentially devastating space weather events.

"I believe we're on the threshold of a new era in which space weather can be as influential in our daily lives as ordinary terrestrial weather." Fisher concludes. "We take this very seriously indeed."

For more information about the meeting, please visit the Space Weather Enterprise Forum home page at http://www.nswp.gov/swef/swef_2010.html.

Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

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The Politics of Cloud Apps: Beware IT Staff Unrest

CIOs and IT managers know they must address concerns like security, compliance, service levels and end-user resistance when moving to cloud-based enterprise software, but they must not overlook a critical area: the feelings of their IT staffers.

CIO.com, by Juan Carlos Perez on Mon, May 17, 2010

IDG News Service — CIOs and IT managers know they must address concerns like security, compliance, service levels and end-user resistance when moving to cloud-based enterprise software, but they must not overlook a critical area: the feelings of their IT staffers.

When companies decide to unplug on-premise servers, ditch the applications housed on them and adopt vendor-hosted software in the cloud, the IT staffers in charge of supporting and maintaining those discarded in-house systems are bound to get nervous.

High-level IT executives may have all the "i"s dotted and all the "t"s crossed in their research and planning process, but if the switch to the cloud causes ill will among their IT troops, the initiative could well be doomed, because buy-in from the IT rank and file is key.

It's the IT department's foot soldiers who will be in charge of training and supporting end users on the new cloud-based software, which often requires adjusting to an interface that is different. These staffers may also have to build links between the new and existing systems, develop customized applications and tools, monitor the cloud vendor's performance and keep tabs on end-user activities.

If IT staffers feel left out of the conversation and used as expendable pawns bound to go the way of the on-premise systems they used to maintain, their aversion to cloud-based software could spread to the organization at large.

"With a move to enterprise cloud applications, IT executives shouldn't assume that it will be any different than other technology adoption in terms of the human, cultural and political factors," said Rebecca Wettemann, a Nucleus Research analyst.

IT staffers raised concerns about job security quickly and directly at advertising and event marketing agency Momentum Worldwide as soon as they were informed the company planned to move its enterprise portal to a cloud, software-as-a-service model offered by enterprise collaboration vendor Socialtext.

"As we talked this through with the IT group, they were very concerned about: 'What are we going to do? If we're not managing as many servers, if we're not supporting infrastructure, where does that leave us?'" said Momentum Global IT Director Doug Pierce.

About eight of the IT department's 28 staffers saw their roles change when Momentum turned off its data center servers. "Our IT employees had a lot of questions. They flat-out asked: 'What does this mean for me and my job?'" Pierce said.

IT leaders better be ready to have an honest and informed conversation with their staffers. The path to success begins with explaining to them clearly the rationale for the move.

Continue Reading

Microsoft Outsources IT to Infosys

The deal calls for Infosys to manage all Microsoft’s IT services worldwide, with a caveat: pay is tied to outcomes.

CIO.com, by: Beth Bacheldor in News, BLOG: Inside IT Outsourcing

I’m sure the Internet’s tongues are a-wagging. Microsoft is outsourcing all its internal IT support to Infosys. You can read about it here.

Under terms of the three-year deal, Infosys will manage the internal IT services for Microsoft worldwide, including IT help desk, desktop management, and infrastructure and application support, from multiple Infosys centers. The deal covers applications, devices, and databases in 450 Microsoft locations across 104 countries.

That’s a big deal, literally and figuratively. No one’s talking financial terms, but clearly it is a lot. (Anyone out there want to wager a guess?)

Anyway, whether you are for or against Microsoft’s decision, whether you think it’s yet another death knell for American businesses and more dramatically the American economy and way of life, Microsoft did do something right.

They tied the cost of the deal to its outcome. The financing is structured in what Infosys refers to as an “outcome-based pricing model,” meaning Infosys’ fees will be based on how successful the gig is, and how much money it manages to save Microsoft.

And it is definitely more than just a straight outsourcing deal, because it’s got all the flavor of a partnership. According to Infosys, the Indian outsourcer will establish a dedicated Service Excellence Office to help Microsoft implement ISO 20000 and ITSM Processes, and provides Infosys with an opportunity to become experts in the implementation and management of the latest Microsoft technologies. Whatever for? So it can then be more equipped to provide outsourcing services to other customers that are using Microsoft.

As Infosys’ Sanjay Jalona, VP and head of manufacturing North America, says in the press release, “This managed services agreement will further strengthen the Infosys – Microsoft partnership, and is a significant milestone in the multi-faceted relationship."

For Microsoft’s part, the software giant expects the deal “will help us enhance how we deliver end-user computing services to our internal employees and partners while leveraging the innovation and investments we make in developing new technologies,” according to Microsoft’s Jim DuBois, GM of Service Management, who is also quoted in Infosys’ press release.

By the way, Infosys had other positive (at least from its perspective) business news to share… it also reported today that revenue for the quarter ended March 31 was US $1.3 billion, up 15.6 percent from the same quarter a year ago, the company said on Tuesday. Net profit grew by 8.7 percent to $349 million (you can read about that here).

IDC: It's Time for Asia-Based CIOs to Make an IT Bet on Economy

IDC, December 21, 2009

IDC has announced the top-ten insights that highlight the key issues Asia/Pacific CIOs need to be aware of in 2010 and IDC's view of the key end-user strategies for the next year and beyond. During the last year or more, companies in Asia have mostly applied "wait-and-see" or "back-burner" IT tactics, but this will no longer work as the economy starts to turn again. In the list of insights, IDC highlights how IT is in the midst of a renaissance and the significance of this renaissance to businesses has been increased by the economic crisis.

"In 2010 companies will have to adopt a sense of urgency and be more proactive with how they will deal with an economic recovery," said Claus Mortensen, Principal for IDC Asia/Pacific Emerging Technologies Research Group. "The economic downturn has taken its toll on all lines of business in the last year and that makes it even more vital to be ready to deal with the next upswing. Companies will have to make strategic bet on when the economy will turn and plan their IT investments accordingly."

At the core of IDC's top-ten CIO insights for 2010 is the concept "dematerialization" of IT. For many companies, on-premises IT may have a serious economic flaw. The on-premises model can potentially hold IT to ransom with fixed assets that are typically underutilized and escalating in cost to support. "Dematerializing" these assets by moving them off the premises and off the books is one such alternative of overcoming this dilemma.

"This process of ‘dematerialization' is already taking place in various forms," said Claus. "We see them in the market as in cloud computing, cloud services, virtual dynamic IT, elastic infrastructure, on-demand architecture, Web-oriented architecture and software plus services--all sharing the same core element of virtualization."

IDC's 2010 top-ten CIO checklist highlights how companies can respond better and more dynamically to future market change. It also provides insights into how the choice of IT architecture can provide business technology a rapid and flexible way to revise, scale, upgrade and change BPM and workflows in minutes rather than in months.

IDC sees the top-ten issues that CIOs should be aware of as:

1. Adopting an IT Recovery Strategy;
2. Cost Reduction and the Dematerialization of IT;
3. Cloud Migration 2010;
4. Protecting Business from Disruptive Innovation and Subsequent Technology Churn;
5. Security and Identity & Access Management;
6. Cloud Multi-Tenancy is About Innovation;
7. Virtual Private and Hybrid Cloud;
8. Business Intelligence as a Service;
9. Social Enterprise Architecture; and
10. Green IT.

For more information, visit www.idc.com.

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Google To Acquire DocVerse; Office War Heats Up

TechCrunch, by Michael Arrington on December 19, 2009

Docverse is something in between Google Docs and Microsoft Office
(screenshot docverse.com)

Google, which is currently on one heck of a spending spree, is closing an acquisition of San Francisco based DocVerse , a service that lets users collaborate around Microsoft Office documents, we’ve heard from a source with knowledge of the deal. The purchase price is supposed to be around $25 million.

Docverse lets users collaborate directly on Microsoft Office documents. Appjet, another recent Google Acquisition, has a related product called EtherPad, although that team is reported to be working with Google Wave and the EtherPad source code has been released to the community.

DocVerse is a product Google is likely to keep. The company was founded by Microsoft veterans Shan Sinha and Alex DeNeui. Sinha drove product strategy for SharePoint and SQL Server, $1.6B and $3.0B products, respectively. DeNui ran Microsoft SQL Server’s web strategy.

With DocVerse Google will have a direct software connection to Microsoft Office, allowing users to collaborate real time on documents. Microsoft is also moving in this direction with Office 10. In effect, Microsoft is countering Google Docs with the new Office. And Google is countering that move with the acquisition of DocVerse. For more on this fight, see Imitation Isn’t Always Flattery: Microsoft Previews Google Apps Killer To Beta Testers.

DocVerse has raised just $1.3 million , in 2008, from Baseline Ventures , Harrison Metal Capital and Naval Ravikant .

The deal has not yet been finalized, says our source, but is past the term sheet stage.

Solar Storm Could Zap Power Grid in 2013: NASA

Data center managers will need to keep an eye on the solar weather, because a geomagnetic storm (now predicted for May 2013) could knock out electric power.

(Solar and Heliospheric Observatory - website)

CIO.com, by Mitch Betts

MON, DECEMBER 07, 2009 — Computerworld — Alarmist news reports earlier this year warned that solar storms coming in 2012 will cripple electric power, GPS equipment and communications systems for months, creating an electronic apocalypse not dreamt of since the days of pre-Y2k hysteria. Those reports then spread throughout a blogosphere already saturated with hype about the Hollywood disaster flick 2012 .

The truth is more complicated.

Solar storms bombard the Earth's magnetic field with bursts of radiation, which can in turn disrupt the power grid and satellites. In fact, "the great geomagnetic storm of March 1989" zapped northeastern Canada's Hydro-Quebec power grid, leaving millions of people without electricity for up to nine hours, according to a National Academy of Sciences report.

In a worst-case scenario, a solar storm could cause $1 trillion to $2 trillion in damage to the world's high-tech infrastructure, the 2008 report said.

But the severity of the next solar storm is unclear, as is the timing.

Several years ago, NASA predicted that the peak in the next cycle of solar weather would occur in 2012 -- a date that coincidentally aligned with other forecasts of doom. The space agency's more recent prediction (made May 29) said the peak for sunspot activity will be in May 2013 -- though additional revisions are expected.

So data center managers need to keep an eye on space weather, just as they keep an eye on terrestrial weather. Check out the National Weather Service's Space Weather Prediction Center at www.swpc.noaa.gov.

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Indonesia Information Technology Report Q4 2009 - New Report Published

New report provides detailed analysis of the Information Technology market

Companiesandmarkets.com and OfficialWire, by Press Office, Published on November 20, 2009

The Indonesian IT market should grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 13% over 2009-2013 despite a deceleration in 2009, with demand in key segments affected by the global economic crisis. In H109, some manufacturing organisations deferred IT procurements, but there was continued spending in the financial sector, which had previously accounted for as much as 30% of total spending.

Demand is expected to pick up in 2010, and return to double-digit territory by 2011.

Government spending is expected to increase this year, and some fundamental drivers, including low computer penetration and growing affordability, should ensure that the market remains in positive growth territory. Indeed, Indonesia is projected to be one of the best regional IT market growth prospects over BMI's five-year forecast period. 2009 has undoubtedly brought more caution, however, with pressure for cutbacks as companies focus more on the bottom line and immediate needs.

By 2013, Indonesia's hardware-dominated IT market is projected to reach a value of US$5.7bn, displaying faster growth than many Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) neighbours. With information and communication technologies (ICT) penetration of only around 20% and development restricted to richer areas such as Java, the market has much latent growth potential. However, the country's uneven development, and resultant digital divide, is a major barrier to faster growth within this potentially huge IT market.

Industry Developments

In H109 a ministerial decree directed that local government offices across Indonesia must adopt open source software (OSS) by 2011. The mayor of Surabaya revealed in July 2009 that his city had launched a pilot project for OSS applications. According to the mayor, all Surabaya municipal offices were now using the software, and civil servants had been given relevant training. The local government hoped that the municipality could save between 20% and 25% of its budget.

E-government is expected to emerge as an area of growing opportunity for IT vendors over the next couple of years. Currently, several ministries at both federal and province level are planning to implement projects. In 2008, a number of projects were launched, including an e-procurement system by the State Ministry for State Enterprise, which covered 25 state-owned enterprises, including state oil and gas company Pertamina and state electricity company Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN).

The government is also rolling out new e-learning initiatives, which could see education's share of the local IT spending rise from its estimated level of around 4%. The current ratio of PCs to students in public schools is around 1:3,200, and the government wants to increase this to 1:20. As there are 53mn students in Indonesia's schools system, this would require at least 2.5mn computers.

Indonesia Information Technology Report Q4 2009 © Business Monitor International Ltd Page 6 Competitive Landscape Multinational vendors dominate the Indonesian brand PC market leaders, with Acer currently boasting the edge in both notebook and desktop segments. In addition to HP and Acer, the rest of the top five comprises of Dell, Lenovo and Zyrex. While locally assembled 'white boxes' still claim up to 60% of the local PC market, a number of local PC and notebooks brands also enjoy increasing success, including Zyrex and Ion.

Acer is thought to have a market share of more than 40% for notebooks. In 2009 the Taiwanese vendor continued to expand its presence across both notebook and desktop segments with more product releases.

Meanwhile, HP has pledged to reclaim top spot in the Indonesian market from Acer at some point in H110 and has been aggressive in launching new notebook and netbook series.

IT services vendors have reported a growing demand in the telecoms, manufacturing and banking sectors.

Oracle has an agreement with local IT solutions provider PT Sigma Cipta Caraka (Sigma) to provide outsourcing services. Meanwhile, e-government is also being eyed by IT services vendors as a potential growth area. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) said that it had targeted the government as a future growth driver in the Indonesian market. Currently, TCS's 15 local clients are principally from sectors such as banking and financial services, telecoms and media.

Hardware

The report forecasts 2009 Indonesia computer hardware spending of around US$2.5bn, up from US$2.4bn last year. Growth decelerated in 2009 and is forecast to be in low single digits this year before ticking up again in 2010. Double-digit growth is expected to resume in 2011, with the market rising to a value of nearly US$4.0bn by 2013.

Early results for 2009 were encouraging, due largely to notebook sales, which surged thanks to the popularity of netbooks; notebook sales grew faster than desktops in H109. In the current environment, the most promising growth driver is perhaps the consumer segment, which accounts for around 25% of computer demand. The main drivers are growing affordability and more credit availability.

Software

For 2009, software sales are projected at US$402mn, up from an estimated US$377mn in 2008, despite the current economic slowdown. There were signs in H109 that many firms planned to increase software spending. One market inhibitor is the continuing software piracy problem, which, by the local government's own figures, loses Indonesian software companies alone more than US$100mn a year.

Over the forecast period, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software continues to be of most interest to the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) market as currently only around 20% of Indonesian SMEs are estimated to make use of IT.

IT Services

Indonesia's IT services market is projected to be worth US$589mn in 2009, recording year-on-year (y-oy) growth of 4% from US$564mn in 2008. Currently, IT services account for only 17% of the country's hardware-centric IT market sales. Hardware deployment services remain the largest Indonesian IT services category, with approximately a 20% share.

In 2009, the banking sector continued to provide opportunities for IT vendors, despite the fallout from the global financial crisis. Banks continued with transformation strategies driven by factors such as new technologies & services and regulatory compliance. However, most opportunities are currently in fundamental service areas such as system integration, support systems, training, professional services, outsourcing and internet services.

E-Readiness

Low telephone line density, high charges and low PC penetration are all significant obstacles to higher internet penetration. However, the picture is not all bad as there are signs of faster growth in user numbers, and recent surveys have shown that, among a very small elite, there is fast adoption, by regional standards, of broadband and a willingness to pay for video conferencing, security and other additional features. The government is encouraging fixed wireless deployments, including WiMAX, to bring the internet to more remote areas.

The government is also rolling out an internet-based National Education Network, which involves 1,000 network points in five clusters nationwide, designed to facilitate the use of the internet in schools. Despite some advances in e-education, constraints remain due to poor infrastructure and lack of public awareness in a country where only 20mn people own fixed-line telephones.

IBM Jumps on the High-Speed Rail to China

Fastcompany, BY Ariel Schwartz, Wed Mar 25, 2009 at 1:50 PM

Oil prices may not be rising quite as dramatically as they were a year ago, but mass transportation--and more specifically, high-speed rail--is still growing in scope and importance. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), three quarters of G-20 countries (including France, China, Germany, Indonesia, and Italy) plan to increase funding for transportation infrastructure. And since the cornerstone of any successful transportation network is reliable computer technology, it's not surprising to hear that IBM is jumping on the high-speed rail train.

The computer giant announced plans today for high-speed rail projects in China, Taiwan, and the Netherlands. IBM will be responsible for managing maintenance, logistics, and IT needs in the China and Taiwan projects, while the Netherlands will rely on the company for resource utilization. It's not a small job.

In the Netherlands, IBM will oversee nearly 5,000 trains passing through a network of 279 stations. The Guangzhou Metro Corporation (GZ Metro) transports 2 million passengers per day across 60 stations, and is investing $1.76 billion this year to expand the network.

All of this is great news for denizens of these three countries, but what about those of us in the United States? When do we get our fancy high-speed rail lines? Relatively soon, if the U.S. government's $8 billion in rail-line stimulus funds goes ahead as planned. And when we do get our high-speed rail, IBM is likely to be a part of it. The company, which manages Amtrak's reservation system, is already angling for a chunk of the stimulus money. In the end, IBM might be known more for its ubiquitous transportation software than its consumer technology.

Related Article:

IBM to Cut 5000 Jobs; DC Area Largely Not Affected

PC Shipments to Decline Through 2009

PCWorld, Zack Stern | Friday, March 06, 2009 1:44 PM PST 

PC shipments will continue to fall through 2009, according to analyst group, IDC. The group estimates that for the full year, numbers will be down 4.5 percent versus 2008, with a whopping 8 percent decline in just the first half of 2009. To which I say, it's about time. 

The PC hardware upgrade cycle has always frustrated me. Yes, new software often drives the requirement for new hardware. That relationship was clear in the beginning of the decade, with every PC transitioning to a video-editing, media-capable system. Games have always driven hardware upgrades. As graphics and AI get more realistic, games naturally demand more computing power. 

But for business use, hardware upgrades often superfluous. Will I need a new system to run the next version of Office? If so, why? Is the spell checker going to add so many new abilities that it'll justify new hardware? 

This forced hardware lifespan extension is a silver lining to economic instability. Business should take back their machines, adding RAM, hard drives, and other updates instead of blindly replacing systems. And you can even use an old PC in other, less-demanding ways; set it up as a Linux server. 

Hopefully hardware companies will react to declining sales. IDC says the netbook market is expanding, projecting twice as many sales this year as last. These light laptops are appealing because they handle basic tasks--email, web, productivity software--on a budget. That might be all your business needs. 

Software companies are critical to extend the hardware life-cycle. They need to keep lowering requirements to hit more systems. Even Microsoft, ever-conscious of driving hardware growth for its partners, might begin releasing less demanding software. Hopefully Windows Server Foundation Edition is a beginning step. 

Even without the economic necessity to hang onto hardware longer, the rise of web applications adds even more life to an old system. Cloud computing can offload heavy system requirements so a PC needs only basic abilities: input devices, an Internet connection, and only limited video and computing power. 

Businesses should think twice before tossing an old PC. Software developers will find more customers by catering to a PC's second act, and businesses will save on hardware costs.

Mac or PC: Making the Big Switch

Our analyst looks back on 25 years of switching between the Mac and the PC. 

By Joel Santo Domingo, PC Magazine, 23 January 2009 

The Mac vs. PC "war" has been going on since many of us were still in grade school. As for me, I've been torn between the two for about that long. But switching back and forth for me was in large part a combination of necessity and desire. Let me explain.

I learned to run PC-DOS, program BASIC, and write Pascal programs on the original IBM PC in 1982. In those days, you got text with a text graphics card and bare-bones color graphics with a CGA adapter, and I thought it was the height of cool that I could play Microsoft Flight Simulator during downtime. I was so smitten with the new tech that when the ill-fated PCjr came out, I almost convinced my parents to get us one. 

Soon after that, my buddy John showed me an article in Creative Computing magazine about an upcoming computer called Macintosh from the company that produced our "ancient" Apple II computers. I didn't think much about it, since Apple was obviously yesterday's news, and the future of the PC was all in IBM's hands. Apple II was a dying, closed-off system, while the IBM PC was the system that both businesses and consumers thought of when they thought of computers. 

Then I got a summer job at a local Computer Depot, and consequently got some hands-on time with the Macintosh. The first-generation 128K Mac was underpowered, to be sure, but the new graphics interface sure beat having to type DOS commands just to get to the word processor and modem terminal program. Call me fickle, but when I "got it," the way was clear: Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) were the wave of the future. For college, I chose a brand-new Apple Macintosh Plus. It had the power the original Mac lacked, and by that time there were enough software packages to make it useful. I mean, MacPaint and MacWrite were cool, but you need to do other things like connect with CompuServe, right? That 

Mac saw me through college, with an 800K floppy disk drive, a 20GB SCSI hard drive, various modems, Apple ImageWriter printer, and 4MB memory upgrades along the way. I upgraded to a Mac Performa 400 while in grad school. But, alas, the real world waited. 

My first job out of college was as an IT dude at a major record label, where I serviced the art department, which, of course, worked with Macs. I got a crash course in Lotus Notes and saw how a mixed PC/Mac environment worked, which wasn't too well in those days. The lines were drawn between the creatives (Macs) and the corporate side (PCs). I still liked the Mac as a platform, but the incompatibilities were maddening. 

You couldn't reliably get a PC-written Word document to read right on a Mac if you'd done any formatting on it. Even keyboards and monitors were on different, noninterchangeable standards (PS2 versus ADB keyboards, VGA versus DB15 monitors, and the like), leading to walled gardens where the Macs played with each other and the PCs did the same. Networking was just starting to bridge the gap, but the gatekeepers (network managers) absolutely hated that work, so it got done only when necessary.

My next job was converting a whole major news organization from an old MicroVAX to Windows NT Server. That was hardly fun, but I finally saw how the real world worked (or so I thought), and I started carrying around a Toshiba Satellite notebook with a Windows NT and 95 dual boot and a dongle that let me use a Motorola StarTAC as a modem. The PC world was simply better connected than the Mac world: The only way I could connect to my office from the road without a landline was with a PC. Aside from the technical compatibility issues, I found that on the whole, Mac users were walled off by the corporation that headed the news organization. Unless you were a powerful household-name "talent" or high-ranking executive, you couldn't get a Mac onto the corporation's computer network. 

At my next job, which was at a graphics-intensive (read: Mac-loving) business, my work and home systems were a "reasonably priced" PowerMac 7300 and a PowerBook 2400c. I kept a few PCs running just so files could be exchanged reliably with the "outside world." It was fun (not!), transferring files on floppy disks between Macs and PCs, then e-mailing them from the PCs over our Mac- and IP-based network. After that company was acquired, I was back to Windows, this time with another Toshiba Satellite Pro and supporting Windows 2000 in the office, and I had to give up my Macs. This migration was less happy than one from the MicroVAX to Windows, since Mac users of the mid-1990s were even more rabid about "their" operating system than they are today. The entire staff rebelled, from the art department to the administrative folk. The in-house Mac database guys and our head of IT went off to start their own companies in the salad days of the dot-com era. There is always turnover in any business, but for many at that company, the Mac-to-PC conversion was even more of a reason to resign than the regime change or the acquisition. I was fine with the change, since PC developers and IT folk are easier to find and hire than Mac folk. For the time being, however, I was (again) a PC guy killing off the local Macs. 

Finally, in 2001, I came to PC Magazine, where at the time Apple coverage was an afterthought. Mac knowledge on staff was limited to the art department, and those guys didn't write articles for the magazine. We had an Apple expert freelancer who wrote about all things Apple from his own walled-off garden. I didn't try to evangelize the staff, even though that was the only way to get Macs into a business at that point. I accepted that I was a PC guy in a PC-based environment. Homebuilt PCs and trusty ThinkPads (first a 600x, then a T40) were my rides of choice. 

Then in 2002 , my wife got me my first iPod. It "worked" with my homebuilt PCs with FireWire cards, but there was something…lacking. I had to reformat the iPod way too often, and iTunes was a resource hog on the PC. I had to get a Mac so that I could have some stability in my music player. I was back to an Aluminum PowerBook G4, first a 12-inch then a 15-inch. The Intel transition of Macs happened in 2005, and now I carry both operating systems everywhere I go: a MacBook Pro that runs both Windows Vista and Mac OS X Leopard. Strangely enough, it's a working synergy: I use the Mac side for some tasks and the Windows side for others. I still have the ThinkPad, but it's relegated to e-mails that don't come through on Microsoft Entourage.

There are no more walled-off gardens: Using Parallels Desktop, I can even drag info back and forth from the Windows side to the Mac side on the MacBook. The future is Web-based, and all the popular Web sites look and act identically in a Firefox browser window. My iPod is now an iPhone, and even that works well with PCMag's Microsoft Exchange–based e-mail. It seems as if every time I switched from the Mac to the PC it was because I was forced to, while every time I switched back it was by choice. It's been a long road with many detours along the way, but in this case the two paths that diverged came back together, and that has made all the difference.

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