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by Joshua Greenbaum, Contributing Editor   | Abstract: | Tepid increases in IT budgets over the next few years will intensify the battle between consultants and software vendors for IT dollars. |
Predictions of anemic growth for IT spending in the coming years mean that software vendors and IT consultants will end up vying for bigger pieces of the proverbial pie. If you're interested in a cynic's-eye view of all the marketing and posturing going on in the software industry today, take a look at these figures, culled from a report called "Stack Wars Intensify," by Merrill Lynch analyst Kash Rangan. The total market spend for enterprise applications is a mere $21 billion-$23 billion, while the total spend for consulting and services is a whopping $550 billion. This casts a glaring light on the push toward enterprise services architectures, composite applications, on demand, software as a service, and a host of other recent industry initiatives. With consulting and services far outstripping applications for the lion's share of IT budgets, it's no wonder that each of these initiatives in some way seeks to position its respective proponents to either retain a large chunk of consulting and services spend (for on demand and software as a service) or shift more of that spend to the applications side (for service architectures and composite applications). [Click to continue] |