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This is an excerpt of the RBC Dain Rauscher's Global Panel of 11,000 leading-edge IT adopters within 7,500 companies:

Shows Disruptive Threats To Technology Sectors

 

[Companies will] continue purchasing "disruptive" technologies for Q4 2007 / Q1 2008. The survey suggests that traction for disruptive technologies continues to accelerate in certain technology sectors with implications for emerging and incumbent players.

 

Sectors Facing Highest Disruption Q4: Software, Wireless, Corporate Networking. Our survey shows the sectors facing the highest impact (market share changes) from disruption to be Enterprise Software, Wireless and Corporate Networking.

 

Winners/Losers

 

Companies poised to win based on these trends both in sector growth and vendor share include:

• SaaS - TLEO, OMTR; Software – MSFT; PC – ABT.T, MSFT
• Wireless – RIMM, SWIR
• IT Services & Outsourcing – CCOI, GIB.A, INAP, NAVI, TTEC, SAPE, SDXC
• Corporate Networking – CSCO, FDRY, ARUN, RIMM.

 

Companies poised to lose market share are:

• SaaS - ULTI; Wireless – PALM
• IT Services & Outsourcing – PER, EDS.

 

Highlights

Software – Consolidation Favoring Dominant Players. 24% of respondents indicate increased spending in the next 90 days on Microsoft, spread uniformly across all company sizes. The bigger the customer, the greater the trend, with 23% / 25% of larger enterprises (1000+ employees) indicating increased spending on Oracle / SAP, respectively.

 

Barriers to On-demand Software Dissipating. 38% of respondents indicated no major concerns with adoption of SaaS (Software as a Service), up from 26% in the prior quarter. TCO (total cost of ownership) remains the biggest concern, while data security and legacy system integration concerns may be easing.

 

Blackberry Momentum Healthy, Strong Demand for Wireless. 19% of respondents expect increased Blackberry spending in the next 90 days, showing no slowdown in momentum despite financial services sector woes. 29% indicated increased spending in next 90 days on wireless cards and laptops with embedded wireless modems.

 

IT Services Spending Seen Steady in Q4 and 2008, with 17% of respondents (net) indicating increased IT services spending 2008, in line with the prior quarter. A majority of respondents indicate that 6-10% of budgets are discretionary and are at risk at times of economic downturns (in line with expectations). Additionally, only 22% of respondents had 2008 budgets finalized/approved.

 

Bandwidth Increase Preferred over Co-location/Hosting by 25% of respondents compared to 10% previously, possibly aided by a marked decrease in pricing seen for Internet bandwidth. Physical security and pricing remain the leading criteria when choosing colocation vendors.

 

Wireless LAN Adoption Continues to Ramp Up; 10-Gigabit Ethernet Momentum Building. 65% of respondents are currently running a WLAN (Wireless LAN), up from 57% in the prior quarter, reaffirming a faster-than-expected ramp up. 10-GigE traction saw a sharp increase in the fourth quarter (28% of respondents compared to 14% in the previous quarter), driven by a desire for lower cost data network communication.

 

Emerging Network Protocol Adoption in Early Stages. Mainstream enterprise adoption of emerging network protocols appears to be in early stages. In our view, technologies should be evaluated in the near-term on an application-specific basis, while contemplating the long-term merits of a multi-protocol unified fabric topology.