B2B Marketplaces Booming
According to a recent Delphi Group study, an overwhelming 50 percent of online transactions will flow through B2B marketplaces in 2003. According to Tom Koulopoulos, Delphi’s president, “While the disintermediating effect of the Web has resulted in far greater velocity of online activity between customers and partners, the real story is the formation and evolution of B2B marketplaces.” There are currently 300 active B2B marketplaces, with thousands more being formed.
How Are We Doing?
The Yankee Group’s E-Sourcing Strategies Unit recently reported that out of 100 IT and business managers polled, one-third said that early deployment of e-business initiatives has given their organizations “competitive advantage.” Thirty-seven percent claimed that they were merely keeping pace with industry peers rather than surpassing them. It seems that part of the struggle can be attributed to a lack of focus, as not all the executives polled work at companies with clear e-business strategies. A fact that speaks to the hopes of future success, one out of five companies polled said that they plan to spend 10 to 20 percent of their IT budgets on outsourcing services this year alone.
Good News for JavaBeans
Giga Information Group predicts the application server market will reach $1.64 billion in 2000 and $9 billion by 2003, from $585 million in 1999. Additionally, dramatic market segmentation will accompany the spectacular growth, with potentially as few as two or three companies each claiming 20 percent or more of the market and several smaller vendors specializing in market niches claiming less than 10 percent each.
According to Mike Gilpin, a Giga vice president, “We believe that the Enterprise JavaBeans component model and associated Java 2 Enterprise Edition standards will dominate the application server market and drive a potential market growth rate of almost 180 percent year-to-year.”
The New CIO
It seems the CIO’s role has evolved from a distinct profile into four separate “genuses,” according to The Gartner Group: the strategist, who shapes top-level busines needs and expectations; the CTO, who makes sure that technology services are cost-effective; the technology opportunist, who finds new business opportunities, and the departmental CIO, who directs IT for a business unit within a larger company. According to Marianne Broadbent, the Gartner VP who wrote the report, external factors such as customer demand, new business models, and skill shortages all contribute to the role a CIO needs to take in the future.
All Aboard the Internet!
According to a recent Forrester Research study, more than one-half of all U.S. households will be online by 2001, more than one-third will have purchased online, and one in 10 will have banked or invested online. Patrick Callinan, an analyst at Forrester, said that “2000 will be remembered as the year that important psychological thresholds were crossed and technologies once considered cutting-edge entered the mainstream—making the PC as common as the stereo system.” Consumers are doing and spending more online these days, and their Internet use is branching out beyond e-commerce, with one in 10 online U.S. households trading stocks and slightly more than that paying bills over the Internet.
Stress, Anyone?
According to a recent RHI Consulting survey, today’s IT professionals are citing increased workloads and office politics as the two top causes of workplace stress, with 55 and 24 percent of the responses, respectively, in a poll of 1,400 CIOs. Work-life balance issues came third, with 12 percent of the responses. Greg Scileppi, RHI Consulting’s executive director, says, “With employment at record highs and the pace of technological advancements continuing to escalate, workloads on already understaffed IT staffs are rising exponentially.” Scileppi encourages employers to take steps to recognize, measure, and alleviate employee stress to keep morale high and prevent turnover.
