Overall corporate IT expenditure among US-based firms
will grow between 4% and 5% during 2005, according to investment
analyst Goldman Sachs.
This growth compares with the sub-3% growth seen in 2004, said
Goldman Sachs, which was affected by uncertainty caused by the war
in Iraq, oil prices, the US election, and factors such as the
Sarbanes-Oxley corporate governance rules.
Goldman Sachs questioned 100 chief information officers at
Fortune 1,000 companies to arrive at its predictions. Although the
predicted growth was up on 2004, Goldman Sachs noted that this was
barely higher than average GDP growth.
The sample reported that HP, Dell and IBM were set to gain in
the enterprise server market, with Sun losing sales. On PCs, Dell
and HP were set to grow with IBM losing market share. On Storage,
Network Appliance and EMC were expected to gain market share with
Sun slipping back.
However, Sun has had success with its new Solaris operating
system, Solaris 10, which Goldman Sachs said, "has captured the
attention of its installed base but has only begun to show a slight
hint of interest beyond it".
Although it will not be officially released until the end of
January, the next version of Sun’s operating system, Solaris 10, is
under evaluation or already in the planning stages for
implementation among more than 80% of Sun’s existing customers, the
survey found.
This suggests that Solaris 10 has "enabled Sun to re-engage its
customers, many of whom have been shifting from Sun’s platform to
Linux", the analysts said.