Technology is going to have to deliver innovation and
greater efficiency in the future if it wants to secure
salesas users come out of the recession with budgets
down.
According to
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, budgets across customers are
generally down by 10% and the pressure to deliver innovation
twinned with efficiency is not going to ease.
"Consumers want technology to be powerful and easy to use and
business owners want it to be more capable and more
efficient," Steve Ballmer added. "Efficiency and cost are more on
people's minds than I can ever remember, even in the doct.com-bust
era."
In an e-mail that Ballmer sent out last week, he outlined what
he called
"the
new normal". In his speech to customers today, entitled
"
the new efficiency", he said consumers would demand technology
"that ran the IT factory well".
Ballmer
said technology - and he included
Windows 7 and virtualisation in the list - could free-up
spending, which would appeal to users.
Martin Saunders, marketing director at
managed
services specialist clara.net, said the situation in the market
was improving, but customers wanted SLAs and more support with the
day-to-day running of their IT departments.
"We did see a dip in spending, with projects being out on hold,
but the projects are coming back. They were never cancelled, just
put on hold," Saunders said.