Gartner Does Not See IT Bust along with Economy

CIO Magazine reports that at Gartner’s Symposium/ITExpo, analyst Peter Sondergaard predicted that, "In a worst-case scenario, our research indicates an IT spending increase of 2.3 percent in 2009, down from our earlier projection of 5.8 percent…Developed economies, especially the United States and Western Europe, will be the worst affected, but emerging regions will not be immune. Europe will experience negative growth in 2009; the United States and Japan will be flat."

Podcast: Who is #1 in GIS…and Does it Really Matter?

Who’s #1 in GIS? How big is the GIS market? Is the impact of Google affecting the sales of GIS vendors? These questions are asked all the time and the answer is…nobody really knows. But more to the point, does it really matter. With the fragmentation of the geospatial technology market during the last few years, it is difficult to place a number on the total size of the market, despite the best efforts of market research firms. Editor-in-chief Joe Francica lays out a framework for the sectors of the geospatial market and what really needs to be considered when trying to size the market…but as importantly, why the numbers today are irrelevant.
Subscribe to Podcast RSS

Listen Now (to download, right click on the link at left and choose "save target as")

Read the show notes

Missed any podcasts? Want to subscribe via iTunes, Yahoo, etc? Here’s the index with all the info.

Newsflash: “80% per cent of online information includes a geographic element”

PCPro covers Google Developer Day held yesterday worldwide. I found this paragraph interesting.

Other points raised in the keynote were the claim that 80% per cent of online information includes a geographic element, hence the importance of mapping to Google as it bids to organise the world’s data. It is not all explicit mapping data - in terms of latitude and longitude - but involves the location of particular people, objects or services.

Ok, so, now we have ancedotal info that of all data 80% has a geographic compenent and now Chris DiBona, Google’s Open Source Program Manager, speaking at the London event, claims that’s true of online information. Google might be able to back that up; it’d be nice if they did so we can quote it with confidence.

Also, consider, “It is not all explicit mapping data.” Indeed. That’s why when I first met the MetaCarta guys I wondered (and did again when I saw them last week) why Google has not yet acquired the company. (I got mostly smiles as a response.) Now, I have to believe other companies, even Google, are trying to do what MetaCarta does - identify, extract and geocode location in unstructured text. This is pretty specialized stuff from what I understand and is finding a market in petrolem and the public sector. I believe it’s a key component to Google’s goal to “organise the world’s data.” (See my coverage who’s using MetaCarta technology and how here.)

Gartner Releases SWOT Analysis on Outage Management Providers

Gartner has released a market research report on software solution providers to the electric utilities market and specifically for outage management solutions (OMS). The report develops a SWOT (strength, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis for each software company and examines current market conditions that are leading utilities to improve communication and responsiveness in emergency situations. At the top of the list was Oracle Utilities followed closely by GE Energy while Intergraph, Miner and Miner and others were designated as niche players in the market. The report mentions the relationship between GE Energy and Oracle that we reported following the GITA conference this year in which GE announced plans to develop additional solutions directly on the Oracle Platform.