IDC FUTURESCAN
is a collection of metrics of IT industry leading indicators and customer
surveys. Values are based on expectations of future growth, with a value
of 1000 equating to zero growth and each 10 points representing roughly
1% of expected growth.
These are external indicators only and don't represent IDC's
forecast for the market, which is based on many more inputs and which
relies on strict methodologies and market definitions.
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This Month's Results
Fifth month of recovery, if you don't count last year's blip. The worries out of Wall Street and Washington DC these days are Greece, not us. And long term debt, which is a lot better than worrying about Armageddon, which is where we were last year.
As we said last month, word from the field - meaning customers and IDC analysts - is that IT shipments are picking up. Hardware refresh money is starting to be spent, as customers realize the penalty for NOT upgrading or replenishing infrastructure.
At the moment, IDC's forecast for U.S. IT spending growth in the next 12 months is 2.9%, between the indicators.
Perhaps things will turn out better than we think and we will have to raise the forecast again. Just like we lowered it as the economic forecasts shrank last year.
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History
Ah, now here's a trend we like to see. All we had to do was take off all the data from before last March that depicted the downward once-thought-to-be-death spiral of the recession.
With the macroeconomic forecasts relatively stable and heading up, we would expect the optimism in the user community to pick up as the year goes on.
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Buyer Intent
History: |
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This is the fifth month the buyer indicator has been above zero growth (1000). We are officially in recovery.
Hot areas remain security and collaboration solutions, especially in the government sector. Also storage management and anything to do with the health care industry.
Of course it all goes sector by sector, initiative by initiative. The hottest individual market these days is security solutions in the government sector. Other areas are storage management and anything to do with the health care industry.
Mobile smart phones will surge, as will anything to do with virtualization and enterprise social networking.
There may be trouble brewing in the credit area, however - as a lot of credit lines used by medium and small businesses to finance their IT will be rolled over this year. If capital is even available then, the price will go up.
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Market
Indicators History |
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Let's hear it for Wall Street. Both the analysts forecasting better than 6% revenue growth for IT vendors in the next 12 months and investors, who keep nudging the S&P 500 up. They are doing what needs to be done to bring up our indicators.
Also the economic forecasters, who keep edging up the GDP and profit growth forecasts for the U.S. to 3.1% and 15.2% respectively for 2010.
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The Buyer Intent metric is based on surveys of 400-500
U.S. CIOs and line-of-business executives on their expectations
for IT spending growth during the next 12 months. Results
are carefully weighted to be representative of the U.S.
market. These surveys are conducted monthly by the Quantitative
Research Group (QRG) within IDC's Global Research Organization.
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The Market Indicator metric combines inputs from economic
and IT industry supply-side indicators including:
- The stock market (S&P 500 over last 6 months)
- Current interest rates
- The current GDP forecast for the next 12 months
- The current US corporate profit forecast (next 12 months)
- The IDC IT Revenue Forecaster (% revenue growth expected
next 2 quarters)
IDC combines and weights the inputs using information
developed in its Leading IT Indicators program on the
relationship of macroeconomic trends to IT spending.
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IDC FUTURESCAN is a collection of metrics of IT industry leading indicators
and customer surveys. Values are based on expectations of future
growth, with a value of 1000 equating to zero growth and each
10 points representing roughly 1% of expected growth.
These are external indicators only and don't represent
IDC's forecast for the market, which is based on many
more inputs and which relies on strict methodologies and market
definitions.
For more information about any of IDC's Black Books or other
GRO products, please contact Amie White at awhite@idc.com
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