Ebusiness: the future according to Gartner

Dig out your cool shades and pack your smartest duds. It's time to emulate the Hollywood crowd and head for Cannes again. Yes, the Gartner worldwide caravan is back on the Cote d'Azur this week for its annual Symposium and ITxpo.

As you would expect, this year's symposium is dominated by all things ebusiness. But, as ever, Gartner wants to push the ebusiness debate to the next level as it believes "conditions are perfect for bold moves into the networked economy".

While the stock markets may be going down and investors may be worrying about problems surrounding dotcom companies, Gartner analysts advise "bullish strategies and execution toward the networked economy". The message is: IT management should forge ahead and embrace the new New Economy.

So on what is Gartner basing its optimism? Well, one indicator is its forecasts for the application service provider (ASP) industry, which, it claims, is poised to grow by 2400 percent - from $1bn in 1999 to $25.3bn by 2004.

The market research company believes "the ASP market represents a major computing revolution with the power to dramatically redraw today's IT ecosystem based on the delivery of application services over a network". And you thought ASPs were just a figment of someone else's deranged imagination.

"If you are deploying technology, it doesn't get better than this," says Gartner's chief executive, Michael Fleisher. "Technologists and business executives have an immediate opportunity to increase the revenue and market valuation of their companies."

Gartner Research Fellow Kenneth McGee is even more bullish. "We have perfect conditions for technology breakthroughs. The only variable is the guts and conviction of business leaders in the wake of dotcom hysteria," he says.

The broadband effect
Moreover, ebusiness opportunities will soar as consumers move to broadband internet connections, Gartner predicts. By 2005, it expects consumers to spend 20 times more online when using a high-speed broadband connection than they will do using traditional analogue dial-up modems.

"The impact of consumer broadband access emphasises the significance of worldwide investments in broadband technologies, as evidenced by AT&T's purchase of TCI and Microsoft's $18bn investment in broadband technologies," says Gartner's McGee.

Factors contributing to the broadband multiplier effect include: convenience - broadband gives shoppers immediate access and quicker response times, but also enables suppliers to provide better user interfaces and customised services.

But what about reaching customers through mass media? Yes, we all know you can advertise, but what about interactive TV or video on the internet? "Reaching the mass market is easy, but enabling interactive services for this market is considerably more difficult," says Gartner analyst Paul O'Donovon.

"The technologies being deployed to reach the mass market have a direct effect on the level of the interactive services that operators are able to offer. From the internet to digital text services through the TV, the enabling technologies will determine the growth of ebusiness revenue streams that operators are looking for," he adds.

But selling online also requires a quality catalogue. Gartner research director Mark Nicolett plans to offer advice on how you can manage your catalogue content to become more competitive while avoiding operational problems. He will look at which vendors provide the most effective catalogue management products, and provide tips on how to develop an effective catalogue management strategy.

The nuts and bolts
As ever, the symposium will balance what, for many IT managers, will be 'blue sky' predictions with practical advice. While this year, there appears to be fewer 'vendor-specific' programmes, there are still research streams on nuts and bolts subjects such as managing storage networks and Windows 2000 migration.

Keynote speakers include Paul Stodden, chief executive of Fujitsu Siemens. He will talk about how he took Siemens IT Services, one of Germany's largest managed service providers, and restructured it to become a global joint venture between the largest IT companies in Japan and Germany.

A panel composed of members of different industry groups, including Tesco's divisional director Barry Knichel, Lockheed Martin's vice-president of corporate strategy, Arthur Johnson, and Pirelli Tyres' senior vice-president Guglielmo Fiocchi, will also discuss business to business issues, in particular, how companies can exploit the internet to gain greater flexibility, economies of scale and competitive edge by creating better relationships with their customers and partners.

Over the course of the symposium, there will be some 130 sessions in nine parallel streams - a veritable IT gab-fest. But remember this: if you're going to Cannes or have already gone, it may all get a bit much. So leave some space in your conference diary to spend some quality time on the beach. It's as good a place as any to contemplate the brave new world.

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