10 Predictions For 2008 From VARBusiness 500 Execs

ACCENTURE, No. 2 on the 2007 VARBusiness 500

"Innovation processes within enterprises are shifting from their centralized R&D origins. In many far-sighted organizations, open-innovation models now permit transfer of new product and process concepts both from and to the organization. But Accenture Labs sees a new rush of innovation about to emerge -- an upsurge that we are calling 'everyman innovation' because it will result from unstructured collaboration enabled by social networks.

"Virtualization is advancing much more slowly than anticipated. The concept of using software to pool hardware resources and reallocate them as needed is further complicated by Google's moves to become a big infrastructure player. Accenture Labs sees cloud computing as a practical direction for infrastructure development through 2010 -- one that will avoid virtualization's limitations, but without requiring the radical rework needed with grid computing."

-- Kishore Swaminathan, Accenture chief scientist

COGNIZANT, No. 49 on the 2007 VARBusiness 500

"The three key trends we are likely to see are: industries beyond financial services taking to global sourcing strategically, large European companies across industries adopting global sourcing strategically, and newer services like knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) including high-end areas such as business analytics, IT infrastructure services, and business-technology consulting being espoused by global corporations in an aggressive fashion.

"Newer industries such as pharmaceutical, media and entertainment, and travel and transportation are likely to see significant traction because of cost rationalization, time-to-market, business transformation and innovation pressures. Likewise, with KPO and IT infrastructure services likely to gain significant traction, at their intersection, we could see increased 'business services' being delivered in an innovative fashion."

-- Malcolm Frank, Cognizant senior vice president, strategy and marketing

CXTEC, No. 195 on the 2007 VARBusiness 500

"Overall, we are predicting increased spending in areas such as wireless and security, as well as in the data center environment, with vertical markets -- Healthcare, Government, and Education -- increasing dramatically. However, some of our clients are taking a 'wait-and-see' approach to larger projects such as Voice over Internet Protocol, and a number of customers are focusing on maintaining the longevity of their technology investments -- looking for legacy support and considering refurbished options such as Cisco Certified Refurbished. This approach enables them to maintain current core infrastructures in order to shift budget to more advanced technologies when required."

-- Frank Kobuszewski, CXtec vice president, technology solutions group

DIMENSION DATA, No. 30 on the 2007 VARBusiness 500

"Cisco owns the data network and Microsoft owns the desktop. We envision customers integrating those two powerhouses; leveraging Cisco for the converged network and Microsoft for the application integration. We're also seeing the reintroduction of video conferencing through IPT, web conferencing and TelePresence.

"Forrester and Gartner are saying that over the next two years proactive business will begin rolling out unified communications infrastructures. Dimension Data believes small- and medium-sized businesses will turn to unified communications to help compete with larger companies. Our customers are looking for a methodology and the tools to put a Unified Communications strategy into effect. The ability to locate an individual when you need them, in real-time, is a motivator. And it's a powerful feature to be able to use Microsoft as a Presence agent and have your call control/conferencing through Cisco."

-- Mitchell Hershkowitz, Dimension Data North America converged communications practice manager

FISERV, No. 20 on the 2007 VARBusiness 500

"One of the largest areas where we see growth is electronic bill payment and Internet banking. We think that customer adoption of this technology will continue to increase. Our latest acquisition, CheckFree makes customers' lives easier, and allows more convenient times, places and access to banking. Here are some of the other top services we see as trends:

-- Jim Sizemore, Fiserv ITI senior vice president and CIO

GTSI, No. 62 on the 2007 VARBusiness 500

"For those of us working with government customers, 2008 will be a challenging year as we try to help our customers replace aging infrastructures, expensive footprints, and for those customers whose 2008 budgets are still not in place. The Congress will continue to fund the war in Iraq while many civilian agencies operate on continuing resolutions that fund them month-to-month rather than on an annual basis. State and Local agencies will face similar budget challenges with the property tax at the State, County and Municipality level. "We see the effect of funding the war on our entire economy, for both the public and private sectors. Many of our customers can't wait until the budget is passed to upgrade, replace or refresh their infrastructures; we have developed a unique Technology Lifecycle Management approach addressing our customers' needs that includes architecting an enterprise infrastructure solution and provides both professional and financial services."

-- Scott Friedlander, GTSI president and COO

TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES, No. 32 on the 2007 VARBusiness 500

"With annual IT budgets rising five to seven percent, there has been a rapid pace of technology evolution. We're seeing clear emerging trends and opportunities for the year to come. Outsourcing is increasing its reach across verticals and geographies. Although the financial services industry continues to remain one of the largest spenders on IT, other industries including retail, pharmacy, telecom and even the utilities sector are seeing traction in their use of IT services.

"Secondly, India's transition to a KPO destination is imminent. Over the past five years alone, more than 100 IT and science-based firms have located R&D labs in India TCS is committing large sums of money for R&D over the next 10-15 years, in order to create an ecosystem of start ups and mature companies with intellectual property orientation.

"Last, but not least, Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM) is likely to be the next big wave in outsourcing and expected to touch $8.8 billion of work for Indian IT companies by 2010."

-- N. Chandrasekaran, Tata Consultancy Services COO and executive director

THE PLANET, No. 216 on the 2007 VARBusiness 500

"Our 2008 plans call for an extension to our recently announced reseller and channel strategy, with new programs and incentives for this customer set.

"With the requirement for ubiquitous connectivity -- whether it's in branch offices or with an increasingly mobile workforce -- we believe hosted IT infrastructure will become even more pervasive in 2008. The growing Software as a Service (SaaS) model introduces new threats to VARs and resellers, and hosting provides an alternative to these channels to service their customers' needs while protecting their business. We expect VARs and resellers to respond this threat by making a case to customers that a hosted model delivers all the benefits they require, with uniquely tailored solutions for the diverse requirements of their customers.

"With the growth of the dedicated hosting business, we see significant increased business from our top-tier customers who are looking to expand their hosting platform footprints."

-- Urvish Vashi, The Planet director of product management

VALTECH, No. 197 on the 2007 VARBusiness 500

"Valtech has recently noticed a trend in the buying psychology among clients and prospects who are beginning to show signs of caution and are becoming more deliberate in their buying decisions. We think it's clear that 2008 will be a more challenging year from an overall IT budget perspective. However, we also see the Internet spawning another wave of innovation and technologies that are catalyzing completely new online opportunities for several industry sectors (Online Media, Travel, Financial Services, and others).

"Those opportunities mean that there will still be very attractive growth opportunities during 2008, but to capture the growth areas will require IT firms to be more diligent than ever on enabling focused and innovative solutions that appeal to very specific industry challenges and opportunities. Valtech focused heavily during 2007 on launching several new and very disruptive innovations around a radically different software development outsourcing model we call Software OnDemand and as a result we are expecting growth in 2008 to be robust (more than 30 percent), even if the overall economy remains flat during the year."

-- Brad Murphy, Valtech, SVP, Business Development

VERIZON, No. 23 on the 2007 VARBusiness 500

"As companies seek to maximize the efficient use of their infrastructure, achieve their green objectives and strengthen security, no technology holds more promise than virtualization and on-demand computing. Multiple dedicated servers -- which may be underutilized and consume space, power and cooling in the data center -- can now be replaced with virtual servers sharing network-based resources such as common storage.

"Businesses will continue to adopt this model because it helps them achieve data center consolidation and further reduce expenses. It also allows businesses to respond quickly to changing business needs and paves the way for 'computing as a service' where the sharing of the resources are managed in the service provider's network."

-- Nancy Gofus, Verizon Business senior vice president and chief marketing officer