10 Glimmers Of Hope In The IT Industry Wreckage

GLIMMER OF HOPE: Windows 7 is coming in October, and from all accounts, it's an OS that's capable of banishing the bad memories of Windows Vista into the mists of history. Windows 7 simply works the way Vista was supposed to, and that will help remove some of the tarnish that had accumulated around the Windows brand.





For many Microsoft solution providers and customers, the Vista experience has been compared to brain surgery without anesthesia. With Windows 7 coming in October, Microsoft is preparing to put Vista out to pasture, and solution providers once again will be able to recommend a version of Windows that doesn't induce fits of rage within their customer bases.

GLIMMER OF HOPE: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act includes about $19 billion in incentives for doctors and hospitals to implement electronic medical records (EMR).





Solution providers that develop an EMR strategy stand to benefit from a mountain of lucrative opportunities over the next five years, according to Michael Cocanower, president of Phoenix-based Microsoft solution provider ITSynergy.





"Doctors are getting $44,000 per provider -- and more under certain circumstances -- to implement an EMR system. That means they are essentially getting the software, hardware and services for free in most cases -- even if they get all brand-new hardware," Cocanower said.

GLIMMER OF HOPE: Companies have talked about the promise of green IT initiatives for years, but the subject is receiving renewed attention from firms looking to reassess their spending on power in the data center and beyond.





In the U.S., some $71 billion in federal stimulus funds are being directed toward energy and environmental projects, including smart power grids and electronic medical records. Although that money won't arrive immediately, it's an attractive carrot for solution providers to focus on and offers plenty of motivation for making the business adjustments necessary to take advantage of these funds.

GLIMMER OF HOPE: IP videoconferencing is another technology that's been talked about for years as a way to reduce travel budgets, but until recently hadn't made major inroads. Ever since the economy tanked, however, companies have finally started deploying IP-videoconferencing solutions.







Growing interest in IP videoconferencing provides a boost to the channel, and it also helps improve employee morale. Business travelers are well acquainted with the manifold hassles associated with airport security, and they'd be the first to say that IP videoconferencing isn't just an interesting and useful technology -- it's also helpful from a mental health perspective.

GLIMMER OF HOPE: The success of Apple's App Store has spawned numerous imitators and serves as an example of how third-party developers can transform an interesting idea into a transcendental one. App stores have helped cement the viability of mobile platforms and give developers incentive to keep extending the functionality of smartphones into new areas.





Regardless of whether you're in the mobile business, the future looks pretty bright for how app stores will change the face of mobile computing, and this kind of broad innovation will eventually touch all types of businesses.

GLIMMER OF HOPE: Virtualization as it pertains to computing is a revolution that's just getting under way, bringing with it the glittering promise of server consolidation and lower energy costs.







Many solution providers with virtualization expertise are finding that the recession is driving more business their way because of the myriad long-term benefits it offers. Virtualization is good for business and for the environment, and that's the kind of technology that doesn't come around often.

GLIMMER OF HOPE: Whether or not you believe in global warming, there are signs that humankind is on its way to making the Earth uninhabitable. Even if that doesn't happen, the sun is going to explode eventually, vaporizing most of the solar system along with it. That's why it's important to plan ahead.







If the goal of IT vendors is to get their technology in front of the largest addressable market, the universe would seem a perfect place to target this expansion. Space exploration hasn't yet yielded any great technological breakthroughs, but Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have now gone beyond the limits of the solar system and into interstellar space, so anything's possible.

GLIMMER OF HOPE: Researchers at Elte University in Budapest, Hungary, are developing software that analyzes the sound of a dog's barking and translates that into language that's understandable to humans. The idea is to identify key canine emotional reactions and give humans insight into the way dogs think.







It may seem irrelevant to IT, but in an increasingly uncertain world, any technology that brings humans closer to man's best friend has to be worth developing.

GLIMMER OF HOPE: The growing popularity of e-books not only bodes well for television-saturated cultures, it also could give a boost to the struggling semiconductor industry and revolutionize the textbook industry. Some feel e-books also could help bring the dying newspaper business back to life.







One of the side effects of the Internet has been unprecedented levels of attention deficit disorder within the Web news-reading populace. Any technology that restores books as an easily accessible, portable form of knowledge transfer has to be seen as beneficial to society as a whole.

GLIMMER OF HOPE: Given the vast number of companies that skipped Windows Vista to wait for Windows 7, there's an inordinate amount of pent-up demand for Microsoft's new operating system.





When it arrives in October, Windows 7 will create a healthy stream of opportunities for VARs that deliver deployment and implementation services. And Windows Server 2008 R2 brings Microsoft up to speed with the rest of the virtualization market, so there also will be chances for solution providers to tap into this budding segment of the industry.





For the channel, Windows 7 represents another type of "green IT" -- a kind that helps them make money.