eWeek - December 7, 2009

“As sales of PCs and other IT infrastructure equipment dried up, so too did sales of Microsoft products tied to that hardware,” said Kolakowski. “Within that context, the launch of

Windows 7 and other new products is of particular importance to Microsoft because it represents a chance for them to potentially reverse the decline and impel both businesses and consumers into an

IT tech refresh.”

Mobile revolution

The budget squeeze hasn’t killed everything. Another bright spot this year has been sales of netbooks and smartphones.

“It’s mobile PCs driving whatever growth there is, because desktop sales are by all accounts shriveling,” said e WEEK Senior Writer Michelle Maisto.

A big player in the growth of mobile computing is the smart-phone, Maisto said, and key to that market are Google’s Android, the iPhone and the many “iPhone killers,” as well as the applications for those devices.

“The playing field is jammed with phones that can surf the Web, have multiple applications open at once, connect users to applications stores, and sync contacts and calendars, in addition to supporting e-mail, IM and SMS,” Maisto said.

Security concerns

The massive growth of smart-
phones has led to growth in security
concerns, but there were other threats
to be worried about in 2009, as well.
e WEEK Staff Writer Brian Prince
noted the emergence of the first
iPhone worms, as well as new threats
from malware being delivered using
social networks.

Malware in general was a growth area in 2009.

“The three big botnets—Z-bot, Pushdo and Bredo—are hitting us pretty hard right now,” said Fred

Touchette, senior
security analyst at
AppRiver. “These are
professionals on the
other end writing these
pieces of malware.”
Both Prince and
Touchette said that
the emergence of the
Conficker worm was a
huge security event this
year because of the ease
with which it spread.
Fortunately, the worm
hasn’t as yet carried a
destructive payload.

With all that said, the security industry remained relatively unscathed during the down times this year.

“The security industry was impacted by shrinking budgets in 2009,” Prince said. “But anecdotal evidence suggests it was not affected to the same extent as other areas of IT. This is probably because we live in an age of data breaches and high-profile compromises.”

The feds take notice

The government notably stepped into several technology areas this year.

Congress, as well as the Federal Communications Commission, expressed concern about the high cost of early cell phone contract termination and held hearings on the subject. Most wireless companies responded with plans to phase out such termination fees. Verizon Wireless, however, first announced such a drop, then a few months later announced that it would be doubling those fees, attracting outrage from some in Congress.

Also attracting attention from the federal government were a number of mergers in the technology industry.

Hewlett-Packard, for example, has
announced that it wants to buy 3Com,
probably as a result of the Cisco uni-
fied communications initiative. And,
earlier this year, Oracle acquired Sun,
a move that is still under scrutiny.
“In our industry, a lot is about
consolidation,” said Paul McMillan,
director of UC technical vision and
strategy for Siemens. “We started
consolidation with Avaya getting
bought and Nortel going on the
block,” he said. “The battle lines are
being drawn up between larger play-
ers. I see a trend of companies that
have an application focus partnering
with companies that have a commu-
nications platform or UC function.”
Fortunately, the worst may be over.
Stock prices are rising, which gives
companies additional capital with
which to start buying IT products
again. This will hopefully lead to a rise
in IT employment, although, in some
areas, it’s been growing all along.
Dion Lim, president and CEO of
SimplyHired.com, a job search engine
that also tracks employment trends,
said some areas in IT have already
shown significant growth in parallel
with their growth in the market. These
include green tech, cloud computing
and virtualization. For example, he
said, “cloud computing went from
10,000 people to 18,000 people.”

Lim added that the trend in hiring is an indication that new technologies will lead the way to job growth as the recession eases. “New software requires better hardware. Something like the iPhone generates an entirely new genre of jobs,” he said. “We’re seeing new jobs that companies want to fill.” ´