Will SaaS and Cloud kill the appliance market in Australia?
Next G Business Applications: game on IBM and Oracle, and so long HP

Welcome to the final edition of Longview for 2009. What a year it has been. For starters much of what we outlined back in January in the 2009 trends edition has indeed come to pass. Zero-cost infrastructure is well entrenched as a consumer purchasing model, major technology vendors continued to flood the cloud putting increasing pressure on local hosting and channel partner companies, ICT recruitment took a pounding, and green technology slipped from the heights of hyped adoption. What will the New Year bring?

Well as a primer for next year we are really excited about this last edition for the year. It includes two excellent pieces of industry commentary that leave tantalising questions as to the potential changes and challenges that await the industry in 2010 as it wakes from the economic slumber of 2009. If you only read two articles this year then these are the ones to comprehend as they explore the impact of onpremise appliances and our take on the mega-vendor showdown between IBM and Oracle. What will both these tremendous inflection points in our industry mean for your organisation? Read the articles now and then see follow-up interviews on LTV in 2010.

Until then we wish everyone a merry and safe Christmas and look forward to seeing you in the market, at various end-of-year parties, or next year in our February 2010 Trends Edition of Longview. See you then and thanks for another wonderful year. Read more...