SEO News
Is demand for IT weakening? What do the trends indicate?
Two big computer vendors, Dell and Ingram Micro, have warned of a weakening in IT. Though they did not specifically mention the financial sector, but they did hint of some shock from the sector. They informed that both consumer and corporate end-demand were on the downhill spiral. Tech shares have taken a downturn recently. Dell has lost nearly 10 per cent and Ingram Micro has gone down by about four per cent. Business software maker VMware was down by nine per cent and Micron Technology was a major loser at 12 per cent.
Dell, the second-largest maker of personal computers, has already posted a sharp drop in fiscal second-quarter profit. It said that customers were delaying their purchase decisions. They do not want to block their money. Dell is planning to reduce its headcount and investment in infrastructure.
Ingram Micro is the world’s biggest computer products distributor. It has cut its quarterly profit forecasts. It said that there is no sign of an immediate bounce back after the summer holidays. Incidentally, the US is still a little better than Europe as far as business outlook is concerned.
Clickable software tool
As it stands Google is the king of search advertising market. The search engine giant dominates it thoroughly. Other ad-technology hopefuls along with Yahoo and Microsoft are trying hard to find their feet through experimentation and innovations.
For instance, New York-based Clickable is looking to build a profitable business selling advertisers a simple software tool. This tool will help to supervise and enhance their search-marketing campaigns with Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. Clickable helps advertisers with a self-described iTunes-like application that will guide them on which ads are working and which are not. This will help the advertisers save a lot of time. It also makes their task far easier.
The company was launched in February 2006. It has around 400 customers with a major portion of its expenses and efforts devoted to search ad campaigns. The company intends to grow by creating a single ‘Clickable’ interface for web advertising like social media and display ads. It also intends to create tools for Facebook, Twitter and the like. Advertisers will benefit from a single tool that can trace how ads are performing with other types of media.
Shortage of skilled workforce compounded by lack of interest in UK students for IT
The interest of UK students towards postgraduate teacher-training courses is alarmingly on the wane. The Graduate Teacher Training Registry (GTTR) data for England, Scotland and Wales shows a fall of 18 per cent in applications over the last year, across all subjects. Information technology (IT) registered the second worst decline of the year among secondary school subjects.
As per the GTTR statistics, as of June 2008, only 508 men and 273 women applied for admission to an IT PGCE (postgraduate certificate in education) course in the UK, as against 619 men and 333 women applicants in June 2007. The decline is 15.8 per cent compared to 2007. Applications for Chemistry, Biology and Business studies, which had a bigger decline than IT in the beginning of year, are improving in numbers, but the applications for IT are declining at an alarming rate.
While the number of IT learners is sliding, skills body E-Skills UK is predicting a huge demand of workers for the IT and telecoms industry. It will require 140,000 new skilled staff annually to run its growing business.
Margaret Sambell, head of strategy for e-Skills UK, emphasising the strategic importance of IT for the business and nation, informs that the UK’s IT industry is growing five times faster than the industry average. He considers it essential to inspire young students about the technology for becoming IT professionals of the future. He has appealed to everyone to show serious concern about the waning interest in teaching IT subjects.
Virtualisation Era
The use of virtualisation technology offers companies the alternative to allow employees to select and run their own devices at work. The latest study from analyst house Gartner into employee-owned-notebook programmes showed that more and more people wish to use their own laptops at work.
Gartner claimed that portable-technology users are keen on using particular devices and brands as a fashion statement. Companies will increasingly find it difficult to force their employees to use whatever generic device they give them.
Employees want to use only those devices they are comfortable with. Gartner claimed that any employee-owned-notebook programme needs to have four basic elements:
- A technology solution needed to protect the device along with the network that it is linked to
- Policies required to guide user behaviour
- Third-party maintenance in order to ensure that the device is available
- Some kind of incentive offered to the employees for the responsibility they are willing to take up.
Oracle releases latest version of Retail application suite
Oracle has just released the latest version of its Retail application suite. The company is considering this as one of its most important product launches. The version 13 release has been designed to cater to the demand for an incorporated store-to-web-to-back end system. It also challenges SAP, its archrival in the retail space.
The suite is based on systems devoted to a number of different retail formats. If we are to go by what Dave Boyce, the Oracle Retail VP (product strategy), has to say regarding this new release, it has the capability of considerably improving the company’s bottom line. For example, the suite’s stock management and price optimisation applications can reduce the inventory by almost 10 per cent.
The suite also includes merchandising and demand forecasting. George Lawrie, Forrester Research principal analyst, believes that there are many retailers who still stick to best of breed applications. But the oracle suite can positively impact the trading performance of any retailer opting for the Oracle suite. By opting for it, CFOs will be able to categorise where the quick wins are!