Forrester slashes global IT outlook
301253
Forrester Research said Monday that it is downgrading its 2008 forecast for IT purchasing in both the U.S. and around the world.
683857
Sputtering U.S. economy forces shipper to cut forecast.
639121
(InfoWorld) - Enterprise security decision makers have long been more likely to be swayed by flashy new technologies than by the notion of comprehensive IT restructuring to protect data and other corporate assets, but the situation is evolving rapidly, according to experts participating in Forrester Research's ongoing Security Forum. Kicking off in Atlanta on Sept. 5, the two-day event will bring together a number of influential IT security consultants and researchers along with a range of vendors and end-users to debate pressing issues impacting enterprise businesses today. Whereas such technology meetings, including Forrester's inaugural 2006 security confab, have historically focused more on the acquisition of new technologies or the latest trends in malware, companies are finally beginning to spend less time on investigating individual attacks and defense mechanisms and more closely examining the idea of broad-ranging risk management, show organizers said. "There isn't any hot new technology being pitched at us these days. The process is less about shiny widgets than it is about cohesive programs that combine security and risk management," said Laura Koetzle, the Forrester analyst charged with pulling the event together. "For a long time, the power in the security industry has been in the hands of the technology providers," she said. "But as enterprise security programs are maturing, we're seeing a shift to more coherent strategies that emphasizes specific business needs." Koetzle said that the annual conference will have its fair share of security research reports on emerging threats -- including the latest on messaging security trends from specialists with Postini -- but the analyst highlighted increasing sophistication of the planned discussions, which focus on how companies can work with their customers and business partners to take a more organic approach to security. "Many people growing up in the security discipline have seen a lot over the last few years, and now they're focused on working with business partners both inside and outside of their firms to get a more holistic view of what they want to accomplish, versus blocking viruses and filtering," said Koetzle. "Today, security folks are much less likely to be a guy in a black hat in charge of some esoteric technology whom you never see, it's more about people who coordinate management strategy for companies and ensure that they have the right skills and partners in place," she said. The Forrester analyst contends that security professionals are also no longer forced to fight for attention among the ranks of IT with c-level corporate leaders having woken up to the fact that their companies' operations and reputations can be severely affected by data breaches and security gaffes. Among the scheduled speakers at the show will be representatives from IT vendors including Dell, Texas Instruments, and VeriSign, but Forester has also corralled customers from the financial services and healthcare industries to share their latest experiences. Along with a slew of Forrester's own experts, academic researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Purdue University are also slated to speak at the show. Representing Johns Hopkins will be Dr. Aviel Rubin, director of the school's Information Security Institute and a well-known expert regarding e-voting technologies and many of the issues that loom with the continued adoption of the systems. Rubin, who will also be representing his Baltimore-based consulting firm, Independent Security Evaluators, said that he will explain to show attendees how many existing IT products can still be broken by sophisticated hackers. "It will always be a fact of life that things can be broken and not always by the good guys who will publicize it, so it's important that people examine the way they handle incidents, and it's always good to encourage people to share their stories," Rubin said. However, the researcher said he will also focus on the process improvements that many companies have been able to appreciate as their security efforts have matured. "With the experience they've accrued, some companies, including vendors, are doing a better job of handling vulnerabilities and reporting," he said. "However, it's still useful to look at how things can still be circumvented and look at the measures that are being put in place to stop that sort of activity." Also presenting will be Brian Contos, chief security officer at security management specialists ArcSight and the author of the well-known insider threat tome Enemy at the Water Cooler. Contos agreed that the political battles that IT security pros needed to fight just to get attention and budget from business leaders have waned over the last several years and said that companies are getting far more aggressive in how they police their users and networks. However, that shift has also created new challenges, he said. "People want to monitor almost everything, but by adding more events, they are moving from megabytes of result information to terabytes and also trying to meld IT security efforts with physical security, which will be a long process," Contos said. "The main question we're hearing has become how companies can deal with this flood of data and turn it into something valuable, that's the challenge that many of these enterprise customers face going forward."
271427
Shares of the world&#39;s largest retailer are likely to come under pressure later Monday, after the company threw a shadow over preliminary holiday retail data when it cut its estimates on Saturday.
747554
Business & money: Markets on both sides of the Atlantic take  fright  at data showing weakness in the US and Germany.
104974
World stocks fell sharply on Monday,  battered by fears of U.S. recession and investor disappointment  about a fiscal rescue plan promoted by the U.S. administration.
465078
The FTSE 100 shed 60 points by mid-session trade on Wednesday due to renewed concerns of a global sell-off after a move by China to cool its overheated stock market.
663139
Forrester Research is scaling back its projections for IT spending growth in the first part of 2008, saying spending patterns next year could look a lot like 2007.
68877
Microsoft suffered a big setback this week in Europe. Should other large tech companies be worried?
455001
US stocks were set to fall sharply on Thursday after Cisco's downbeat outlook added to concerns about the outlook for corporate tech spending and Wal-Mart's January sales proved a big disappointment. Jobless claims meanwhile declined less than expected.
330579
Global share prices continue to fall sharply amid fears that a US recession will lead to a global economic slowdown.
591478
More bad news out of Asia weighed on investors Monday.
379330
Forest Laboratories Inc. (FRX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) on Monday lowered its profit outlook for fiscal year 2005, citing the recent approval of generic versions of its antidepressant drug Celexa.
547667
Microsoft&#39;s $1.2 billion acquisition bid for Oslo-based Fast Search and Transfer and a dour report on Amazon marked the new year&#39;s first full trading week in the United States, as technology company share prices continued to slide.The increase in tech share prices that occurred in 2007 -- a banner year for IT company earnings -- appears to be in danger of evaporating, as fears of a general downturn and bad news on the consumer front resound among industry insiders. U.S. Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke&#39;s announcement on Thursday that he would move to cut interest rates to spur growth provided only a temporary halt to a decline in the Nasdaq Composite Index, which closed Friday at 2,440, down 212 points from its close at the end of 2007.This week, investment banking firm Goldman Sachs forecast that the United States will suffer a recession this year. Company analyst David Kostin reduced his recommendation for the amount of technology stocks that investors should keep in their portfolios, from 19 percent to 15 percent.Investors usually like to keep a good percentage of their holdings in tech stocks to hedge their bets. IT companies are truly global, with major U.S. vendors earning about 50 percent of their revenue outside their home countries.But inside the United States, tech companies are getting hit with a double whammy: a predicted weakening of consumer spending because of falling home prices and a resulting crisis in financial markets. Up to 18 percent of U.S. and global tech spending comes from financial companies, according to Forrester Research.Turmoil in the financial markets will likely dampen tech buyouts from private equity investors, according to the 451 Group&#39;s Tech Banking Outlook Survey, released this week. But that might not stop cash-rich technology companies from continuing to shop for deals, it noted.On Tuesday,&#160;Microsoft announced that it would buy enterprise search software company Fast Search And Transfer&#160;for 6.6 billion Norwegian kroner ($1.2 billion). Microsoft said it will integrate Fast Search&#39;s high-end search technologies into its enterprise infrastructure offerings, including SharePoint Server 2007 business productivity platform.Microsoft is locked in a search battle with Google, not just for general Web searches but also for businesses. Fast Search shares got an immediate boost on the Oslo exchange, where its price jumped from 13.35 kroner to close at 18.80 kroner Tuesday. The deal did not keep Microsoft shares from sliding in a generally down market for tech, however.On the consumer side, investors were particularly spooked by comments on Tuesday from AT&amp;T CEO Randall Stephenson, who said the company has had to stop servicing an increasing number of customers who did not pay their bills. The company closed Tuesday at $39.07, down by $1.96 for the day.The news did not bode well for other technology companies that sell to consumers. Citing uncertainty about U.S. consumer spending, American Technology Research Monday put a &quot;sell&quot; rating on Amazon, which then on Tuesday fell by $2.66 to close at $85.22 on the Nasdaq.Even companies that received positive reports from analysts this week were slammed by the general market slide. Lazard Capital Markets started its coverage of virtualization-software darling VMware, which had a successful IPO last month, by issuing a &quot;buy&quot; rating on Tuesday. VMware&#39;s share price jumped by $5.39 to close at $79.89 Wednesday, but slid back to $77.53 by the end of the week.
340007
Intel, the world's leading computer chip maker, slashes its revenue forecasts, triggering a decline in global chip stocks.
403797
Fears of a global slowdown wiped $5.2 trillion off global stock markets in January, analysts at S&P estimate.
421324
(InfoWorld) - Businesses are planning to scale back their IT spending in the third quarter of 2007, according to a survey released Friday by an investment research firm. IT spending usually slumps in May, but now, the percentage of companies planning to increase their spending has fallen to its lowest point in the last four years. The portion of technology and business executives who plan to increase IT spending fell from 34 percent in November to 26 percent in May, according to the report from ChangeWave Research, a division of Phillips Investment Resources. The survey also showed signs of weak spending throughout the second half of 2007 with the biggest slowdown hitting the server market. The portion of technology leaders who said their companies do not plan to buy any servers during the third quarter rose from 31 percent to 35 percent, the survey said. The results came from responses to a poll of 2,029 senior technology and business executives during the week of May 15. The forecast seems to validate Dell's decision, announced Thursday, thatÂ it would lay off 10 percent of its 88,100 employeesÂ over the next 12 months after profit fell slightly for the first quarter. Dell fared the worst of all PC vendors in the survey, which showed that the number of businesses planning to buy Dell desktops and notebooks has fallen to its lowest level in two years. The portion of corporate buyers planning to purchase a Dell desktop over the next quarter fell from 45 percent in August 2005 to 34 percent now. The numbers for laptops were almost the same. In contrast, Hewlett-Packard hit a two-year high in the number of businesses planning to buy both desktops and notebooks. Apple and Lenovo were essentially flat, while Gateway showed an increase in desktop demand. "There are rays of light; HP has shown an extraordinary rise, and there's a little pop in consumer spending. But business IT spending is undeniably slowing down, and it has been for a while, actually," said Paul Carton, director of research at ChangeWave Research. Part of that spending pullback is driven by the normal seasonal business cycle, he said. But in 2007, many companies are cutting their IT spending more than usual as they look for extra funds to meet rising energy costs. The slump in corporate IT spending plans is not the only sign of a softening economy. The analyst group GartnerÂ scaled back its forecast for 2007 global semiconductor revenue growthÂ on Thursday from a 6.4 percent rise over 2006 levels to just 2.5 percent. That soft market could put a big dent in future earnings for processor vendors like Intel andÂ AMD and for memory chip vendors like Samsung.