Gartner, There are Times….

Looking at the news feeds today I ran across this little ditty compliments of Tom’s Hardware, from Gartner –

Market research firm advised its clients not to wait until a recession is officially announced to cut their spending. Instead, “action is required” now, the company said, as “economic factors in the United States have deteriorated” to justify the preparation of cost cutting.

“Last October we published research recommending that organizations should prepare two IT budgets for 2008, the first reflecting guidance already provided by senior decision makers and a second ‘backup’ budget assuming the need to cut costs in response to the arrival of a business slowdown,” said Ken McGee, vice-president and Gartner Fellow. “Since that time the factors we based the research on - such as GDP growth projections and expert predictions for the likelihood of a recession - have worsened to a degree that convinces us it is now time for clients to prepare for cutting IT costs.”

Don’t have the source link, sorry. But we had this advise from the same Gartner in 2005 –

Gartner urges caution before downloading Firefox The Web browser may not be an unstoppable juggernaut

Matthew Broersma
February 10, 2005 (TechWorld.com) — Companies should think twice before jumping on the Firefox bandwagon, according to research firm Gartner Inc. The open-source browser has been gaining market share steadily over the past few months, helped by industry support and user enthusiasm, but Firefox isn’t the unstoppable juggernaut it might seem.

Browser switching is taking place at the level of individual users, rather than organizations, and some of the factors that make Firefox more appealing than Internet Explorer are likely to go away as the browser gets to be more popular, according to Gartner analysts Ray Valdes, David Mitchell Smith and Whit Andrews.
“The growth in usage of Firefox is driven by factors that are not inherently sustainable,” they warned in a study released last week.
…

Being kind, I will say — “kind of like stating the obvious isn’t it?” Taking a peek at ThridPipe’s stats we have roughly the following breakdown - IE 45%, Firefox 35%, All Others - 20%. Ooooh, looks like Gartner missed that one. Fact is Gartner usually misses more than it catches a trend. The reason of course is that every industry is different and even in recessions some industries are in growth mode.

My number one recommendation is know your industry. It drives not only your IT needs but your projections on income. Save your money and pass on the Gartner subscription.