A Goldman Sachs survey out today shows that Microsoft is taking a larger cut of shrinking IT budgets.
Goldman Sachs’ survey of decision-makers at Fortune 1000 companies showed that 41 percent of respondents expected to increase their spending with Microsoft over the next year, compared to 23 percent who expected to cut back.
Source: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/153321.asp
Although you could argue that these are very early conclusions given the current economic climate, these are comforting results.
Surely companies are cutting back on their overall IT spend, but they also spend their IT budget in areas that make sense. All of the top spend categories, looking at the products deal with the’Information Worker’ platform, which fuels productivty and streamlines communications.
The authors say:
… Microsoft’s shift into the top group is likely to be a result of a number of its enterprise product upgrades, such as SQL Server (Microsoft’s enterprise database) and the ongoing traction of SharePoint server. In addition, the Office suite was stronger than expected in the September quarter; however we remain mindful of the exposure to the small-to-mid sized enterprise and remain muted in our expectations for this area of Microsoft’s business …
Some companies may be looking for quick and short term cost fixes by turning to “SaaS” based Office solutions. Surveys like this prove that many organisations look at “office functionality” as part of their platform and equip their people with the best integrated tools rather than buying them new tools every year …
The fact that Microsoft is offering almost all of the above mentioned products online through Microsoft Online Services, allows companies to speed up implementation, lower TCO and speed up the implementation.
