Digital Lifescapes

The growth in Artificial Intelligence (AI) software could lead to many benefits. As more organizations adopt AI, they may become more efficient, productive, and able to offer improved products and services. The global job market could also expand, with demand growing for roles like AI engineers and technicians. Plus, AI apps could enable breakthroughs in fields like healthcare, transportation, and energy. The worldwide AI software market will grow from $64 billion in 2022 to nearly $251 billion in 2027 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 31.4 percent, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). AI Software Market Development The forecast for AI-centric software includes Artificial Intelligence Platforms, AI Applications, AI System Infrastructure Software (SIS), and AI Application Development and Deployment (AD&D) software (excluding AI platforms). However, it does not include Generative AI (GenAI) platforms and applications, which IDC recen...

When B2B buyers consider a purchase they spend just 17 percent of that time meeting with vendors. When they are comparing multiple suppliers‚ time spent with any one salesperson is 5 or 6 percent. Self-directed B2B buyer online research has already changed procurement. IT vendors are less likely to be involved in solution assessment. Now, more disruptive changes are on the horizon. By 2028, 60 percent of B2B seller work will be executed through conversational user interfaces via Generative Artificial Intelligence sales technologies -- that's up from less than 5 percent in 2023, according to Gartner. Generative AI Market Development "Sales operations leaders and their technology teams must prepare for the convergence of new forms of artificial intelligence, dynamic process automation, and reinvented deal-planning activities that will transform the sales function," said Adnan Zijadic, director analyst at Gartner . According to the Gartner assessment, Generative AI (GenAI) ...

Many CEOs continue to invest in enterprise software to enable digital business transformation. The benefits include improving employee productivity and efficiency, gaining a competitive advantage, staying ahead of the competition, and improving customer service. According to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), the European enterprise software market grew by 13.1 percent year-on-year in 2022, despite economic turbulence and ongoing global instability. IDC claims that this is the highest growth rate in the prior 20 years, further demonstrating the resiliency of demand for digital business applications software in the face of macroeconomic volatility. Enterprise Software Market Development The growth was primarily driven by the increased price of software licenses, customers locked in with existing partners that were unable to cancel SaaS subscriptions, and contracts signed for longer time periods than was standard in previous years. According to IDC’s researc...

Cloud computing adoption continues to gain momentum across the globe. The public cloud services (PCS) market in Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) will reach $165.2 billion in 2026, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). IDC expects the Asia-Pacific market to grow at a higher year-over-year (YoY) rate in 2022 at 31.4 percent, in comparison to 30 percent in 2021, as cloud migration continues to accelerate. However, IDC expects the YoY growth rates to slow down beginning from 2023 with a YoY growth of 28.3 percent to 22.4 percent in 2026. Asia-Pacific Cloud Services Market Development "Majority of organizations have pivoted rapidly toward a digital-centric modus operandi to adapt to new ways of operating, working, and selling products and services amid various disruptions," said Estelle Quek, senior research manager at IDC . These organizations demand better business outcomes from their adoption of digital technologies to increase efficiency, ...

When the world was disrupted by a global pandemic during 2020, many CEOs and their board of directors were consumed by reacting to immediate problems. Meanwhile, a few forwarding-thinking enterprise leaders also paused to invest in accelerating their prescient digital transformation agenda. What enables executives to envision an opportunity while others see only challenges? Strategic foresight, and a willingness to embrace the apparent changes that are transforming the legacy status quo. During this period of uncertainty, hyper-automation investment has gained new momentum. Hyperautomation is the application of advanced technologies that augment humans by helping to streamline processes in new ways that are significantly more impactful than the legacy approach. Hyperautomation Market Development The global market for technology that enables hyperautomation will reach $596.6 billion in 2022, according to the latest worldwide market study by Gartner. This is up from $481.6 billion in...

More informed CEOs and their leadership teams are asking the CIO to step-up and take on new bold goals. Meanwhile, evolving senior executive needs for substantive business-led digital transformation projects continue to fuel ongoing opportunities for hybrid cloud infrastructure vendors. Fulfilling these specific Line-of-Business (LOB) requirements is prompting IT organization shifts from traditional, stand-alone data center infrastructure to operationally efficient hyperconverged platforms, according to the latest worldwide market study by Technology Business Research (TBR). In turn, this transition creates a market that will grow at a 60.1 percent CAGR from 2014 to 2019, according to TBR's latest global market forecast. Growing Demand for Efficient IT Infrastructure "The typical customer of hyperconverged platforms requires ongoing infrastructure transformation to improve efficiency of internal processes and management of operations," said Christian Perry, practi...

A new global market study by ABI Research finds that integration with social networks will add significant value to enterprise machine-to-machine (M2M) strategies in the coming years, as more savvy company leaders discover the innovation enabling potential of the Internet of Everything. Initially, this trend will concern internal social channels -- such as Salesforce.com’s Chatter -- which is forecast to be actively used by 60,000 enterprises at end-2013. Going forward, the emphasis will shift towards Facebook and other consumer-facing networks, which ABI Research forecasts to cover 2.9 billion users by end-2018. "There’s an intriguing intersection developing around social networks and M2M services. At this stage the activity is nascent, but over the next five years we expect the relationship between the two to become increasingly synergistic," said Aapo Markkanen, senior analyst at ABI Research . The innovations it results in will add a strong social ingredient to th...

According to IDC's upcoming study Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) Unified Communications Forecast and Analysis Update, Q207, the unified communications applications revenue in the region will grow from $448 million in 2007 to $844 million in 2011 at 17 percent CAGR. "Currently, IP contact center forms the largest share of UC applications spending. During the latter part of the forecast period, conferencing applications revenues will outperform other UC applications as enterprises get serious about improving collaboration in the region. In Q2 2007, instant messaging revenue saw the highest growth over the previous quarter," says Shalini Verma, Senior Analyst for IDC's Asia-Pacific Telecommunications Research. The current growth is fueled by the adoption of IP telephony in the government, banking and financial services, and services industry verticals, as well as greenfield projects in emerging markets. These industries are also likely to be the early adopters of unified...

Strong customer relationships are critical to the success of most businesses. Also, companies rarely get a second chance to make a quality first impression. Because 77 percent of today's interactions are still being conducted by phone, it is still critically important that front-line customer service representatives can operate efficiently and effectively, according to the Yankee Group. Call centers engage in customer relationship management (CRM) projects to transform themselves into an intelligent contact center -- defined as a single point of contact to provide quality customer care, while also acting as an individualized marketing channel to push new products and services. A contact center must empower front-line customer service representatives (CSRs) and customers with actionable information through context-driven assisted and self-service applications. CSRs and customers now have the correct information in the right format for each interaction, increasing the efficiency and ...

Forrester Research introduced a framework for assessing lead management maturity and examined how business marketers today stack up against the model. In a recent study, they looked closer at the role that technology plays in supporting lead management success, and uncovered the following insights. B2B marketers try to leverage sales-centered systems to manage leads. Eighty-five percent of these B2B marketers use or plan to use sales force automation (SFA) systems to manage leads. Unfortunately, this approach rarely works. SFA applications are transactional systems that do little to help marketing slice and dice customer data, drive targeted messages, track responses, and qualify prospects. Clearly, the adoption of marketing-specific applications lags. To compensate for the challenges related to driving marketing programs from sales systems, half of B2B firms have now built marketing databases to help them better understand customer and prospect behavior. But, less than a one third u...

Many businesses today view their technology infrastructure as an enabling platform that allows them to meet or exceed customer service requirements and as a competitive differential that allows them to have an advantage in their marketplace. Evidently, business decision makers agree with this thought because in a study conducted by Harris Interactive they indicated customer service (54 percent) and upgrade of current infrastructure (47 percent) were the leading categories for technology investment in the months ahead. Considering that investments in sales and marketing, production and efficiency (39 percent) also made the list, it is safe to say that a state-of-the-art technology infrastructure is important to the future of many organizations. These are just some of the results of the new study, which were presented through Harris Interactive’s latest technology research webinar. Harris Interactive fields ongoing studies on a range of topical issues within the technology industry and p...

Every day I receive press releases from PR people who are announcing a new product or service launch, and while most are well intentioned they rarely stimulate my interest because they're simply not newsworthy -- from my point of view, as an industry analyst and columnist. In contrast, every once in a while I will read about the retirement of a product or a complete product-line, and while the story is rarely offered to me by the source company -- as a press release -- I sometimes feel compelled to go in search of more information. Why? Mostly because I have a personal sense of attachment, or I seek the historical perspective. What's the story? As an example, when I read the headline "RIP - Dell Axim" on the MobilitySite I was immediately curious. You see, I own a Dell Axim X30 pocket PC, and I have used it extensively for several years. I've also purchased accessories, like the extra-capacity battery, folding keyboard, and SD memory expansion card. The X30 was ...

Across all industries and company size, growing revenues is a top priority for organizations. This holds true for all business models -- business to business (B2B), business to consumer (B2C), and not-for-profit. Moreover, top-line growth is not the only pressure faced, according to an Aberdeen Group market study. Marketers also seek to do more with less. They are pressured to identify and invest in their most valuable or profitable customers while optimizing both budgets and resources applied. In short, marketers must find ways to communicate, interact and provide service to customers based on value metrics. Ideally, highly profitable customers would receive more attention, service and resources than less profitable ones. Customer retention and acquisition rates among preferred segments or profiles would increase, as well as market share among most valuable customers. Aberdeen Group surveyed and interviewed 200 companies to gain an understanding of how best-in-class organizations sel...

Forrester Research studied customer experience initiatives, and they uncovered a variety of approaches that companies use to incorporate customer feedback into their efforts. These "voice of the customer" exploration processes fit into five different categories as follows. Companies who already have highly developed customer advocacy programs in place are no doubt very familiar with these various approaches. However, for every executive who has wondered if their organization might be too internally focused, this list is for your consideration. Relationship tracking : Organizations need to track the health of customer relationships over time. That's why companies often ask customers to fill out surveys -- typically quarterly or annually -- about their perception of the firm. Using this feedback, companies can create metrics that are simple to understand and easy to trend. Why is this important? Because an easy-to-grasp report card helps align everyone in the organization a...

Dell has been featured prominently within the press lately, mostly regarding ongoing changes in their executive leadership, as the company continues its quest to regain lost momentum. Meanwhile, there's another more thought-provoking story that's unfolding. While many high-tech corporations talk of their passion to engage their customers in an open dialog -- to better understand their collective needs -- few have been as bold or adventurous as Dell in its exploration of raising the bar for superior customer care. Dell's direct-marketing and sales model made them a pioneer of building world-class call centers. They created the Dell Community Forums platform to enable customer interaction, and ultimately knowledge transfer. Then they introduced Dell on Call to provide additional fee-based technical support, and eventually launched the Direct2Dell corporate blog. Following the announcement of their Dell 2.0 initiative last year, they recently ventured into the world of broad...

Across the tech vendor community, approximately 50 percent of marketing investment is allocated to demand generation and about one-third of that investment is ear-marked to directly support the sales force. New research from IDC shows that, for most vendors, this complex and expensive intersection of marketing and sales remains very much a 'work in process.' However, IDC observes pockets of excellence that are emerging as executives are starting to come to grips with the escalating costs of selling and marketing in today's tech industry. According to IDC's Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Advisory Practice -- which undertook a study evaluating which IT vendors have demonstrated best practices in lead management process development and execution -- marketing's lead management process at a majority of tech vendors fails to provide even the most basic need of establishing a consistent global definition of a lead. Other failure points include data collection, lead qualific...