AMR Research (Bruce Richardson) Based on a survey of 236 IT and line-of-business executives - When asked about their IT spending plans for the next 12 months, 72% planned to increase spending and 25% will keep budgets steady, while only 3% said they would be cutting spending. AMR conduct this survey three times a year. The 72% intent on spending more is up 27 points since we first started these surveys two years go (covering approximately seven periods), and up 17 points since the previous survey.

Result: 2006 will be a strong year for the enterprise software and services market.

Five broad themes for the Year 2006.

1. Continued vendor consolidation - While companies are looking to spend more, they will have fewer choices. Vendors are being acquired faster than new firms are being funded, Recent ones announced were : IBM is buying MicroMuse for $865M and Bowstreet (undisclosed), Progress Software is acquiring NEON Systems for $68M, and Unica will be adding MarketSoft for $7.25M in cash and assumed liabilities.Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) market could be ripe for consolidation, especially in the Business Intelligence (BI) sector.

2. Microsoft Office takes on enterprise apps - Now that Microsoft is shipping Dynamics CRM 3.0 and teaming with SAP to deliver the first preview shipments of Project Mendocino, we think Microsoft Office, especially Office 12, will be one of the most talked about products of the year. In my view, the Office franchise will be the foundation for many of the future composite apps for inter-enterprise collaboration.

3. The Google Economy takes on eBay and retailers - "Five Ideas on the Google Economy." sixth: An opportunity for Google to take on eBay or any of the big retail chains.

4. Strong year for collaborative apps for trading partners - E2open - Its success in building eHubs for high-tech companies and its new ventures into Aerospace and Automotive. RiverOne and other vendors that are building rapidly growing companies by automating business processes across the extended supply chain.

5. SOA---Another year of product development and market building - Today, most of the interest in Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) is coming from our vendor clients. Outside of projects in Financial Services and a handful of very early adopters in other verticals, we don't see the need to declare 2006 as The Year of SOA.

Source : AMRPrashanth RaiTag(s):2006, Predictions