To be sure, not all companies are growing as fast as GMAC or Point Biomedical. Nor does every enterprise have the bargaining clout of GM. For the average IT buyer, deals may be fewer and farther between.
Still, IT spending won't exactly snap back overnight. Gartner, for instance, predicts a 5 percent increase in U.S. IT spending next year, excluding telecom services but including some consumer-technology categories. Gartner's Reynolds cautions that even that figure may be overly optimistic.
"We based our numbers on expectations expressed in surveys this year, which could decline as pen is put to paper" this budget season, he says. In fact, real demand proved to be as much as 30 percent weaker in the second and third quarters of 2003 than users surveyed by Gartner had projected.
IDC also projects a five percent increase in IT spending worldwide in 2004, but says its forecast is conservative. A Goldman Sachs survey of Fortune 1000 CIOs conducted in August foretells IT spending growth of 2.3 percent in 2004, down from the 3.5 percent growth predicted in June. Fifty-three percent of the 100 CIOs surveyed said they anticipated that budgets will grow, versus 25 percent who expected to cut spending.
"Rebound may be an aggressive word," says Robert Reeder, CIO of Alaska Airlines. "But anything better than what we've been going through would be an improvement. I'm not sure we'll ever see the exuberance of the '90s again."
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
