"Early adopters have a track record of identifying trends three to six months in advance; although these disruptive technologies are at their early stages of adoption, signs are emerging that they have the potential to impact incumbent vendors, with strong implications for investors," said Marc Harris, director of U.S. equity research for RBC Capital Markets.
The survey found that a potentially threatening sign for traditional software vendors is an increased willingness by companies to adopt "on-demand" software in place of "traditional" software: 26 per cent of respondents said they have no major concerns about Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) adoption and 24 per cent said they will consider deploying SaaS in the future.
Despite the inroads made by pure-play vendors, larger software vendors who have consolidated the market could pressure pure-play incumbents in several sectors. One in four (26 per cent) respondents plans to increase spending on either Oracle or SAP software over the next 90 days compared to 7 per cent for pure-play software companies.
The survey also found that, contrary to conventional beliefs regarding offshore outsourcing, 36 per cent of respondents prefer captive (on-site) vs. outsourced operations for global IT service delivery. Twenty-six per cent prefer multinational service providers, while just 11 per cent preferred offshore-only providers. "Price" was cited as the biggest obstacle for both insourcing and outsourcing decisions, followed by security concerns (20 per cent).
In terms of networking equipment, the wireless revolution continues as companies seeking to connect their employees increasingly turn to Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN). More than half (57 per cent) of respondents say their company has already installed a WLAN, with better connectivity, simplicity and convenience cited as the chief reasons. Security is the main concern of those who have resisted wireless.
"Corporate IT executives today are increasingly open to buying new systems in what is a new technology landscape - one with aggressive, fast-moving companies that are quick to translate the latest technology advances into usable products," Harris said. "We will continue to track the acceleration of these disruptive trends and uncover what other emerging technologies have made an impact."
Other survey findings include:
- Open-source technology is beginning to replace server software, with one-fifth saying their company's use of open-source technology has replaced existing server software and an additional 17 per cent saying it has filled a technology gap.
- While more than 20 per cent of companies are not yet currently running server virtualization software (i.e. VMWare, Xen, or Microsoft Virtual Server), this number is expected to drop to 5 per cent within five years.
- Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) increasingly will be incorporated into networks as nearly one-third of respondents' companies (31 per cent) already have implemented VoIP systems. An additional 10 per cent say their company plans to do so in the future.
- Eighteen per cent of respondents expect an increase in their company's purchases of keyboard-based portable devices (e.g. BlackBerry, Motorola Q) over the next three months, while 10 per cent expect an increase in touch screen-based devices (e.g. iPhone, HTC Touch).
- Purchases of Windows-based desktops and laptops are expected to outpace those of Apple products during the next three months by margins of three to one.
To conduct the survey, RBC Capital Markets exclusively partnered with a proprietary network panel of 11,000 leading-edge technologists at 7,000 companies and collected a random representative demographic sample of 800 responses. The survey was conducted online during July 2007. Respondents were from companies of all sizes - from smaller firms with less than 10 employees (27 per cent) up to corporations with over 1,000 employees (38 per cent) -- and included senior and mid-level management and IT/engineering managers.
