Goldman Sachs: Windows 7 Upgrades to Fuel IT Spending in 2010

A Goldman Sachs report on IT spending for the next year and beyond indicates industry growth, with help from storage gear, server and PC refreshes as well as Windows 7 upgrades.

By Shane O'Neill
Fri, December 11, 2009

Goldman Sachs' latest IT spending survey forecasts modest overall growth in the coming year, with pent-up demand for new hardware such as servers and PCs stimulating an increase in Windows 7 upgrades.

Overall, Goldman forecasts an 8 percent decline in global IT spending for 2009, followed by 4 percent growth in 2010. The survey is comprised of 100 IT executives from Fortune 1000 companies.

Spending on software for servers (with VMware and Red Hat ranking highest) as well as virtualization and SaaS-based applications (with VMware, salesforce.com and Citrix ranking the highest) is predicted to return to normal levels in 2010. But with more than half the survey respondents indicating they will do PC, server and storage refreshes next year, most of the spending will be on hardware, according to the report.

Slideshow: Windows 7 in Pictures: The Coolest New Hardware
Slideshow: 7 Tools to Ease Your Windows 7 Rollout
Slideshow: Windows 7 in Pictures: 10 Cool Desktop Features

Goldman points to data from research firm IDC stating that 2009 third-quarter PC shipments are up 17 percent from the previous quarter and up 2 percent year-over-year.

The increase in PC upgrades in 2010 are likely due to aging PCs at the end of their lifecycle. Yet the arrival of Windows 7 also has a significant influence, according to the Goldman Sachs report.

The survey indicates that 94 percent of survey respondents intend to upgrade to Windows 7, with 32 percent planning to do so in 2010 and 28 percent anticipating an upgrade in 2011.

Microsoft in 2010: Four Challenges That Lie Ahead
Windows 7 Launch: Early Adopters Eager to Bid Farewell to XP

Goldman expects that the remaining 34 percent of Windows 7 upgraders who report the intention to upgrade in 2012 and beyond will lean more toward 2012. Why? Because 85 to 90 percent of respondents are still on Windows XP, and XP support expires in April 2014. "We believe that 2013 becomes a de facto deadline for Windows 7 upgrades," states the survey report.

Another indicator that Windows 7 will drive more IT spending: the percentage of respondents who believe that their spending with Microsoft will increase jumped to 36 percent, compared to 15 percent and 24 percent in the last two surveys, which took place in June and August respectively.

One piece of bad news for Microsoft from the survey: Apple, surprisingly, is the PC maker gaining the most share of IT dollars, followed by Windows-based PC makers HP, Lenovo and Dell.

"Although Apple's presence in the enterprise PC segment remains small," the report states, "the company was a share gainer for the 11th consecutive time in this survey, as companies and employees continue to adopt the Mac platform for corporate use. We think these results are supported by Apple's recent strong September quarter, with Mac sales a key driver."

Shane O'Neill is a senior writer at CIO.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/smoneill. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter at twitter.com/CIOonline.

You are here: Technology Topics » News

Most Recent Technology Topics Stories

White Papers »

Has Your Server Infrastructure Kept Pace with End User Demands?

Learn how your answer to this question compares to your peers by taking this quick poll. See how your peers are dealing with the challenge of ensuring a highly capable server infrastructure as technological shifts impact the application server platform.

Enterprise Strategy Group: The Case for a New Data-centric DLP White Paper

With increasing data growth, comes increased need for data security. The existing DLP model, with a focus on compliance/enforcement is not sufficient as the data discovery and classification capabilities are not granular enough. Read this paper to find how you can efficiently and accurately manage your risk by rapidly inventorying and classifying your data and then developing remediation workflows that support business needs.

Data Loss by the Numbers

This paper breaks down attack sources into four categories: external, malicious insiders, accidental insiders, and unknown.

Data Loss Prevention Solution for Managing E-Discovery

The rapid growth of data and technology is creating challenges for organizations as this digital data is considered to be business communications and must be preserved according the same industry-specific regulations governing the retention and discovery of emails and more traditional forms of electronic communications. This paper examines the role that Data Loss Prevention ("DLP") technology can play in helping organizations address the challenges of locating information in response to electronic discovery.

Best Practices in Data Protection - Executive Summary

This research, conducted by the Ponemon Institute, focuses on issues relating to the use of data protection solutions such as endpoint encryption and data loss prevention within the workplace.

Business Centric DLP

This report, by Jon Oltsik from Enterprise Strategy Group, examines the need for a new business-centric approach to DLP in order to align business and security requirements.

Webcasts »

Virtualization Success is a Team Effort

As greater numbers of datacenter servers transition from the physical to the virtual world, the components of virtualization success come to the fore. What scores of organizations have discovered is that success is derived from an optimal pairing of the right software platform with the right hardware platform.

Customer Spotlight: How IPC The Hospitalist Company Implemented Oracle on VMware

Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn about VMware customer, Navicure, and their experiences testing and evaluating the recovery manager, their progress in implementing it in their environment and their advice other customers considering using vCenter.

Quantifying the Business Value of VMware View - Webcast

Many enterprises have discovered that the use of virtualization to support desktop workloads creates a range of significant benefits. These benefits include price efficiencies, improved IT management and greater agility and choice for end users.

This VMware sponsored webcast with IDC will provide both quantitative measurement of the business value -- defined as the expected ROI -- and qualitative analysis associated with the use of VMware View™. IDC will also provide an analysis of the View Composer and ThinApp™ features of VMware View, including the business value of these solutions and an overview of how they work.

Attend this webcast to learn about:
- Challenges and barriers that might impede the adoption of desktop virtualization
- Navigating roadblocks to facilitate a strategic implementation
- Optimizing qualitative and quantitative benefits to IT and your business

Deliver Private Cloud Database as a Service with VMware vFabric Data Director

VMware recently announced VMware vFabric™ Data Director, a new database deployment and operations platform that enables enterprise IT organizations to offer database as a private cloud service. Built on top of VMware vSphere 5, vFabric Data Director enables IT organizations to ontrol database sprawl through automation and consistent policy enforcement and accelerate application development cycles with self-service database management. Attend this webcast to learn how vFabric Data Director can help you build database-as-a-service in your datacenter.

Reliable Disaster Protection with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

A simple, cost-effective disaster-recovery solution for virtual environments is high on the agenda for IT organizations as they virtualize more business-critical applications with VMware. VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager-the market-leading disaster-recovery product-ensures the simplest and most reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications. VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager provides centralized management of recovery plans, enables nondisruptive testing and automates site-failover processes.

Introduction to VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5

Traditional disaster recovery solutions are often too expensive, complex and unreliable to meet business requirements. As a result, IT departments are hesitant to expand disaster protection beyond their most critical applications, largely because they are uncertain whether the quality of the protection is really worth its cost. VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager 5 is the market-leading disaster recovery product that addresses this situation for organizations of all kinds. It complements VMware vSphere to ensure the simplest and most reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications.

Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter