The number one challenge for most of our clients in 2010 remains finding ways to lift revenue while maintaining or increasing profit margins. There are still attractive segments in new geographical markets such as China, India, and Brazil, but expansion there can cause unusual problems such as the censorship issue in China, or heavy regulation in India.
The US and European markets are still very sluggish –the strength of countries like Germany and Norway is offset by continuing weakness in the UK, Spain, Greece, and Portugal. The removal of government stimuli in developing markets such as China will slow the growth there. A recent rebound in manufacturing in the US is overshadowed by the still depressed service and housing sectors. However even in these generally subdued developed markets there are opportunities for more precise sales and marketing efforts to push revenue growth into double digits.
Within the technology sector, Forrester is predicting an 8% growth in IT spending worldwide, but this seems overly optimistic in relation to the larger macroeconomic picture. The rollout of Windows 7 should provide support for PC markets and services throughout the first half of this year, and growth in the 5% range seems more believable. What is your current experience telling you?
Drilling down, the largest growth area in technology still looks to be the growth of virtualization and cloud services. VMware just posted some stellar quarterly numbers, and cloud service offerings are helping both Amazon and Salesforce. As consulting firms like BTC Logic (www.btclogic.com) remove some of the confusion around cloud computing and cloud vendor choices, I can see this segment becoming the engine of growth.
Companies wanting double digit growth this year need to be very smart in how they allocate their investment dollars in 2010. A sharper strategy and clearer view on new technologies will make this a reality.
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