News in Brief

Research firm Datamonitor recently ranked the top-five enterprise application integration vendors, also known as EAI vendors, in the European market. TIBCO took first place, with a 51 percent market share. The rest of the top five include webMethods, SeeBeyond, Mercator, and Vitria. Datamonitor also says that the United Kingdom, Germany, and France are spending the most on integration in Europe. The enterprise application market is bouncing back, but not as quickly as some might hope, says analyst firm JMP Securities. According to recent research, license sales will be trending up slowly, following a promising 4.3 percent year-over-year growth in private enterprise application investment in the second quarter of 2003. More than 50 percent of travel and transportation executives are looking at multichannel-communication software suites as their next eCRM purchase, according to a new study commissioned by KANA. The results show that the travel industry recognizes that online travel-purchasing has gone mainstream, and is realizing the need to match online customer service with offline service levels via a close-looped CRM initiative, KANA says. There are many short-term opportunities for IT vendors in the form of government contracts, but vendors must balance their contracts with long-term IT directives as well, according to a new report from Yankee Group. "Sectors like security and e-government are big areas in spending, but under the covers these sectors are only short-term," says Carrie Lewis, Yankee Group senior analyst, technology management strategies. The solution, according to Lewis, is for vendors seeking government contracts to create a balance in which they offer solutions for the hot-spot areas, but also offer nuts-and-bolts CRM infrastructure solutions to solidify long-term relationships with government agencies. Enterprise buyers are demanding that IT services providers offer a range of global sourcing alternatives, including onsite, domestic, nearshore, and offshore capabilities. Nearshore and offshore capabilities are absolute necessities for IT services providers to even compete, according to the latest research from Gartner. According to Frances Karamouzis, a research director for Gartner, despite economic and geopolitical uncertainties, IT services providers with resources in India continue to be the dominant choice for U.S. enterprise buyers. Gartner estimates that spending for outsourcing in India exceeded $10 billion for IT services delivered in 2002.