Friday, 30th January marked the end of a revolution. Like most unsuccessful revolutions, this one lasted for only a short while, and was abruptly ended by a much more powerful force.

Julian McIntyre tried to make it as an investment banker, but fell in love with Africa instead. He worked at Deutsche Bank in his early twenties and, in his words, quickly came to hate it, leaving at 25 when “I got my first bonus”.

The Briton, who had developed a great affection for Africa while travelling, hooked up with a friend, Peter Gbedemah, to set up a telecoms business, providing infrastructure to mobile-phone companies south of the Sahara.

Eight years later, Mr McIntyre’s company is now GTV, a pan-African pay-TV company. The telecoms business, Gateway Communications, was sold in the summer to Vodacom in South Africa for $700 million (£474.8 million). GTV is what is left – a pay-TV operator aimed at a continent where pay-TV has barely existed, a “test case for African business”, as Mr McIntyre, 33, puts it……….

=> A brief chronological account of the company, as published by Times Online.

The rise of GTV started a Pay-TV revolution in Africa, rekindling interest in Paid TV, as many an average person could now watch their favourite satellite TV programs at low costs. In June 2007 for instance, the company offered a one month’s FREE subscription to “all who join the GTV revolution” – enabling access to programming every day in July without paying a cent.

The GTV Pay-TV revolution enjoyed widespread support from the populace, as it provided “premium international programming not just to a few people but to literally thousands of people who have never before been able to access to pay-TV.”

This perhaps led to the suggestions that MultiChoice DSTV’s dominance on the continent had finally come to an end, more so when results from a study conducted by Balancing Act- a London-based consultancy and research firm, indicated that;

“consumer demand for GTV and its services has resulted in his company becoming Africa’s fastest growing pay-television service.”

The study also reported that GTV took “five out of every seven new subscribers” who chose satellite TV in Africa over the past nine months.

Sadly, this was not to be the case. The GTV revolution, was abruptly ended by a force which attained global enormousness in 2008- as it succumbed to the global economic crisis. The company became the most recent casualty of the global recession.

According to a Press Statement issued by Gateway Broadcast Services- the suppliers of the GTV service to subscribers across Africa;

“The current financial and global crisis has severely interrupted the company’s ability to secure further funding for the continued operation of the business.”

“Increased instability in global markets interrupted our ability to secure funding on an acceptable timescale and have left us no choice but to cease operations,”

“We realise the negative impact this has had on our loyal customers, creditors and staff, all of who have believed in GTV and the revolution in pay TV it had created. We have tried every possible step to keep the company going but we are all the unfortunate victims of the current global economic crisis.”

The collapse of the company will no doubt have devastating effects on Pay-TV viewers across the African continent, many of whom relished the new opportunity GTV presented them, in terms of International TV programmes, not to mention staff of the company-

Permanent employees lost their jobs instantly, not to mention the hundreds of dealers and business partners, thousands of subscribers and the tens of thousands of English Premiership viewers who will miss their favourite weekend sit-outs.

This is indeed an unfortunate end for a company whose Africa-wide GTV service had “an estimated 100,000 subscribers across Africa and has over the last two years invested a total of $200 million and created jobs and competition in 22 markets”.

It has been said time and (time) again that the Sales Copy is a major decider in the outcome of a business’ marketing campaign. The same goes for your website. At a time where millions and billions of websites popup on a daily basis, the terms website, sales copy, marketing and business have never been more synonymous.

Incase you don’t know what a sales copy is and you own a business (which I seriously doubt)- it is  that piece of text you find in advertisements, promotional brochures or other public relations outlets. Copywriting, which is the art of writing a sales copy has never been more crucial to a business. Tom Chandler writes;

“Good copywriting and marketing have never been
more important. Or more confusing.“

Probably the reason why most businesses hire professional Copywriters to draft these sales copies for them. So;

Who and What is a Copywriter?

Whenever you hear a radio commercial, or read words in the advertising section of a magazine, a copywriter is responsible. A copywriter creates the text for advertisements, promotional brochures or other public relations outlets. Advertising agencies routinely refer to a written script as copy, thus the name copywriter applies to those who create the scripts.

But what makes a Good Sales copy?

Several answers to this question may exist, but the most important (arguably) of them all would be Readability!! Readability here not just in the sense of the word, but also in terms of attractiveness. The sales copy must, as a matter of necessity, be able to capture and captivate the readers.

A few things you may want to note when writing your sales copy ;

• Keep it Attractive- can’t help but reiterate, your sales copy should, as a matter of importance, be engaging. It must possess qualities that captivate, if not thrill the reader. This holds true for the opening paragraph through to the last.

• Keep It Short- despite what most people may think, length matters. Not everyone enjoys reading (as a matter of fact most people don’t), as such it would be wise to make your sales copy as “straight-to-the-point” as possible.
  
  
• Formatting and Placement- also very important. It is worth noting that 6 out of 10 average readers would only read the first one or two paragraphs and scan through the rest of your sales copy. It is therefore extremely important to pay attention to placement- endeavor to have the most important aspects of your draft as close to the beginning of the copy as possible. It is also a good idea to use bold fonts, and quotation marks where necessary, so as to emphasize an important word, sentence or paragraph. Coloured text are “pleasing” to the eyes, and are encouraged.  Be careful however, that your copy doesn’t end up looking like the face of a clown.

• Keep It Original- try to be as original as possible. Think twice before deciding to “borrow” content from someone else’s copy without their permission. Copy writing requires an enormous amount of talent and creativity, needless to say are intellectual property. Apart from just losing credibility in the eyes of your reader, you can quickly find yourself in an unwanted legal tussle. If you must borrow, you should endeavor to give the author some acknowledgment.

• Mind your language- last, but by no means least, it is advisable to watch your language. In the beginning, it may seem like a good idea to use your copy to show your grammatical proficiency, but you may end up having achieved nothing in the end, if your sales copy is more confusing than it is explanatory. It is thus advisable to use “common”, everyday terms which would have “real” meaning to the reader.

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Finally, as a parting gift, bear in mind that;

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“Marketing is not just about advertising – it’s also about
education and building customer relationships.”

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“Marketing is fundamental to the growth and development of any business, regardless of its size, nature, financial strength, location, or anything else for that matter”
(it’s fast becoming a cliche, but it’s true nonetheless.)

Though the fundamental principles of marketing remain the same, the approach to marketing has and always will be the underlying factor that sets apart the successful business from the unsuccessful ones. True, most businesses understand the need for marketing, and many allocate the required amount of resources to the propagation of their products and services through many channels- some effective, others not as effective, and some, well …….

Internet Marketing for one, has become extremely popular, with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) often topping the agenda in most Internet Marketing campaigns- the rationale behind it being to get into the Golden “top 10” search results of a Search Engine’s SERP. E-mail Marketing is also high on the agenda, I mean, you simply;

1) Prepare your HTML Email template
2) Compile a comprehensive list of Email Addresses you wish to mail to
3) Create your Email or E-Newsletter (Obviously)
4) Feed the Email or E-Newsletter into a Mass Email Software

AND ………… BLAST OFF!!!

Yep! That’s just about it. Or is it?

Whilst it may be easy to go according to structured, laid down marketing principles and methodologies, it is also extremely easy to lose track of the obvious;

Your entire Marketing Campaign was originally targeted at
“Individuals”, not the Search Engines.

Meaning- these individuals form the core of your target audience, and whilst it may be prudent to pursue the fine art of SEO and all the other E-Marketing techniques, it is however important to Remember Who You Really are Dealing With.

Links, optimized tags, PPC campaigns and the like may bring the much needed traffic to your website, and even place you in the top 10 results of Google’s SERP, but just as Google’s Matt Cutts said “last year” (it’s fun saying that);

“SEOs are starting to embrace the fact that they are marketers. It’s a broader spectrum. You have to think about how you build buzz, how do you get loyal customers, how do you optimize your ROI. All those different things and that can include how do I make good videos, do I have a book, things like that.“

“…. the smart SEOs are not just necessarily looking at the rankings. They are looking at conversion, they are looking at their server log. It’s great if you’re ranking for a phrase but unless that leads to sales that doesn’t help you very much.“

Similarly, with regards to E-mail Marketing, sending an email or calling someone up might be more convenient, but it’s also less personal — and therefore less effective. Words alone cannot always communicate what you want, your facial expression and body language often contribute to help your cause and help you reach your marketing goal.

There is also the issue of practicability- what assurance do you have that your E-mails won’t just end up in a Spam folder, and even if they do make it to the “Inbox”, what are the chances of them getting read, especially if they are unsolicited?

This is particularly true for most African countries, where most businesses don’t even have email addresses, and 90% of those who do, either do not monitor their mail boxes, leading to them being closed after a while, or deliberately post invalid addresses. It is extremely common to get E-mail bounce rates of up to 85% in E-mail campaigns (and that’s no lie)- all resulting from invalid E-mail addresses.

As such, you cannot and should not play down the role of physical marketing, and you should also pay serious attention to localized forms of advertising/marketing such as the radio, Television, NewsPapers, etc. Localization is also a very important aspect of marketing and branding.

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Problems affecting the development and use of Information Technology in West Africa have been a major topic of discussion and concern for eons, encompassing  discourse from various IT experts the world over, and even the average individual.

Over the years, in most parts of West Africa, the development of Information Technology has been hampered, largely due to inadequate or insufficient Telecommunication Infrastructure, and even where these infrastructure have existed, the service charges are beyond the reach of the average person.

Pascal Zachary, in his article titled Ghana’s Digital Dilemma- The lesson from West Africa: good computers and fast modems don’t matter if you can’t get a dial tone and the power keeps going out- which was first published in July 2002, writes;

“In the West African country of Ghana, one of the world’s poorest places, the busy signal is a reminder of the unfulfilled promise of the Information Age. Making a telephone call here requires persistence. Roughly half don’t go through because of system failures, but that’s only the start of Ghana’s telephone woes. The country has a mere 240,000 phone lines-for a population of 20 million spread across an area the size of Britain. Moreover, telephone bills are inaccurate, overcharges common, and the installation of a new line can cost a business more than $1,000, the rough equivalent of the annual office rent. Lines are frequently stolen, sometimes with the connivance of employees of Ghana Telecom, the national carrier. Phones go dead, and remain unrepaired, for months. Some businesses hire staff for the chief purpose of dialing numbers until calls go through.

The spread of mobile phones has only worsened telephone gridlock. There are more mobile phones in Ghana than wired ones-about 300,000, as of March-but the network is clogged because of a shortage of cell stations. Customers are bedeviled by what operators term “dropped calls.” Besides, calls are costly. The price of a one-minute wireless conversation, under the most common plan, is ten times higher than it would be in the United States. “The situation has come to a point of crisis,” says Kwesi Nduom, the country’s minister for economic planning. Ghana’s telecom mess limits the utility of the Internet, raises the costs of information services-and suggests that the country is mired in the Stone Age, technologically. But the situation here, as in much of sub-Saharan Africa, defies such straightforward conclusions. There is another side to the country’s technological profile, a burgeoning homegrown technology culture that explodes assumptions about the inherent backwardness of Africa and the nature of the so-called digital divide.”

Mr. Zachary, who visited Ghana on several occasions between 2000 – 2002, first as a Foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, and later as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism,  goes on to talk about how Information Technology had changed the landscape in different ways, saying;

These problems however, are not peculiar to Ghana, but cut across the entire West African sub region, and a lot of effort has been made to tackle the issues highlighted, and nip the growing IT concerns, resulting in several meetings, workshops, and summits- most notably; the Africa ICT summits and the iPAD 2008. Unsurprisingly, these discussions are most often geared at tackling the same problem- Infrastructure. For instance, the most recent (7th) Africa ICT summit, held in Ghana, was on the theme: “Strategies for low cost broadband access in Africa.“ :

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Is IT Infrastructure Really West Africa’s Problem?

Perhaps not! To reiterate, the period between 2002 and 2008 has seen significant improvement in IT infrastructure in Ghana for instance, but not as much improvement in the attachment and use of these infrastructure.  Could the problem lie elsewhere? Just maybe! A school of thought has it that;

providing all the “tech” infrastructure without properly engaging the populace, would not only be- “a complete waste of resources, but also plain ludicrous”.

In most parts of the sub-region, the concept of being IT savvy appears to be completely misunderstood, as basic (sometimes Theoretical) knowledge of common Office applications such as Microsoft® Word, Excel, PowerPoint,  and (maybe) Publisher or Access would make one an “IT guru”. Extremely worrying also, is the Curricula of the educational system of most West African states as regards IT- where the course structure of Degree awarding, IT programs such  as Computer Science (Bsc.) for instance, is a far cry from what exists in most other parts of the world.

The concept of E-Learning also, which was widely promoted over the last couple of years, now seems to be mere Rhetoric, and at best a figure of speech- this coming at a time where the Full Sail University has just introduced an Online Masters Degree awarding program in “Internet Marketing”.

More so, a previous post “Top Paying IT Jobs For 2009″, quickly woke me to the fact that apart from AJAX developers and maybe Enterprise Architects, most of the other “hot” IT jobs for 2009 probably (I could be wrong) do not even exist in West Africa.

In a part of the world where innovation is not encouraged and (brilliant) ideas are “killed” before they even hatch- as almost everything is played to the gallery- it is difficult to envisage a period where the IT focus would have gone beyond just understanding and appreciating the concepts, to actually competing at a global level, but the belief remains that we would get there some day.

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After reviewing Global IT Trends For 2009, it became quite evident that despite the global economic down turn, the future of the IT industry still remains extremely bright. As a matter of fact, forecasts from industry leaders project that IT specialist would be pivotal to the success of businesses this Year.

According to the Baseline magazine;

… Many of the hottest roles and skills address issues specific to survival, such as productivity, efficiency and process improvement. Most relevant are those experts who can use technology to help drive profit ….. quoting David Foote- chief research officer for Foote Partners.

This, no doubt, is in line with the increasing interest in the adaptation and use of Social Media for market development, not to mention the increase in the deployment and use of Web 2.0 applications, Web/Video conferencing, and Telepresence systems.

Below is an excerpt from a chart in a report by ‘David White, JISC funded ‘SPIRE’ project 2007’, representing trends in Web 2.0 usage;

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Though the current job market is brutal, it is quite evident that some IT specializations remain in high demand. According to Foote, Executives are interested in keeping their customers, getting new customers, making acquisitions and anything to keep the revenue channel going.

Here is a list of “hot” IT jobs for 2009 à la The Baseline Mag;

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Brace Yourself ……..

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• Business intelligence Experts
  BI experts can help organizations “In a lot of decisions having to do with how the customer base is changing, market differentiation, pricing and services.” Foote says

• Resiliency Services Professionals
  while many larger enterprises may be slimming down, some of their already mature business continuity practices, resiliency services are big in the mid-market. Many of these jobs will be through outsource services firms.

• Vendor Procurement Specialists
  “It’s pretty clear that in this next year, companies are going to be renegotiating contracts like crazy,” Foote says. A savvy vendor procurement specialist is critical to getting the upper hand in these negotiations.

• Outsourcing and Vendor Managers
  Slightly different than a procurement specialist, vendor and outsourcing managers are project management specialists who act as liaisons and enforce SLAs once the ink dries on the contract.

• Enterprise Architects
  Forrester Research voted this one as “Very Hot” last August in an internal survery of analysts. Since the economy tanked, the role’s importance has grown as IT is called to automate and streamline processes and infrastructure.

• ITIL Managers
  Governance and standardization are keys to getting automation efforts off the ground in an orderly fashion, and companies will be paying a premium for ITIL and business process experts in 2009.

• Virtualization Gurus
  HR gurus with the job site Dice.com are reporting that even though IT job listings went down 12 percent last year, virtualization postings went up 37 percent.

• Security Architects
  IT security is staffing up, and some of the highest demand is for architects who can understand the complexities of various IT ecosystems and emerging risks from technology like virtualization.

• AJAX Developers
  Businesses will continue to leverage Web 2.o technology to differentiate themselves, so it’s clear that AJAX and XML skills remain in high demand.

• Storage Directors
  Another hot role per Forrester, this one is critical as organizations hope to coordinate for better storage utilization rates, slimming down on hardware purchase costs in the process.

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The Mobile industry is not left out! According to a report titled “Mobile Internet 2010,”- there are more than 4 billion wireless subscribers globally and many of these will be using their handset as the main Internet terminal.

In order for that potential to be achieved however, the report said carriers need to boost their networks, and handsets makers need to do a better job of incorporating Web services into a phone’s user interface.

It goes without saying that Mobile application developers would also be in huge demand this year.We just have to wait and see how it all unfolds.

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Global PC processor manufacturing giant Intel, yesterday- 15th Jan 2009, reported a whopping 90% drop in fourth-quarter profits for 2008, as revenue fell by 23%. The company becomes the latest “hard-hit” casualty of the global recession, which has affected the sales of PCs and consumer electronics worldwide.

For 2008, Intel posted revenue of $37.6 billion, operating income of $9 billion, net income of $5.3 billion and EPS of 92 cents. Intel generated approximately $11 billion in cash from operations, paid cash dividends of $3.1 billion and used $7.1 billion to repurchase 324 million shares of common stock.

President and Chief Executive, Paul Otellini, in a statement said;

The economy and the industry are in the process of resetting to a new baseline from which growth will resume,”

“While the environment is uncertain, our fundamental business strategies are more focused than ever. Intel will continue to extend its manufacturing leadership, drive product innovation, develop new markets and implement operating efficiencies that have already taken more than $3 billion out of our ongoing cost structure since 2006. Intel has weathered difficult times in the past, and we know what needs to be done to drive our success moving forward. Our new technologies and new products will help us ignite market growth and thrive when the economy recovers.”

Intel Reports Fourth-Quarter and Annual Results

• Fourth-Quarter Revenue $8.2 Billion, down 19 Percent Sequentially
• Gross Margin 53 Percent, down 6 Points Sequentially
• Operating Income $1.5 Billion, down 50 Percent Sequentially
• Quarterly Net Income $234 Million; EPS 4 Cents

• 2008 Revenue $37.6 Billion, down 2 Percent Year-over-Year or up Slightly Adjusted for Divestitures
• Gross Margin 55 Percent, up 3.5 Points Year-over-Year
• Operating Income $9 Billion, up 9 Percent Year-over-Year
• Annual Net Income $5.3 Billion; EPS 92 Cents

Citing an excerpt from an article posted by Antone Gonsalves on the “Tech Web” website;

“Besides lower sales, Intel’s profits were hurt by a $1 billion net loss in its equity investment in Clearwire, a wireless broadband provider that leverages WiMax technology heavily promoted by Intel. Overall, Intel reported a $1.1 billion net loss in equity investments. The company had originally forecast a loss of $50 million.

Intel’s closely watched gross margin fell nearly six points from the third quarter to 53%, primarily because of charges from higher underutilization of its factories and higher inventory write-offs. Gross margin for the first quarter of this year is expected to fall to the low 40s, primarily because of charges from underutilized factories and startup costs of moving from the current 45-nanometer manufacturing process to 32 nm, which will provide the foundation for the next generation of products.”

Reports have it that Intel earns over 80% of its revenue from outside the United States, and there have been reports of dismal market for most Intel products across the globe, an exception being in sales of mini-laptops, also called netbooks.

Sales of the low-cost systems that sell for as little as $300 have been growing fast, and Intel has been gaining traction in the market with its Atom processors.

While declining to provide a formal projection for the first quarter of this year, Intel said that for internal purposes, it’s planning for sales of around $7 billion.

This just in, Sony Ericsson’s has just released the new W715- the mobile device which is “all — and only — about Vodafone”.

The new and “exclusive to Vodafone” slider boasts a 3.2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, aGPS, WiFi, DLNA certified, 120MB memory, quad-band GSM, 900 / 2100 HSDPA, ………

News of its release has been making the rounds all over the net, with several blogs, online news sources, etc. posting numerous articles commenting on the new and unique features of the Walkman.

Anyway, the most interesting (not to mention amusing-) aspects of its features, from an African perspective that is- is its purported ability to;

“enable quick access to its navigation services through among others a dedicated key.”

You may be wondering why this is so “amusing”.

Ever heard of Google Maps? Sure you have! “Play” with this (useful) navigation tool for a while, and you would begin to see the amusement in all of this. Try navigating to Ghana for instance at a zoom level of 25, and see what it tells you.

Hint: Click the link- Ghana’s Google map, and “navigate” to the bottom of the page for quick access.

According to the IT News Africa website;

Aside from turn-by-turn pedestrian or driving navigation available using Vodafone Find&Go, customers will be able to find their nearest restaurants, hotels or shopping centers all within a few clicks on their new mobile phone, the company said. (Company here referring to Sony Ericsson of course).

It beats the imagination how finding any kind of useful information on the Walkman would be possible in some parts of Africa, where even getting street names and postal codes is a “tug-of-war”.

Anyway, not to discourage any potential shoppers, the w715 Walkman is still good for many other things. Quoting IT News Africa again;

“On the top of premium music experience with crystal clear sound, the W715 includes popular Walkman features such as the music recognition application TrackID, SensMe for matching your mood to the music, and Shake Control to change tracks with the flick of a wrist. All this provides for a premium Music experience, fully integrated with Vodafone Music, allowing easy access to single and album downloads,” said Sony Ericsson.

2008 saw a number of significant changes in IT trends globally, the most distinctive being the rise of social media in 2008. Chris Crum of Web Pro News takes a look at the Year in Social Media. It is quite obvious that there was a lot of activity in the world of social media.

There were also quite a number of changes in SEO trends in 2008, most notably Google’s Custom Search, and toolbar update, which saw a number of websites lose and gain PR.

As far as global IT trends for 2009 are concerned, there have been a number of predictions, especially on the growth in “Tech Spending”. Quoting the Wall Street Journal blog;

“Businesses and other organizations in the U.S. will spend $573 billion on computer software, hardware and services next year, just 1.6% more than they spent in 2008, according to new data out Tuesday from Forrester Research Inc. In contrast, U.S. tech spending grew 4.1% in 2008 and 7% in 2007. Earlier this year, Forrester predicted U.S. tech spending would grow 6.1% in 2009.

The results are based on several factors, including real gross domestic product growth and how technology is valued by businesses, says Andrew Bartels, an analyst at Forrester.

Despite forecasts that show real GDP declining, tech spending will grow slightly because “businesses have become more dependent on technology”

As the baseline mag puts it ;

“.. enterprises with a forward-thinking approach and a solid grasp of technology trends will have a distinct competitive advantage. The following technologies trends in areas like SaaS, virtualization and project portfolio management, among others, are likely to shape IT and business in the coming year, and they can give your company the advantage it needs to do business in this challenging economic environment.”

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Expected global IT trends for 2009

• Saas- Software as a Service
  Cloud computing environments will contribute to the expansion of SaaS into areas beyond ERP, CRM and HR management systems. Rob DeSisto, analyst for Gartner, says organizations increasingly see the benefits of moving large-scale software expenses from the capital budget to the operating budget.

• Document management and E-discovery
  Systems that retain, manage and retreive documents and data quickly and seamlessly will continue to rise in 2009.”Today, anything electronic is discoverable as any part of litigation,” Forrester analyst Kyle McNabb points out. “Developing rules and procedures is essential, and it is going to receive a lot more attention in the coming year.” Not surprisingly, the focus is rapidly moving beyond ERP and enterprise systems and into the broader realm of all documents and communications.

• Virtualization
  was a huge trend over the past 2 years, and will continue to expand in storage, desktop and data center technologies in 2009.According to industry estimates, 50 to 60 percent of all servers are now virtualized. The goal is to reduce server inefficiencies and lower costs. It is now moving into the realm of SMBs, and is also extending into storage and onto the desktop, says Moosa Matariyeh, enterprise storage specialist for CDW.

• Energy efficient Data Centers
  Data-center hardware in conjunction with virtualized systems, will continue to reduce power needs with more green componentry and infrastructure.Chip and PC manufacturers are moving toward more energy-efficient components including improved memory and resource management, but the big action in 2009 will be in the areas of virtualization and storage. Businesses are quickly recognizing that they have little margin for error, and energy costs are now a huge variable, says Anil Desai, an independent IT consultant.

• Security, Risk and Compliance
  Expect risk and compliance to be automated in intrusion, detection, authentication, patch management and security analytics.

• Enterprise mobility
  Being secure and synchronized to live data while on a host of pocket computing devices will continue to expand and improve in 2009.

• Social Networking
  “the champion of 2008″- Social Networking will continue to expand in customer relationships with brands and corporate team building efforts as ways to help the bottom line.Organizations are increasingly looking to next-generation social networking tools to conduct sophisticated business intelligence and analytics. In many cases, they are mining data and looking for trends and patterns, such as which salesperson has the relationships to pull off a deal or which customers seem to have the biggest influence with others online.

• Web 2.0
  Applications built-on Web technologies will continue to prosper and proliferate in new and more cost-efficient ways in 2009.

  Some organizations are now exploring Twitter or Facebook-like applications that allow individuals to push information out and create a simpler, organic communications structure. Others are using Web 2.0 tools to handle everything from asset management to business intelligence and analytics. Tim O’Reilly, CEO of O’Reilly Media. says “We are seeing the Internet become a preferred platform for app development.”

• Project and Portfolio Management
  Robust Portfolio management systems that offer collaboration tools, business-process rules support, advanced reporting capabilities and governance tools will expand in 2009.
  
  PPM is evolving and bringing greater order to business-level decision making. Applications such as Daptiv PPM and Primavera are providing tools to mesh diverse workgroups, such as finance, marketing, human resources and IT–all while viewing groups of initiatives, conducting detailed analysis on them, and understanding underlying relationships across organizational roles and teams.

• Web and Video Conferencing
  Bigger pipes and converged data and voice networks will help spur more, cheaper video conferencing and use of video for connecting with new and existing customers.Collaboration tools are poised to go mainstream and further change the way business is conducted. According to the Boston-based research firm Aberdeen Group, 63 percent of companies say they will be using videoconferencing and so-called telepresence systems (essentially, a form of videoconferencing with high-quality images and audio) by the end of 2010.

There you have it. The future looks bright enough.

Seems the global recession played out differently for the IT industry. African firms and businesses will have to prepare themselves to meet these global IT trends, as the results would no doubt be a more productive year for business.

In an earlier post on this blog, we discussed the challenges facing the use of IT infrastructure in some parts of Africa. Recent studies have shown a slight improvement, but we aren’t there yet.

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