IDC released this week FutureScan results depicting good if not spectacular IT spending growth for the next twelve months. The users polled expect their spending to grow by over 8% between now and April 2006.

The languishing stock market - the S&P 500 has remained between 1100 and 1200 in 11 of the last 13 months - is also creating inertia in the market indicator figure.

"It's gratifying to have such positive expectations on the part of CIOs and business executives," said John Gantz, IDC's Chief Research Officer. "But we are waiting for the reality of the macroeconomic situation to sink in.

On the other hand, noted Gantz, who concentrated on cutting IT costs wherever they could during the high tech downturn have begun looking to IT to increase revenue, help develop new products, and increase productivity.

"To use a sailing analogy, we seem to be on a good tack in favorable seas," added Gantz. "We could just use a little more wind."

FutureScan is a set of market metrics that measure supply and demand in the IT industry based on leading indicators and customer surveys.

In the web hosting industry field AT&T announced that Xilinx Inc., a leader in programmable logic devices, awarded AT&T a three-year, $1.4 million contract to host and manage the company's Web site, www.xilinx.com.

According to the contract, AT&T hosting solution will provide visitors to the Xilinx Web site faster page loads as well as enhanced flexibility and security. Xilinx's web site includes an online store and offers visitors a variety of options, including signing up for educational courses, accessing online support services and searching online software manuals.

Fusepoint Managed Services announced this week the launch of new Microsoft Exchange services. The new addition is designed to simplify the management of the messaging system for business-class e-mail, public folders, calendaring, and collaboration.

The same time Aplus.Net, a leading web hosting and design firm announced that the company developed a new affiliate program. The new program is designed to give web site owners higher payouts than popular syndicated advertising programs like Google's Adwords.

Among the technology implementation partnership this week can be marked CM-AG and Cybernet contract. Cybernet, headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, has licensed the CM4all WebsiteCreator as a new OEM customer. Cybernet provides Internet access and hosting products to its more than 25,000 business customers.

Copyright © 2008 DevStart, Inc. Permission is required to use the material on this page.