The Bloor Perspective: Broadband TV licences, Tech budgets, Palm

With tech budgets under intense scrutiny and vendors waiting for a surge in spending, there's probably never been a better time to look at project success. According to a recent poll of IT directors from medium and large businesses, they will spend £37.7m a year on some 45 annual IT projects for their business, but 80 per cent of them don't believe this will provide a competitive advantage to their firm.

There is an obvious question that begs to be answered - what is the definition of competitive advantage? Does it include profitability and efficiency gains for instance? We don't know and the study, undertaken by Winmark Research, doesn't seek to answer it.

CIOs still aren't very confident about their work. Eighty per cent of them expect their email and intranet systems will crash when they launch a new application and only 6 per cent of them think that the rest of their critical systems are safe from failure in that situation.

CIOs are pessimistic about the likelihood of failure with their projects and systems. Sixty-five per cent said their projects achieve less than 75 per cent of their expected value. This could be because of a lack of understanding how to measure the value of course.

Failure to reap all of the benefits from a project and failure of an entire system are completely different things but each one said that the average cost of system failure to their business was approximately £129,000 annually. That's just the cost of the failure and doesn't include potential lost revenues or damage to reputation. For the IT directors, it's the lost revenues that concern them.

The study was commissioned by a change management software firm, Serena. It does highlight the problems and concerns that are to be found amongst tech buyers. IT projects have always been a controversial subject for the business. High failure rates, project over-runs, budget slippage, you name it, the tech project has had it. In today's tough economic climate though, it seems IT directors are still unsure about their returns.

*Palm and Office apps?*

The Palm PDA is losing ground in the enterprise space because of a lack of compatibility between office applications, based around Windows, and its operating system. IDC's latest study of its 1,000 strong Mobile Advisory Council has found that they are voting for Windows CE machines to power mobile workforces, while the Palm is dominating the vertical sectors.

While Palm OS is the clear market leader, Windows CE dominates those industries driven by field sales and service and for those operating in the utility sectors. Palm, on the other hand, is seen as being entrenched in the health care, education and government sectors.

This, IDC argues, is because of the need for organisations to ensure that their mobile workforce can easily plug into critical applications like Office and email systems - without any compatibility headaches. Opportunities exist for both operating systems as developers continue to work with vendors from all ends of all spectrums, devices, software and services.

As IDC notes, in the current market professional services and manufacturing is where the money is. The large-scale, enterprise application mobile workforce roll-outs across industry just aren't happening. Organisations are focusing on the quick productivity gains that can be had from basic CRM and Office applications rather than heavy duty ERP and that's making this a vicious fight for market share.

It's been a tough slog for Palm to achieve its dominance in the PDA marketplace and one that has always had threats hanging over it. Palm has tried desperately, by splitting divisions and reinventing, to head off these threats but now more than ever they are pressing. With Windows CE's ability to cooperate with corporate networks it is, simply, the obvious choice for mobile sales teams.

Top of the priority list for organisations is the ability to operate an effective and well integrated network and with the spread of wireless and otherwise mobile devices this drive has become almost mantra-like in some organisations. They want ease of use, rapid deployment and cost efficiencies. That, they believe, is what the Windows OS delivers in its multitude of guises.

*Broadband detector vans*

There have been a number of rumours circulating that the UK's TV licensing body is seeking to require broadband subscribers to have a TV licence. The logic is that broadband-enabled PCs can be used for watching live broadcast video via streaming technology, so a user's computer essentially becomes a television.

According to the amended 1949 Wireless Telegraphy Act, any equipment capable of receiving TV broadcasts must be licensed. The method by which the broadcast is received is irrelevant, meaning that a user watching a streamed video feed of the news from the BBC's website would require a licence.

The law is currently open to some interpretation and it's as yet unclear whether the licensing authority would seek to enforce it across the board for all UK broadband users, only for those who watch live broadcasts, or not at all. The most likely interpretation seems to be that a broadband user will only require a licence if they choose to take advantage of live video services from the BBC or others. If this is the case it would only be enforceable by standard means such as detector vans - which are apparently capable of picking up television reception via computer.

The news is unlikely to present a problem for the vast majority of domestic broadband users, however, who will most likely have a TV licence already. But if strictly enforced it could be a problem for business broadband customers. Will IT managers be forced to block streaming video at the firewall, for fear of a hefty fine?

The rumours, even if unfounded, are something that Broadband Britain could well do without, adding as they do to the general air of confusion. Languishing as the UK does below the top 20 in the world broadband league tables, let's hope that clarification comes soon.

Bloor Research is a leading independent analyst organisation in Europe. You can find out more at http://www.bloor-research.com or by emailing mail@bloor-research.com.