BUSINESS
ENN Best and Worst of 2002
20-12-2002
by Ralph Averbuch
What were the highs and lows of 2002? ENN asked some well-known figures to give their thoughts on the year's best and worst.
Andrew O'Shaughnessy - Managing Director E-Search Ltd
Understandably, during 2002, confidence in the IT sector has continued to erode. In my view low confidence makes a situation far worse than it needs to be. I fear that early signs of recovery may be ignored, leading to missed opportunities for companies and the Irish IT sector as a whole.
The subdued business environment in 2002 has forced a shift in emphasis from customer acquisition towards customer retention; focusing companies back to the basics of value added service and knowledge of the customer. The long-term benefits of this will pay rich dividends in the years of renewed growth ahead.
Colm McVeigh - Sales Director, Oracle Corporation, Ireland
There's little doubt that 2002 has been a tough year for everyone in the IT sector. Yet, I think a positive aspect of 2002 was the push by Government to introduce e-government initiatives. We've done a lot of work in this area during 2002, using technology to drive efficiencies. It's something we're hopeful the Government will continue to do in the future.
Ironically the lack of IT budgets has in some ways focused IT managers' thinking and pushed them to cut unnecessary duplication from their organisations. A good example is businesses that are using the Internet to deploy business applications across the organisation. That drive for consolidated operations and reduced costs in IT expenditure is a message which Oracle has been plugging for some time and began to be realised in 2002.
Stephen McCormack - MD Exante (formerly Nebula Technologies)
It was turbulent year for the tech sector, with many companies going bust and continuing job redundancies. The effects of the tech downturn, which started in 2001, continued very much into 2002. The industry seemed to be still very much in hangover from the dot-com era, and general IT spending continued to be depressed.
Other negatives for the year were that fact that Ireland still lags behind badly in terms of consumer broadband options, and the venture capital industry was not hugely enthusiastic about investing in many companies in 2002.
It was a bit of an ironic year in terms of its high points. Many of the high points that happened were the very things that caused much hype during the dot-com era.
During the year we saw GPRS becoming a reality, taking an important step for mobile Internet; multimedia messaging was launched; DSL was rolled out; interactive digital TV was launched in Ireland; Bluetooth went from theory on PowerPoint slides to appear in many popular devices such as Nokia phones and Sony laptops. The Irish Internet content industry took an important step forward when Ireland.com started charging for content. This event, together with the advent of things like premium rate text messages, are the beginnings of viable business models for digital media publishers. I also believe that advances, such as Itsmobile launching pay for parking via mobile phone with Dublin City Council, are important landmarks.
Simon Ferguson - MD Sales Online
I would say the biggest downer was watching the advertising agencies let go of their on-line media departments. Four or five different agencies closed down their on-line specialists which showed their lack of commitment to the medium. However, the on-line advertising specialists, like Adculture, gained from this as a consequence and on the upside there's predictions of a 40 percent growth in revenues for next year.
I think the good parts of 2002 were, as a business we saw a lot of growth in our own revenues which must be a good overall indicator for what's happening in the market. On-line advertising growth outstripped the advertising market per se significantly. We saw more FMCG brands using the Internet as an advertising medium and finance brands also increased their spend.
Next year certainly looks strong. From what I've been hearing the IT sector is going to pick up and that's going to have a knock-on effect in increased IT media spend on-line. These guys all see the on-line medium as ideal for communication with the relevant audiences.
David Long - Chairman, Ireland Offline
For me some of the best of 2002 was the launch of partial flat rate dial-up Internet access products with UTVip by UTV, and the re-introduction by Esat BT of a partial flat rate offer NetSmart was a welcome development. Also, the introduction of real broadband in the shape of ADSL, after being delayed for several years! And it was nice for IrelandOffline to receive the Irish Internet Association Net Visionary award for social contribution, too.
On the downside, we have the sky-high cost of current ADSL offerings, with it costing two to three times more than elsewhere in Europe. There's also the continued lack of a true flat rate dial-up product which does away with on-peak off-peak differentiation for call charges. Then there's the complete underdevelopment of Ireland's cable network. I'm missing my gigabit college connection -- I've returned to 56k dial-up, paying per minute for the foreseeable future!
denise cox - Owner, All Real Good Internet & IIA Net Visionary 2002
For me, the trend in 2002 was the dramatic increase of what I consider to be junk e-mail in my in-box. But, I am resolutely against what I see as next year's trend - demand for ever increasing filtering of e-mail at the ISP and server side level. How do 'they' know what I do or do not want to receive? It undermines the whole integrity of a messaging system if what is sent is not guaranteed to be received. Legitimate e-mails can and do get caught up in filtering fervour. 'Small' matters such as filtering can lead to further privacy and liberties being taken away.
Generally I felt there was a shift towards realism. Projects weren't on such a grand scale, but neither were they here-and-gone at the speed of light. There were also less hushed whispers in the halls of business of dire news to come.
Yes, jobs were lost and profits were down, but it just felt as if it's developing into a realistic business to be in. The kind of business that grown ups participate in, put together business plans for and put time and effort into - in 2002 long term goals began to replace expectations of immediate results.
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