Welcome to Spring and hSo's first newsletter of the new decade.

Most predictions for IT, Telecoms and managed services over the last two years have been wide of the mark due to the tough economic environment and over optimistic predictions by vested interests. Many forecasters shouted about VoIP and SIP in the recent past; but the move to IP voice has been slow as people wait for the end of life of traditional PBXs before moving to IP PBXs - a situation we predicted several years ago.

Our predictions for the new financial year are again more subdued than many in the market - we cannot see the next big thing! Stock markets rebounded over the last quarter of 2009 and despite a slight dip at the start of the year, continue to recover. There is more confidence in the economy as a whole. We expect corporate IT budgets to increase this year. But where will people spend their money? The million dollar question.

We anticipate that IT departments will want to refresh their infrastructure having curtailed spending over the last two years. New servers and new PCs combined with Windows 7 release will open the corporate purse. But there will be pressure to control headcount and focus on doing things more efficiently, more effectively and more environmentally friendly.

We think that business will move to SaaS on a limited basis. We believe that those applications which are replaced will be put on virtual servers in a private Cloud. Public Cloud Computing will not be adopted by business, having seen some major failures in the last year.

Virtualisation may also benefit with the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme (CRC) coming into effect in April of this year with initial implications for over 20,000 organisations in the UK. Organisations can reduce emissions and increase business continuity by adopting Virtualisation and SaaS.

Merger activity will increase in the IT, Telecoms and managed services markets as organisations who do not offer a full portfolio of products find they are unable to meet customer demand for single source supply to avoid issues with demarcation points amongst multiple suppliers.

We at hSo believe that the rest of 2010 will be a good year for managed services in the IT and telecoms arena and a great year for hSo.

Chris Evans, Managing Director of hSo