IDC: 'The ecommerce outlook is rosy'

IDC is putting the "final touches" to its forecasts for expenditure on IT hardware, software and services for the next four years, for publication this month.

One trend that can be drawn from the research is that spending on ebusiness, a major proportion of corporate IT expenditure up to March last year, is now on the upturn in Europe.

In particular, IDC is seeing a lot of customer relationship management (CRM) projects.

Speaking to silicon.com Marianne Kolding, director of IDC European Services Group, said: "A lot of organisations ran scared last year after the fall from grace of ecommerce, but we don't believe they've shelved projects for good, but are thinking more clearly about how to proceed. We expect to see a lot more activity from the middle of this year."

This year, IDC has strictly defined ebusiness to only include those CRM, supply chain automation (SCA) and e-procurement projects that involve linking the company to the customer or the business partner using IP technology.

Sales force automation, supply chain forecasting projects or web-enabled enterprise resource planning applications don't count.