STKI Summit 2011

Today at STKI’s 18^th annual conference, 1,500 IT professionals heard five presentations showing the changes, intricacy and workings of the Israeli IT market. There were surprises and deep insights, which gave the attendees much to think about. STKI is the leading IT analysis company in Israel.

Dr. Jimmy Schwarzkopf presented his vision of the future for the next two years. Dr. Schwarzkopf showed the causes of the first technological implosion: PC Ecosystem; Client/server Ecosystem; LAN/WAN Ecosystem; Internet/Web Ecosystem; X86 Ecosystem and Relational DBMS Ecosystem, and the second technological implosion: Mobility Devices Ecosystem; Cloud Services Ecosystem; Analytic tools/appliances for data boom and Social Commerce Ecosystem.

Dr. Schwarzkopf spoke of the 5^th generation of computing, showing how cloud/mobility lead to democratization. Dr. Schwarzkopf maintains that social commerce and core applications, mobility devices and applications, data boom and analytics and hybrid cloud services all come together to form a knowledgeable economy. He called on CIOs to recognize and accept the game changers:

· Support business model innovation

· Consumerized IT and knowledge individuals

· Death of technology and multi-channel strategies

· Birth of business process and multi-touch point strategies

· Curated Computing

· Storage and bandwidth

· New OS for the Internet

· Hybrid, private and public clouds: BPaaS; PaaS; SaaS; IaaS

· Web 2 + 3

· Gamification

· Sensors

· New data base and analytic toolsNew generation of appliances

· Mobile Apps

· E-bizz

· New generation CORE applications

· IT and Marketing

The second part of Dr. Schwarzkopf’s presentation dealt with the ranking of 350 Israeli companies according to 200 categories. For the fifty-two vendor companies showing their products at the conference, as well as for all the other vendors present, this was the highlight of the conference and what they had all been waiting for.

The Israeli IT firms serve their clients in three different categories; very few of them are active in all three groups: hardware, software and the biggest of all, the value-added services. (see pictures included).

During the presentation all Vendor CEOs wait for the results of the tiers in the Value Added Services category. This is the category where the local integration and development companies compete.

Software and hardware categories are usually comprised of international vendors that import their hardware and/or software.

Galit Fein, the STKI analyst in charge of Office of the CIO, mobile and sourcing found that the Israeli culture differs from global demand, and therefore Israeli companies should not place too much value on results of international surveys.

Shachar Maor, STKI analyst in charge of security, networking and Green IT, says Cloud Computing is here to stay. Information Security is an EASY showstopper, but CISOs will have to be agile and creative in order to keep up with the trend.

Pini Cohen, the STKI analyst in charge of infrastructure and software development, draws attention to the huge amount of storage needed by Israeli companies according to his survey.

Einat Shimoni is the STKI analyst in charge of software applications.