Andrew Bartels

Tips and techniques in preparing tech market forecasts during the COVID-19 pandemic. Where to get data, how to form models, and where to scale back.

Tech spending forecasts revised amid “sharp deterioration” in the economic outlook.

Even before the threat of coronavirus, the US economy was poised for a slowdown in 2020. Slowing real GDP growth of 2% or less in turn will lead to slower growth of US tech budgets: from 4.5% in 2019 to 4.2% in 2020 and 4% in 2021, according to Forrester’s latest US tech budget forecast: […]

It is still too early to map out the full impact of the coronavirus (or COVID-19, as it is now called) on the global economy or on global tech markets. The disease has not yet run its course or been contained in China, and it could still pop up and spread in other countries. There […]

A series of economic and political uncertainties have CIOs scaling back spending.

Four reasons to be cautious about the role of AI in procurement.

We have just completed our Forrester Wave™ evaluation of source-to-contract (S2C) suites (“The Forrester Wave™: Source-To-Contract Suites, Q4 2019 — The 11 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up“). These S2C suites combine four related buy-side software products: eSourcing, contract lifecycle management (CLM), spend analytics, and supplier risk and performance management (SRPM). We […]

Which is the right choice: best-of-breed apps or application suites? This is a perennial question CIOs and business partners face in selecting application software. Forrester’s data on the ePurchasing software market — software that helps firms choose, contract with, buy from, and manage suppliers — shows that both options remain competitive. Indeed, it may well […]

Sourcing software helps firms create, organize, and manage sourcing events that will allow them to get the best deals on direct materials, indirect materials, and services. Generally, eSourcing software vendors fall into one of three market segments — source-to-contract suite vendors, eSourcing specialists, and industry/geographic sourcing platforms — and should be evaluated by their size, […]

European tech markets will experience slowing growth in 2020, according to Forrester’s latest forecast for the European tech market as a whole and for tech markets in the eight largest countries (“European Tech Market Outlook For 2019 To 2020” and “European Tech Market Outlook By Country For 2019 To 2020”). European business and government purchases […]

We expect tech spending to decrease in 2020. Read the details.

The Canadian tech market will grow in 2019 and 2020, but growth will slow from 6% in 2018 to 3.7% in 2019, according to Forrester’s report, “The Canadian Tech Market Outlook For 2019 To 2020.” The healthy growth of the Canadian tech market has largely been caused by an expansion in cloud services and government […]

Improving productivity has traditionally been a key justification for technology investments. However, trends in overall US productivity indicate that increases in tech spending no longer raise overall US productivity as much as in the past. Given that US firms have theoretically been investing heavily in digital transformation, the failure of overall US productivity to grow […]

 In my tech market forecasts, I am starting to see the intersection of two worrisome trends: Software subscription fees for multitenant SaaS or for single-instance hosted software are rising rapidly, with a growing percentage related to existing software as opposed to new and with a high percentage having fixed annual fees or fees tied to […]

Forrester has just published its 2019 industry outlook for US tech budgets, with forecasts for how firms in different industries will increase and allocate their spending this year (see the Forrester report, “2019 US Tech Budgets: Industry Outlook“). Our overall forecast of growth is 6.1% for US business and government spending on tech goods; services […]

Forrester has just published our forecast for US tech employment and compensation (see “2019 US Tech Talent Market Outlook”). It has some foreboding news for CIOs and for tech vendors: Tech talent will be harder to find and more expensive over the next two years. The good news is that the supply of tech workers […]

The US tech economy is starting to spread from major cities on the East and West Coasts to inland metro areas. This is great news for American cities, employers, and tech workers. Inland urban centers that were once considered flyover cities are now bustling with tech startups and incubators, as well as the tech workforces […]

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released its Q2 2018 report on US gross domestic product this morning, and it contained some surprises for the US tech market. Real GDP growth for the quarter was about what we expected: 4.1% on a seasonally adjusted annualized basis versus our assumption of 3.9% in our July […]

The Canadian tech market will grow in both 2018 and 2019, but growth will slow from 5% in 2017 and 2018 to 3.7% in 2019, according to Forrester’s report, “The Canadian Tech Market Outlook For 2018 To 2019.” These growth rates, while healthy, still lag the US tech market’s growth by a couple of percentage […]