We continue to expect the overall global economy and IT spending in particular to be more robust in 2004 than it was in 2003," EMC CFO Bill Teuber said. However, as we've mentioned many times before, we believe there won't be a steep acceleration in the economy, but slow and steady gradual improvement.
So dont expect things to pick up much next quarter. The storage vendors have given conservative guidance, perhaps because many were overly optimistic about this year. Indeed, the spending surge at the end of 2003 seemed to come mostly from budget flush -- followed by a guidance flush.
Dot Hill, Emulex, QLogic, and StorageTek all gave guidance after the fourth quarter that exceeded fourth-quarter revenues. None of them hit their mark. QLogic and Dot Hill slashed their estimates before they announced earnings (see QLogic Dives on Shortfall and Sun Dogs Dot Hill).
McData Corp. (Nasdaq: MCDTA) also revised its forecast for the first quarter of the year downward last month as the switch vendors CEO John Kelley admitted that previous guidance anticipated maintaining revenues from the fourth quarter of 2003 (see McData Slashes Guidance Again).
Selected First-Quarter Highlights
Bob Friday, Chief AI Officer for Juniper Networks, explains how the advanced technology is transforming operations.
Contact center leaders from 8x8, Awaken Intelligence, and 360insight discuss the importance of agent experience.
AI may force enterprises to rewire parts of their data centers so they are fully optimized to run such workloads. The question is do you use Ethernet or InfiniBand?
