Is the Time Right to Buy IT from Startups?
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The anxiety among larger companies to buy expensive IT and networking gear from tech startups seems to be abating. |
Following the dot-com bust, big businesses shied away from buying technology from small companies; they worried that the newbies might go belly up and leave them in the lurch. They returned to a stable of known providers. But, a growing number of IT buyers are showing newfound courage, and acquiring technology from tech startups, according to a story Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal (subscription required).
The Journal reports that many of these startups market products to solve new business-technology challenges, including the best way to store video data and moving bits and bytes across networks bogged down by multimedia apps.
The startups seem to offer more cutting-edge and imaginative solutions than established companies, and IT buyers are willing to gamble on them as the memory of the dot-com bust fades. "The old guard equipment guys are having to think about more than just equipment [and] they're having to think about software and video," Gartner research analyst Joe Skorupa told the newspaper. "They aren't used to thinking in those terms."
The upshot, the article concludes, is a surge in business for many small tech companies. And, that's contributing to an overall surge in the tech-networking industry.
