The recently released IDC study states that in planning their IT budgets, European companies are moving away from cost control strategies towards strategic applications to gain competitive advantage.

Around 48% of respondents consider corporate management and IT departments to be the most influential in the final decision for the implementation/enhancement of important IT solutions.

According to the experts crucial for effective go-to-market strategies is the understanding who decides on the level of IT budgets, the implementation/ enhancement of important IT solutions, and a specific vendor or brand.

Just over 50% of respondents are using external consultants to support their IT decisions, but there are significant differences between verticals. 71% of banks rely on external consultants, while this falls to 34% in the discrete manufacturing sector.

The area with the fastest purchase decision process is network hardware; for more than 44% of respondents the purchase decision process for network hardware is less than one month.

According to another IDC release, the enterprise storage semiconductor market will pass the $1 billion mark in 2005, an 18.5% jump from 2004 when the market will rise to $857 million.

"The market for semiconductors within enterprise storage equipment continues to evolve as the demands for networked storage grows," said Sean Lavey, program manager for Semiconductor Research at IDC.

In the security field, one of the latest phishing threats was the fraudsters' use the eBay (www.ebay.com) web site to solicit payments from successful auction bidders.

The danger is increasing because the fraudsters make use of eBay's system to send questions to any user who is selling items, enticing them to pay for a recently completed auction on which they placed bids, or to make a "second chance" offer at winning a lost auction.

Netcraft says that the traditional eBay frauds have involved using a compromised eBay account. The fraudsters make the scam look more plausible by setting up a number of illicit eBay user accounts. One of these accounts is used to sell items, which are then instantly purchased for a small price by the remaining accounts.

The accounts were then used from the phishers to sell nonexistent items and collect payment through instant cash transfer services. Now the fraudsters are requesting payment for items sold by other users.

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