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It should come as no surprise to you or your customers that the outlook for the technology market in 2003 remains as rough as 40-grit sandpaper. Organizations continue to tighten their purchasing belts, and with the exception of the giants, most vendors are struggling to keep their heads above water.

Doculabs' consulting work with Fortune 1000 companies has helped VARBusiness identify some of the major technology trends for 2003. Some key trends we see emerging next year are: increased specialization in business solutions, increased competition from end-user organizations positioning themselves as solution providers, the need to optimize previous technology investments, sustained momentum in integration technology and continued consolidation in the marketplace. What follows is a discussion of how those trends will affect your businesses and your customers'.

Understanding what will be hot-and what will not-is only half the battle. For any solution-provider organization to compete effectively in 2003, it needs to know how to capitalize on trends. VARs also must position themselves to enable customers to address their key pain points. By focusing your efforts on the issues confronting your customers to help them succeed in a tight market, you won't just win the battle, you'll win the war. Solutions For Specific Business Problems

Organizations are searching for solutions that address not only horizontal business problems, but also highly specialized vertical-business problems. Facing yet another year of tight budgets, companies will continue to carefully justify their IT spending on new technology. That means organizations will be far less likely to purchase large-scale, horizontal solutions and will instead identify specific areas of pain (e.g., line-of-business challenges such as claims processing or accounts payable) and actively look for solutions that are easier to justify because they're designed to solve specific problems. The more specific a VAR's solution, the more likely it will attract business next year.

For example, organizations may not be able to justify purchasing a content-management product simply for the sake of establishing an enterprisewide platform for managing all content. However, design and implementation of a content-management system for a well-defined challenge, such as managing content for the company's product catalog, corporate Web site, or partner portal, will be an easier sell to the powers in charge. Smaller, well-defined projects will provide greater chances for success, offering greater project visibility, controllable costs, well-defined scope and shorter implementation timelines.

In response to customer demands for specialized solutions, many vendors have begun to package their technologies into editions, or applications, designed for specific problems. For example, content-management vendors such as Divine, Documentum, FatWire, FileNET and Vignette have packaged their products into solutions designed specifically for portals. Pleasanton, Calif.-based Documentum was at the forefront of the specialization trend and has numerous targeted solutions, including those for marketing, compliance and Web-content management. Similarly, Costa Mesa, Calif.-based FileNET offers insurance and mortgage-processing solutions in its content-management product line.

Vendors are also addressing increased demand for solutions specialized to vertical industries. Many of the vendors in the integration-technology space, for example, have added specialized functionality, including industry-process templates, data-access components and management tools for specific business processes in industries such as health care (to achieve HIPAA compliance), high-tech manufacturing (such as RosettaNet standards for processes and information-sharing) and brokerage in financial services (in the move to global straight-through processing). Microsoft, SeeBeyond, TIBCO, Vitria and WebMethods all feature prebuilt templates in their offerings for such industries.

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This article was written by analysts with Doculabs, a research and consulting firm that helps organizations plan for, select and optimize technology for their business strategies. Contact them at (312) 433-7793, info@Doculabs.com or at www.doculabs.com.