I have to report the sad news of the closure of my local IT dealer who, after many years of building up a trusted relationship, has felt directly the pressures on the economy and the ever tight margins on IT equipment. This is the second time in my working life I have seen a local dealer go under like this, the last being some 15 years ago, and that too was a sad time for me.

Building a relationship with a small local business over a long period can bring its rewards as they appreciate all orders, even the low margin ones, and are often keen to assist in issues larger companies would prefer to avoid. Building a rapport with the same person to a point where they understand the needs of your business, and can prompt you when you haven’t checked your stock levels from time to time or let you know of new relevant technology that complements your existing infrastructure, is also of great benefit.

Margins, in particular, are so tight on technology equipment these days it’s a wonder any tech company is making any money. Smaller companies can also act as a useful barometer giving you the best price first time where other company sales managers will often try the old “tell me what you pay and I’ll try and beat it” technique - a game I never play.

As you can probably tell, I am saddened to see them go, particularly when Christmas is just around the corner.

So, the Christmas tree is up, the kids have already been to see Santa with their lists, we have had snow on the ground and have been listening to carols on the radio whilst colouring in pictures of snowmen. As the kids are very little, one asked me, how many more sleeps ‘til Santa comes? My answer, oh, not many, just 32 more sleeps – “Is that a lot?” I am asked. Under the current economic climate it isn’t the most straightforward of questions to answer. Mind you, I had to smile – whilst at Santa’s Grotto one of the kids was asked “And what is your name little lady?” to which she replied “If you really are Santa then you already know my name” leaving Santa to squirm whilst Mommy tries to quietly mouth it without her noticing.

So what has all this got to do with technology? It reminds me how quickly time flies and how things change. I remember sitting down to write my technology predictions for 2008 last year where I put number one on my list as “Year of the Zune” – this year I am left thinking … what’s a Zune? Mind you, I fared a little better with number two “Budget ‘Back to Basics’ Laptops” – one out of five isn’t bad is it?

It’s time to start thinking about technology predictions for 2009 – but does any tech really stand out as being promising for 2009 – Pico projectors perhaps? Or will 2009 be a year of tightening up the belts, consolidating equipment and maximising the value of what we already have?

So Dixons issues a profit warning due to poor Christmas sales – not a surprise really. Dixons, at least in my little world, has an image of being quite expensive plus the days of nipping into one of their stores to look at potential purchases are long gone – so too has the impulse buy. We tried a high street retailer online service at Christmas but they couldn’t even get a simple order right and we ended up having to cancel it at the last minute because they seemingly couldn’t tell a black iPod dock from a white one – needless to say they aren’t high on our preference list anymore – not when there are a myriad of online vendors who can supply the same product quicker, cheaper and more reliably. The thing that never ceases to amaze me though is that these companies always seem to get the cash bit right – the money came out of my account almost instantly – if only service followed through as efficiently?

And in recent news, the Highways Agency is outsourcing its IT infrastructure. Outsourcing is one of those things that goes in and out of fashion. Initially, some high ranking bod in the upper eschelons of power decides that outsourcing is the way to go and let’s face it – it is very hard to argue against it if your core business activity is not IT related – and suddenly the contract is worth far more than the poor IT people, who have struggled thanklessly for years, could ever get their budgetary hands on. Then, after a few years a sense of detachment occurs, communication barriers breakdown, and the IT operation ends up being bought back inhouse under a new realm of empowerment – not that that is ever likely to happen in this case!

Strange as it may seem public sector organisations have apparently been losing data and now MP’s are calling for stricter powers and punishment for data security breaches. It also seems that these data losses may now be linked to job cuts with the unions indicating that job cuts on the horizon may put more data at risk. I would have thought that at its very core any public body that deals with public data would make the security of the data paramount and everything else would ripple out from there – haven’t they read the data protection act? Don’t these systems have auditing or authority control systems in place and if not why not? We are constantly being told, and as IT practitioners we are constantly telling others, to be vigilant in protecting our personal information online but what is the point of this if our important personal data is regularly being mislaid – we may as well put all our personal data onto MySpace. It certainly sounds like a good case for the national identity card – put all the data into one place then police it like crazy.