Arvin Kamboj, Systems Consultant--Business Development at Foedero Technologies Inc. (at http://www.foedero.com), meanwhile, sees the most opportunity in the database market with DB2, calling it one of the strongest products IBM has to offer. According to Kamboj, "With all IBM's marketing efforts, I see WebSphere having a lot of opportunity in the Web Application Server Market. Java Development is also increasing slowly. I feel that as Java development becomes more popular, so will the demand for Web application servers like WebSphere. Kamboj goes on to say, "IBM Global Services has grown in popularity and is one of IBM's key revenue generators. Companies are tending to outsource their IT needs and are looking for total infrastructure solutions."

Sherry Weinstein of Eclipse Education, Inc. (at http://www.eclipse-education.com) splits the difference, saying, "The opportunities, I think, are evenly distributed between services and products. New functionality and integration capabilities will add an interesting spin to the third-party solution market. Lots of new toys typically mean lots of new pre-packaged solutions. As for the services sector, I also think that there will be ample opportunity to engage in some re-engineering efforts for existing applications. There are simply too many new tools available that add significant value/power/functionality to existing applications that can--and should--be implemented.

Equal opportunities for both services and products are also predicted by Nigel Cheshire, CEO of Teamstudio, Inc. (at http://www.teamstudio.com) and Phil Guirl, President of Stonebridge Holistic Consulting Agency, Ltd. (at http://www.stonebridgeholistic.com). Guirl goes on to say, "we produce an application (product) that we sell to small and medium sized businesses throughout the country. Along with the product we also get to sell some services. As our customer base grows, we sell more and more services. Please note, we aren't reselling IBM's software for them. We would, but there's no margin for resellers as small as us. We could sell one to three servers and 50 to 100 client licenses per month, but instead we send all of our customers to big chains like CDW for the IBM software. IBM offers us little guys absolutely nothing. It's a really worthless organization. It's a shame they bought Lotus, but on the other hand if they hadn't, Notes and Domino would probably be dead by now.

Chip LeBlanc, Director of OEM and Partner Programs at Endeca (at http://www.endeca.com) says that, "As a software company, we see a tremendous opportunity in integrating with IBM/Lotus technologies in the areas of collaboration, commerce, content, and enterprise solutions."

Tom Witkin of The SpeedWork Company (at http://www.speedwork.com) admits to be a bit biased on this question, as SpeedWork is a product company. Clearly, that's where they see their opportunity. "However," Witkin adds, "as adoption of products like SpeedWork grows through various hosted models, the distinction between products and services fades."