Josep Valor, IESE professor
The current situation of economic uncertainty is changing perceptions about the pros and cons of ICT outsourcing. The advantages are becoming much more enticing, particularly in terms of financial benefits, management and flexibility, while the drawbacks are starting to blur as they escalate the pressure felt by many companies' technology directors.
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Study: DTT Yearbook 2007
Source: Impulsa TDT
Date: September 2008
Abstract: There were 7.7 million DTT (Digital Terrestrial Television) viewers in Spain in September, with coverage reaching 89.15% of the country's households. 12 million set-top boxes had also been sold. The difference compared to the number of televisions is basically explained by viewers having more than one TV in their homes and by the fact that some aerials have still not been adapted to the new broadcasting technology. The Beijing Olympic Games were an important boost for the popularization of DTT, although four of every ten Spaniards still do not know what the great analog shutoff is, and are unaware that it will take place in Spain in 2010. One of the main advantages of DTT is the increased number of channels available, which jumps up from an average of six to approximately 30, including regional and local channels. Other advantages stem from its capacity for interactivity, which enables activities such as e-commerce to take place, although at present these are barely being exploited, according to figures from the association. Impulsa TDT, the Association for the Implementation and Development of Digital Terrestrial Television, includes the majority of the broadcasting companies and is supported by the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade. Its activities include the publication of the DTT Yearbook, which was presented in April this year, two years before the end of analog broadcasts, which is popularly known as the "digital shutoff." The association is also responsible for the publication of monthly updates to the Yearbook, and both the updates and the Yearbook itself can be downloaded from the “Observatory” section of its website.
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Title: Information on e-commerce, Q1 2008
Source: Spanish Telecommunications Market Commission
Date: October 2008
Synopsis: In January, February and March 2008, online sales amounted to 1.192 billion euros. Particularly noteworthy were the rises in air transport, travel agencies and tour operators, with 10.7%, direct marketing, with 5.9%, and games of chance and gambling with 5.5%, according to the study.
Spanish companies involved in e-commerce noted an increase in domestic demand for their products to 5.6 million euros in transactions and a total turnover of 44.3 million euros. Orders from abroad also increased, by 47.7%, reaching a turnover of 569.1 million euros. 87.1% of these sales were to customers in EU countries, who were invoiced 495.5 million euros, and 7.5% were to US buyers, who were invoiced 42.8 million euros. Spain bought goods from online stores in other countries totaling 180.6 million euros.
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The economic recession is causing a reduction in technology investment and threatening Spain's progress in convergence with the European average for ICT use. “In 2008, Spanish companies are showing significant progress in the implementation of ICTs in general, but there are still significant indicators that reflect their lower level of development in comparison with the levels attained by leading European Union countries,” says AETIC, the sector's employers' association. Their message is clear: progress is being made, but more effort is needed. In fact, the housing-sector crisis means that the spotlight should focus to an even greater extent on ICTs, which can act as a “buffer for Spanish economic decline,” according to the May issue of TechWeek.
The problem is that the current explosion of the economic crisis is pushing the trend toward a contraction in corporate demand for technological equipment and a reduction in public investment. According to Miguel Sebastián, minister of Industry, Tourism and Trade, the “austerity” in the budgets of his ministry's orders for 2009 will not diminish its commitment to developing the Information Society. He is quoted in the magazine TICPymes, which nonetheless lists some figures that appear to contradict the minister's opinion: “The government will invest 1.512 billion euros in the development of the information society in 2009, six percent less than in 2008.”
If this combination of reductions in private and public demand finally takes place, it will have negative consequences for suppliers' operating accounts and, above all, will harm the competitiveness of the Spanish economy, which according to the report "Globalisation and the competitiveness of the euro area", published in September by the European Central Bank, is already one of the least competitive in the EU. This is precisely due to its technological disadvantage and an unfavorable institutional environment.
Articles in (Spanish): AETIC, TechWeek, TICPymes.es, ADSL Zone and Público.es 

Online activity by Internet users is diversifying, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to remember the range of online activities in which users participate. “Digital life assistants” have been created to solve this problem, and include personal home pages such as Netvibes, Bloglines, Google Reader, FriendFeed, Strands and others that bring together all of the online activities of an individual user. Although each of these tools has its own features, they are part of a Web 2.0 trend that has begun to be called lifestreaming. The term, which has become popular this year, returns nine million hits on Google and calls into question the role of blogs, chat rooms and the other ways adopted by users to relate virtually with their friends. According to Consumer magazine, they may be interesting to businesses to the extent that they are able to “use the advantages of lifestreaming services to unify and connect all their actions on the Internet.”
Articles in Revista Consumer (Spanish), 20 minutos (Spanish), Lifestream blog and Mashable.com 

In recent years, Spanish companies and the subsidiaries of multinationals operating in the country have been suffering from heavy pressure to relocate and reduce the work done at their plants. This is due to Spain's reduced competitiveness compared to the economies of emerging countries, which have lower costs. One strategy for halting this process is to encourage the accumulation of highly sophisticated know-how and advanced technological applications. Some institutions in Catalonia have adopted this approach in order to modernize industrial estates based around the automobile industry and make them competitive, making this pole a benchmark on the European high technology and automobile engineering landscape. 
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