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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

IT Seeing Boost in Business as Firms Increase Awareness

IT Seeing Boost in Business as Firms Increase Awareness By CARLOS MARTINEZ Staff Reporter The Valley’s information technology companies, although experiencing only 4 percent growth in the past year, have more reason to be optimistic than many other tech sectors. Increased activity by hackers and virus writers along with more aggressive marketing by IT firms have been helping boost business in recent months, say analysts and IT firm owners. There’s also greater awareness by businesses of the importance of keeping networks safe, said Hugh B. Bishop, vice president of Aberdeen Group Inc., a Boston-based technology industry market research firm. “There are a lot more IT firms concentrated in the Valley and Los Angeles so the activity is greater there,” Bishop said. “Companies are starting to realize that their networks are the core of their business. If that goes down, they’re in trouble.” Bishop said this realization has made IT a greater priority than it ever had been before and is giving IT companies a boost not seen in nearly two years. IT firms’ increased advertising, cold calling and mailers have also been successful, Bishop added. “I’ve had people calling me up in hysterics asking us to check out their network,” said Phil Mogavero, president and CEO of Data Systems Worldwide in Woodland Hills, which has seen its business increase by 10 percent so far this year over the same period last year. Dave Jollota, chief operating officer of Quality Logic Inc., a quality assurance and IT firm based in Moorpark, said customers have long looked on IT as a low priority. “The thinking was that if there was some money, they could spend on IT, but when things got tough, it was the first thing that was cut,” he said. Today, IT has become a top priority for companies, some of which have learned the lesson the hard way, amid system failures and crippled networks from computer worms and viruses, Jollota said. Companies that were slow to upgrade their networks against viruses are now spending to get the latest virus protection and firewalls to safeguard against attacks, said Hormazd Dalal, president of Encino-based Castellan Inc. While companies try to safeguard their systems, they are also spending to improve and upgrade them to allow a network to continue operating even while it is being attacked.

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