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For those of us in telecom and tech, there is obvious concern about where the economy is headed - just like any other industry. The difference for us is we have seen a recent bubble burst and don't have the excess in our markets which other markets do. In fact in 2000, the dotcom bubble burst in March and the telecom bubble in November.

Most CEOs I speak with in our industry tell me tech and communications are among the best industries to be in for 2009 and beyond.

This of course does not mean we will see runaway spending next year. Company execs tell me they are cautiously optimistic. A few companies are actually looking forward to next year and are positioning themselves to take share from competitors who are generally weak due to poor branding and/or excessive debt.

In order to help you figure out what is happening in the market and what the global outlook is in the telecom and tech space for 2009, TMCnet has conducted its annual survey of purchasing from its online audience of 2-3 million monthly visitors.

We recently issued a press release on the results but I pasted some of the most interesting parts below for your perusal:

• A majority of TMCnet.com visitors, 66 percent, approve purchases, recommend products and determine needs.
• 24 percent have budgets of more than $500,000 for communications and IT purchases in 2009.
• 15 percent have budgets exceeding $1 million.
• 8 percent will spend between $251,000 and $500,000 in 2009.
• 15 percent have budgets of $51,000 to $250,000.

• 19 percent will buy wireless/mobility Solutions.
• 19 percent plan to buy network management products and services.
• 13 percent will buy service provider solutions, such as softswitch, SBC, Gateway, 3G and 4G.
• 11 percent will buy UC solutions.
• 11 percent  will buy PBX and IP/PBX solutions.
• 19 percent plan to make network management buys.

The survey on TMCnet.com revealed that nearly one-third of the respondents work for firms employing more than 1,000 employees, with 24 percent employed by large companies with work forces of 5,000-plus. TMCnet visitors hold senior executive jobs, with 33 percent in top-tiers of corporate and IT management. Another 16 percent are technical management and staff.

TMCnet.com is an information source for communications and technology professionals from around the world. Most visitors - 61 percent - are located in the United States and Canada, 13 percent are located in Europe and the Middle East, 5 percent are in Latin America, and 21 percent are in Asia, Australia and Africa.

If you are an iPhone or iPod Touch user and have been wondering when... Oh when will Rich Tehrani get an iMac in the hands (we are a PC shop) of his talented development and design teams so you can take the best of TMCnet on the go? Yes, we have a mobile site already at mobile.tmcnet.com but this is not really iPhone friendly.

Fear not - we are almost ready. Well I would say in soft Alpha really. The Interface looks good in my opinion but some pages are still not "pinchable" or expandable and there are some other formatting glitches we are working on.

There are a number of reasons for this but keep in mind we have thousands of various sites and millions of total pages. All of our various templates are being updated as you read this.

I hope you enjoy TMCnet on the iPhone. You can get to it at i.tmcnet.com.

iPhone.tmcnet.com is already taken by our iPhone news site by the way.

While many of you were busy in the malls this past weekend or trying to find the best price on that new digital camera yesterday on Cyber Monday, the dedicated team of designers and programmers here at TMC worked day and night and night and day to bring you a new look and feel.

Over the past years, many of you have told me that you love to come to TMCnet on a daily basis and the hundreds of stories and blog entries we write on a daily basis contain everything you need to navigate the telecom and tech worlds. At the same time, many of you have told us the interface TMCnet has looks busy. Others have told me it is not clear that 50-100 writers contribute to TMCnet on a  daily/weekly basis.

Our new redesign is meant to adress all of these great requests and we hope you enjoy the new TMCnet.

One last point... Thanks to the 2-3 million communications and technology decision makers who visit TMCnet monthly and thanks to the TMC team for doing such a great job on this redesign. I should also mention this redesign is ongoing and is still being rolled out over our millions of pages. If you see something that you think can be improved, please drop us a line.

Happy Thanksgiving and I hope you have a wonderful long weekend of eating, relaxing and spending time with your families. TMC officially closes at 4:00 PM EST today so if you need us, please keep his in mind. Normally we close officially at 5:30 BTW.

For my international readers, please have a great work week and weekend.

Like many of you, many of us work all weekend so we will be online as needed.

Again, have a healthy and happy holiday!

Happy Thanksgiving!

If we don't answer the phones or email for the next hour or so it is because we are enjoying the TMC Thanksgiving Pot Luck Lunch here at TMC HQ. This is a many-year-old tradition and we wish you were here to enjoy it with us.

This is a TMC team-member driven event where each person brings in some sort of food. Cookies, cake, etc. At the end of the event, any remaining food is given to the local food bank to support the underprivileged in the community.

After my bearish testing comments, I was happy to learn Spirent is doing better than expected in a tough market. Where is the company looking for growth? Wireless, carrier Ethernet, data center developments, and the automation of lab-based testing processes. Of course things can change but the company seems to be focusing on helping its customers get the maximum productivity out of the systems it has.

In this economic climate of course, this makes a good deal of sense.

Cisco is taking extraordinary measures to cut costs and has had its first ever 4-day shut down to conserve money. Generally this is a good thing to do but in this case, investors are nervous and not acting rationally and the stock is don almost 6% so far today. There is obviously continuing deterioration in world financial markets and Cisco's move is smart.

What is not mentioned in this report is the fact that this is the first time in my memory that Cisco is in a macro environment where little to no hiring is being done. So shuttering plants worldwide does not lead to mass defections to other sectors which are hiring.

This is perhaps one of the few silver linings in a dark cloud.

Om Malik has salient comments on the matter and points to a lack of 2009 visibility. I agree with Om.

I have a job where I get paid to listen to many smart people and then use the vast amount of information I amass in my neurons and put it to good use (well, after I have had some coffee anyway) . Many times when speaking with many of my readers, I get good ideas and one of my more recent ones was to put together a company which amasses patents in the hopes of using them to defend against patent trolls and other companies.

Let's face it, the game is rigged. Large companies which are more established, own patents - either organically created or via acquisition. Some of these patents are solid and innovative but many are downright silly and overly broad. Of course that is just one person's opinion.

Having said that - as a person who thinks allowing small companies the ability to come up with great ideas, put them to use and make life better for their investors and consumers, is a good idea - I applaud the fact that a new company has been created with the goal of becoming a patent protection club.

I should mention that if I worked at a large telco, I would be suing everyone who competed with me and infringed my patents. This is common sense and understandable. But until someone appoints me the CEO of Verizon or AT&T (a long shot after HR reads this post) I think any sort of protection a small company can get from a larger company - especially as it equates to patents, is good to have.

So I present to you a new company I just learned about and one that took my idea and ran with it --  the RPX Defensive Patent Aggregation service. It is worth pointing out, I can't necessarily endorse the company as I don't know much about them. What I can endorse is the idea that a bunch of companies looking to make products which consumers and businesses need, now have an insurance plan to protect them from being sued into submission my a cadre of larger companies doing what is in the interest of their own shareholders.

But even today, I still get the childhood sense of wonder as I witness markets evolve.

We are seeing things we never thought we would see - phones with the power to replace computers, speech recognition systems which allow users to search the web with their voice and software which allows a phone to determine what music is playing and that can determine what an album cover or book is, just by taking a photo of the cover.

And it is just getting started. I wish I could transport forward one decade or more to see how the future generations communicate. I won't be surprised to see baby rattles replaced with waterproof baby phones which allow parents to check on the baby via embedded cameras while the infant enjoys soothing sounds and images emanating from the same device.

To help you along the journey towards discovering this brave new world of next generation communications, TMC has partnered with Alcatel-Lucent to provide you with your very own news-rich Global Online Community focused on next generation communications which we hope you will find infinitely useful.

In order to keep up with the wealth of information in the space, the TMC editorial team and the brightest minds at Alcatel-Lucent will be working around the clock and covering the next-gen communications market, giving you the stories you need and want to be aware.

At the moment, there are some very useful feature articles worthy of your consideration. For example, as carriers embrace the transformation to IP, a dedicated article on the topic is a must read. Likewise an article on how Web 2.0 and other technologies will create wealth - as it did in the industrial revolution, is thought provoking.

There is more and the GOC is organized into enterprise and carrier news allowing you to further delve into specific areas of coverage such as education, energy, finance, hospitality and more. In the carrier space you can find information which is technical, strategic or focusing on the user experience.

I would like to personally welcome Alcatel-Lucent to TMCnet and I am confident the content found on this community will be some of the most thought-provoking and useful you will find anywhere. As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments.

Tomorrow I will be attending IMPACT NOW 2008 -- an event hosted by ScanSource and proudly sponsored by TMC. This event has some absolutely incredible speakers and I am looking forward to learning a great deal and most of all, networking with the reseller community who are always so insightful.

I hope to see you there.

Here is the agenda:

Disney's Coronado Spring's Resort Orlando, FL
DAY 1 Location: Coronado H
2:00pm - 3:30pm	Powerful Disney Institute Workshop on Building Leadership Within Your Company
3:45pm - 5:15pm	Powerful Disney Institute Workshop on Strengthening Customer Loyalty
6:30pm - 9:30pm	Blow-out networking bash at the Hard Rock Live at Universal Studios
DAY 2
7:00am - 8:30am	Breakfast - Coronado Foyer
8:30am - 9:00am	Kick-off and Welcome from ScanSource, Inc. CEO Mike Baur - Coronado H
Perspectives on New Opportunities from Leading Vendor Executives   Track 1 Location: Fiesta 5 POS/Barcoding/Security Track 2 Location: Fiesta 6 Communications 9:10am - 9:40am Epson Avaya 9:50am - 10:20am Zebra AudioCodes 10:30am - 11:00am Axis Aruba Networks 11:10am - 11:40am Motorola Dialogic 11:40am - 3:40pm EXPO & LUNCH - Veracruz B&C 3:45pm - 4:15pm Intermec Extreme Networks 4:25pm - 4:55pm Cisco Polycom 5:05pm - 5:35pm Honeywell Juniper Networks
5:45pm - 6:45pm	Interactive Q&A with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak Location: Coronado H