Service Providers of the Information Society - for the Development and Offer of Own Services, Businesses Only Hesitantly Rely on Internet Platforms

Internet-based technologies and services are used diversely among the businesses in the economic sector service providers of the information society. Thus, internet platforms for the development and the offer of own applications and services meet with only little approval. In contrast, for the vast majority of the businesses, the occasional or even intensive usage of communication- and online-information services goes without saying.

This is the result of a business survey among service providers of the information society, conducted by the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), Mannheim, in cooperation with the credit reference agency Creditreform, Neuss, in March 2010 (details regarding the survey are provided below). Among the service providers of the information society are ICT service providers (businesses of the branches software and IT-services, ICT-specialized trade, as well as telecommunication services) and knowledge intensive service providers (businesses of the branches tax consultancy and accounting, management consultancy, architects, technical consultancy and planning, research and development, as well as advertising companies)

"The internet increasingly becomes established as a medium via which businesses can draw on various services and technologies. In doing so, a significant advantage is that they can access these services as needed but do not need to provide them themselves," explains Miruna Sarbu, researcher at the ZEW. The ZEW business survey, however, reveals that there are significant discrepancies among the businesses with regard to the usage of the services and applications. Over 80 percent of businesses access online-information services more or less intensively. Among these are, for example, business databases or benchmarking services, with the help of which businesses are able to compare themselves to their competitors. Communication services such as video- or web-conferences are employed frequently, too. About 41 percent of businesses occasionally or intensively access business software via the internet, and almost 34 percent retrieve storage capacity and processing power via the internet. There is so far still little demand for platforms for the development and offer of own internet-based applications and services. "Fewer than 23 percent of businesses of the economic sector indicate that they use these applications sporadically or intensively," says Miruna Sarbu.

The economic suvey conducted by the ZEW/Creditreform

About 900 businesses each participate in the quarterly survey. The economic sector service providers of the information society consists of information and communication technology-(ICT) service providers (businesses of the branches software and IT-services, ICT specialized trade and telecommunication services) and knowledge intensive service providers (businesses of the branches tax consultancy and accounting, business consultancy, architectural offices, technical consultancy and planning, research and development and advertising). An overview of the ZEW/Creditreform business survey is provided on the ZEW project site. For further information in German language only, please consult our homepage at www.zew.de/dienstleister.

Comment on the projection

To ensure the representativity of the analyses, the ZEW projects the answers of the participants of the survey with the number of all businesses in the branch considered.

For further information please contact

Miruna Sarbu, Phone: +49 (0)621/1235-334, E-mail: sarbu@zew.de