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IT Trends In and Out of Downturn
An anonymous reader writes "Washington Post has an interesting article talking about how IT industry is changing its business models to survive (IBM: "Pay As You Save"; HP: universal printer driver; Consulting weak; Oursourcing booming), as well as how outsiders view the downturn (Merrill Lynch: it's just another bust after PC and mainframe, but the good thing is, "each 'wave' has so far represented a tenfold increase in the number of technology users."). I'm particularly interested in the outsourcing story. It might explain why IBM will benefit and other vendors like Sun Microsystem which don't have a strong service arm will suffer."
subliminal message there guys?
Sent from your iPad.
Well, don't ask EDS about it. And IBM seems to be a little sheepish on it, too. Outsourcing IT doesn't appear to be very strong lately, either. I don't know why that'd be focused on as a strength. (Although comparitavely, it isn't THAT bad as other things.)
The problem with outsourcing arrangements is that companies only see savings at the beginning of the arrangement. Sure, they get to fire their expensive permanent employees. But guess what happens when something breaks? You end up with people who don't know how that particular company does business. I've seen this happen in three places. Average problem resolution goes from hours to days as users and staff try to figure out which call center halfway across the country to address their problem to.
If I wasn't afraid of having to post at 0 again I would have made a lewd joke about having a strong service arm. Moderation works!
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
There's the oxymoron of the day: "Save as you spend". Wow.
1. You get what you pay for, and good help is hard to find. Getting good constant support coverage is expensive.
2. Scale can help. Like insurance spreading the cost can help manage bumps, and smooth out the actual required resources.
By outsourcing you could save money by not buying more service then you need, and even lower your support if all you need is someone 'on call' incase "something happens".
But like any pooled asset, there will be times it isn't available, and it isn't like having a dedicated team to take care of stuff
"I don't think the computer industry will truly mature until 2015, 2020," he said. I don't understand where this comment fit into that article. BUT - I do not believe this at all. The technology industry changes each and every day, I don't believe that it will "mature" at any time, if at all.
I'm in a services organization and business is poor right now.
Yes, service orgs make lots of PR for each signed deal, but they are over many years and sometimes they get cancelled in advance of completion.
Also, services have more costs associated with them than do software or hardware sales.
To some extent, accounting of service contracts can be misleading by both front-ending the benefits and by buying other service orgs to obtain their profits but spreading out the acquisition costs.
It's not a comfortable business to be in right now.
this is not a sig
If no one is investing in things and everyone wants to stick with what they have now because there is no compelling reason to replace stuff, does this mean the MS.Net initiative is trying to fill a hole that doesn't exist?
Me thinks so. You could throw Palladium on that pile as well.
This space for rent.
The computer techs shouldn't need to know the business.
The business or 'customer' should clearly specify their requirements. The techs should build it.
If they just guess at your requirements they need to know the business to get a good guess, project takes too long, everything's a mess and the end solution sucks.
Yes I work in design, yes I know nobody does it this way, but they should.
Companies outsource because they don't have the political will to control costs themselves. So they pass it off to another company like IBM.
The result is usually the reduced cost you were looking for and severely reduced service levels.
I once consulted for a very large Insurance company, which decided to outsource it's legacy IT staff, approximatly 300 people.
About a third of them left and they were the most knowledgable, each averaging 20 years experience on the systems they maintained.
A small modification that might take any of them a day to build, test and install would take me three weeks. (it's hard to compete with 20 years of domain knowledge).
Skilled IT workers are not assembly line workers. Outsourcing should be for easily replaced resources.
Heck, I'm 27 now -- at 40yrs of age, I should definitely be considered mature by then. Does that mean my mom can still tell me to act my age?
The biggest shaker will be destruction of copyright, then patent laws. IT will have to be more service oriented.
By incompetent mangers and they will have no recourse.
right? Well if the telco's really wanted to make some money, here's what they should do.
Make a new phone that can connect to a bbs and play Legend of The Red Dragon, Pimp Wars, send fidonet mail, and download and read a qwk packet.
This way the Gamers would re-learn bbs technology, and it would spur millions of local and even perhaps (on a good bbs) long distance calls.
Ah, but now someone (suit) will now probably copyright (greedy bastard) my idea. SO....I would like to release this idea under the GNU public license right now. This idea is open source. Who will jump on it first?
if they want to provide the conectivity and make money off that... fine. But the bbs (stay away)
Okay, does anyone else see a problem with this? First, an analysis of the tech market from a stock analyst. Second, the analyst in question works for a company under investigation for bogus analysis of market trends(click)? .NET propaganda. Oh wait, I suppose that Merril Lynch is in bed with Microsoft too.
Third, as I don't quite remember the pc boom, or the mainframe boom as being discussed by stock analysts, shortly after whatever previous bust I am even more likely not to believe this. Especially when the speil for the next great major advancement sounds like
Outsourcing is efficient and necessary. A company ,or a team within a company, should have one specialty. When a sales team starts spending time learning graphic design or IT your wasting money training people to do something they aren't good at and probably don't want to do. If you hire a designer because you need one for the current project, your going to lose money when you don't need her any more. If you outsource the design, and learn enough that you don't get screwed, you get an expert, you don't pay benefits, payroll taxes, or termination costs; your team stays flexible and focused on their specialty.
But what if some one leaked some important data to rivals ?.
What if M$ uses all data to their operations.
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
From my experience Sun does excellent support. Not that they can touch IBM, but who can ? But both SUN and IBM are miles above HP/COMPAQ in terms of onsite technical expertise, and documentation. Rarely does IBM or SUN ever call in 2nd level, and I've never had them need a 3rd person, the 'NEW' HP guys need an assistant to call in help...It has been a LONG while since I dealt with an HP Unix system so I can't comment on support there.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Generalizing somewhat, there are FOUR options for a company currently in "high tech".
One - Sell hardware. Generally billed once, though often financed and perhaps with a "support package" attached
Two - Sell "software". Usually licensed with an annual "maintance" agreement in addition (speaking of enterprise software - in consumer terms this is the annual or bi-annual upgrades/updates that you have to pay for)
Three - Sell a "service" (think ASP's, telcos, ISPs - generally billed on a periodic basis - often monthly, but also quarterly or yearly plans exist).
Four - sell "consulting" or services. This is further subdivided into "project work" or "outsourcing". Projects are generally of a limited duration and for a specific purpose, outsourcing usually involves the takeing over a company's IT staff, equipment, and processes - and is generally of a very long term duration.
There are, of course, variations to all of the above - but these are a basic choices that a company today faces - and all of these are driven in tandem by corporate needs.
New software usually meant new hardware, plenty of services needs, and lots of projects and outsource contracts to go around.
However, we are still suffering from the combination of Y2K, the "dotcom bust", and diminishing returns on technology investment (or at least the PERCEPTION of diminishing returns).
Y2K caused many large corporations to move up spending - which they had planned to do in the past two-three years, to 1999 so as to put new software and systems in place in advance of Y2K. In the course of doing this major corporations also steamlined and simplified their internal systems - often reducing by 50% or more the number of applications they supported internally.
Further, many corporations standardized on fewer platforms - and reduced variation within their corporations.
In 2000 it appeared that perhaps the "Internet boom" would be the driver of future investment in a post-y2k world - and indeed many corporations spent a lot of money on Internet/e-commerce projects - however though a lot of money was spent on these projects, and some companies did see big gains - far less money was spent on Internet projects than had been spent on ERP or other similar enterprise wide projects.
Further, as a new field - most of this money was spent on consultants and projects. Some was spent on services (hosting packages, additional T1s etc) - but less spent on software packages or additional hardware.
Software companies and hardware companies alike have not, in general, offered compelling new systems that provide powerful reasons for additional investment - corporations look at the desktops and servers that they have, note that most of their systems are underutilized, and see little reason to return to regular upgrade cycles - rather they see little to be gained from expensive upgrades - and much to be said for focusing their resources on using what they already own.
So, this in turn, means that corporate internal resources are increasingly available for internal projects - reducing still further the need for outside consultants on a project basis.
What then is the solution?
First - technology is driven by providing VALUE - i.e. providing systems that help people make money (by saving them money or making people more productive). Software vendors should focus on what their tools "really" need to do - and make compelling enhancements in those areas.
Second - We may be seeing a transition from a mostly growth industry to one that will be more stable - there is still money to be made, but annual growth rates of 30+% are probably a thing of the past.
Third - companies should focus on building long term value added relationships with their customers - if you make your client money on an ongoing basis, that is generally a recipe for continued and mutually profitable business - in the "internet boom" many service/consulting firms forgot this - they made money, but their clients just lost money - now those clients are often reluctant to spend further funds with those firms (if the firms are even still around).
So what do I suggest - focus on value added, focus on building systems that customers want, and offer them in a model that both you and your customers gain value (i.e. don't price in such a manner than it is impossible for your client to make money, or conversely don't price your products, services, software, or consulting below what you need to make profit - neither route leads to long term success.
As the president and founder of a software and consulting firm started in 2000 I have observed this up close and personally - at present, my firm is focused on out consulting practice - looking at how we can continually add value to our clients - and still make money doing so.
-- Join us in Chicago May 1-4th for MeshForum -- writer, historian, tech geek, entrepreneur, internet junky since '91 --
This industry is shooting itself in the foot by bringing out a new 'technology' every 7.5 seconds.
Companies might start spending more on Information Technology if there were just a few months stability in the industry such that the media and C*O's can learn what's available, actually understand what things like 'XML' are, what it can do for them etc. and get round to planning ahead.
At the moment, this is industry is doing everything but helping C*O's see ahead by bombarding them with new whiz bang mega hyped new 'technology' all the time.
Let's just chill for a bit.
A little intro, I was one of the many that got laid of in IBM essex last year. There were about 6000 of us in all. Roughly 1/3 - 1/2 the engeniering work force.
IBM will survive because of it's products. Not services. The IBM service model is based entirley on the Hardware that it sells. The reason people are buying into it is because it is like insurance. Pay IBM a smaller amoutn and if anything tragic happens they will fix it. If nothing happens you are not out as much money as if you kept a full time person to deal with your IBM mainfrane systems.
I'm tired and sick (with a cold not mentally) so that's all I have to say. IBM will live or die by it hardware. It's service arm is only part of the PR machine.
Important Stuff:
A big story around here involves CSC laying off a few thousand people who had been working as part of a huge ($1B) contract that involved outsourcing numerous IT functions for United Technologies Corp (UTC). Reading the press coverage, it looks like a classic outsourcing problem: The project scope widens as the competitors bid each other down. Ultimately, some lucky company finds themselves as the winner[?] of a huge obligation to supply all kinds of services for a price may not be realistic. Quite frankly, I find it hard to believe that traditional IT departments could ever waste as much money as the outsourcers claim they can save.
There is a time and place to outsource certain functions, but these comprehensive deals are for the birds. To me, the key is an exit strategy. If you don't have enough non-outsourced resources, you can never fire the outsourcers. You can expect service and price to shift from the ultra-competitive model of the intitial contract to the "gotcha" model of the renewal.
I worked for the State of Connecticut in 1998. At the time, Governor John Rowland was most anxious to outsource all of state government IT. He was already despised by the state labor unions, and this was simply the icing on the cake. Rowland campaigned very hard to convince a skeptical legislature that big money would be saved. In the end, one of the largest outsourcing proposals in history collapsed when Rowland realized that the bidders were promising savings in later years, and there was zero (or negative) savings in the early years. By the time those years arrived, the alleged "savings" would be mostly funny-money comparisions based on hypothetical pie-in-the-sky projections. If Rowland could have saved a single dollar up front, he would have happily taken the deal if for no other reason than to screw the unions. Outsourcing has been a tough sell in this area ever since. When you can't fool the politicians, who is left to fool?
This idea of pooled assets is only effective if the pool of assests is accessable to everyone on a fair baisis. Many insuriance companies don't save people money they just make sure one day of bad luck (lightning strike) doesn't kill the company. But this is not always true. Example: I worked at a computer repair location and most home owners insurance would only cover lighting strikes on computers if it could be positively known that it was lightning that did the damage and they wanted my company to sign off on the cause of damage. Of course we can't say that it was lightning so... "sorry mam it could have been your negligence that cause the damage so there's nothing we can do"
Sex is what happens when people think no one else will ever find out
Economics tells us that when an entity chooses to specialize and excel at a particular thing, not only does it maximize its own profit potential, but it also makes the competitive environment better through comparative advantage. Why should a widget company develop or even maintain its own technology staff when there are companies out there (pick one, IBM, HP, Microsoft, etc) who produce products and service offerings that will do it better than that company will ever be able to. All the technologists out there I am sure have seen this. Ever worked for or with companies that are out of their league, hire or maintain a technology staff, and almost ALWAYS outsource to consultants in the end because they don't know what they are doing? What the big players are doing is commodotizing this need by providing software packages that don't require ground-up programming. The consultant is still needed to implement and customize, but the "employee" or the "Dilbert" in-house shlep's days are numbered.
GetTheJob.com : Nothing but Real Jobs.
All my laid off IT buddies lamented the no support after you buy the box phenomiumum and resorted to chargingGrandma for her middle of the night tech support calls. Not much help for the linux crowd unless Grandma calls you at 2 am to ask for (eek) -WINDOW$- tech support
-888 Geek Help (888-433-5435)
Before anybody mods this up I think it is a 'bot of some sort pulling quotes from different places. It is just a bunch of buzzwords and cliches we have heard a million times put together to look like an intelligent post. I don't see anything in here original, informative, or insightful. Please mod this accordingly.
Having worked for both a company that outsourced services and a company that handled outsourced services, I've seen both sides of the spectrum.
Companies need to learn what to outsource and what not to outsource. My personal opinion is that large scale projects need to be internal, with only small, specialized sections outsourced to the appropriate firm.
Small business can benefit immensely from handing off, for example, their websites and design services instead of bringing those services in-house. But does a large, multinational firm really benefit from turning these services out to another company? More than likely not, and in the long run it will cost them more.
The last company I worked for handled the website and design services for several large companies, on top of many smaller businesses. The large companies spent, on average, $300-400k per yer for web management and design, whereas the smaller firms only maxed out at around 12-40k per year. Proportionally these services where the same. The larger firms would have benefited from hiring and keeping internal these services.
Just my $0.02.
-===- "Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserver neither" -===-
You'll know when the software industry matures. It is when the next release of a product introduces more new features than new bugs.
If you're only running Exchange? Sure. But we used to use Lotus Notes, and it was used for several important applications. Our Notes admin knew a LOT about the business by the time we finished building it. I'd build the backend in SQL, he's build the front end in Notes, and we could move data either way.
And, equally important - if he doesn't know the business, why the hell not? It'll make filtering spam easier, it'll let him know the best times to do maintenance on the servers (one of my Unix servers was turned off for 3 months out of the year!), etc, etc. It also helps the admin add value to what he does - "wouldn't it be handy if you were emailed every ?"
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
There will be no IT turnaround in 2003. Let me repeat that: THERE WILL BE NO IT TURNAROUND in 2003. So what your telling me is that if the economy rebounds in 2003 that suddenly the IT spending floodgates will open wide? All the .commers can come back? I think it will be even worse that that: companies are currently learning that they can live without the latest and greatest. Which means, of course, that when the economy does come back, that big companies (HP, SUN, IBM) aren't going to get the big IT paychecks they think they're going to get. Which means of course, that all these layoffs are more or less permanent.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
Sun's position in the marketplace is really starting to slide and not having a strong service division is the least of their problems.
I work for a company that is Sun reseller, and recently they have been adding more bureaucracy and "rules" to their resellers. This causes the sales force to waste a lot of time and limits them from achieving a better sales position. Recently Sun "required" us to send a sun certified tech to a new product announcement in a town 8 hours away. This three day trip was a complete waste of time as the same knowledge could be obtained in one hour of reading information off their site and spend the remaining time billing hours to clients.
Sun is also slitting its own throat with their pricing. Several year's ago they use to argue price/performance, which was a strong argument for their products. Now with the improvements and wider sector approval of Linux, they can't make that argument. The only area where they have any strength in the marketplace is the very high end server and possibly security for the types that like to have a company behind a product. There market for the most powerful 5% isn't that small, and I think its only a matter of time before other products overtake them in the price department.
If an actual requirement is transfering 37 MB files this should be addressed.
A shared directory or server of some sort is likely possible to solve that requirement.
Or you should have them explain why this is a requirement and if modifying behaviour is the appropriate answer.
Having some knowledge of what goes on is valuable, but not nearly as important as the design requirements themself.
Out sourcing, consulting, internal hiring, whatever, I don't care what works as long as it gets me a developer job so that I can be like the guy in the Monster.com commercial sniffing my business card all hard when no one is looking.
And it was so.
This may sound a bit trollish, but I mean it more in a Devil's Advocate sort of way... Could the fact that this 'downturn' is lasting so long have anything to do with the majority of tech writers/industry pundits/whatever continuously writing articles of doom for the tech industry? I mean come on, anyone that is reading a column like that on a regular basis already KNOWS it's going to take a while for IT spending to pick back up, for companies to rediscover the value of their IT dept, from the PC techs to the UNIX security admins. It's almost like these writers are practically trolling for hits themselves, isn't it? Let's face it, reading the tech news online is just as monotonous as watching eMpTyVee or CNN.
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
If some function can be outsourced to a cheaper finality than internalizing it, that is what will happen. No one is concerned about value or excellence, just what is cheapest. I'm not trying to be cynical, I am simply stating that businesses will take cheap over good.
I think, however, that you could do something like that on a ala cart basis. Outsource stuff piecemeal. Remote 3rd party backup, remote 3rd party network monitoring, etc... The customer expectations are different that level. The interface issues are smaller and more manageable. And in more narrow specialties, you have a better chance at getting ecnonomy of scale.
Thanks for your vote of support, Archfeld. We aren't IBM and thank goodness for that. I'd be outa here so fast if that were to happen, poor IT job market or not.
I've spoken to enough IBMGS folks out in the field when they call in for Sun/Solaris support to know I wouldn't want their jobs.
The trick is getting competent outsourcers with sound business principles.
Not easy, but they are out there.
We outsourced some stuff. Then, when it was all successful and all the powers that be decided to insource it. Here's the result...
It was outsourced for $1 million to develop, and exactly $580K/year to run. There were 2 in-house project managers assigned for 20-40% of their time. The few outages we suffered were all corrected 100%, far, far, within the timeframe terms of the contract. Upgrades and changes were T&M, a phone call away, and done on a 2 month upgrade cycle. Ongoing change budget was about $20-40K/year. The contract was renewed each year, and the project was live 5 years.
It was insourced for $4 million to develop, and has an ongoing group budged of $1.2 million/yr. It drives, we think, from about $200K/yr in Corporate (shared) infrastructure expenses. We've had full day outages, about once a month. We don't dare ask for many changes. The smallest change request takes months, is ALWAYS met with a request for $20K or more in funding, and the rollout ends up with the sites offline far in excess of anything we've ever experienced with the outsourcers.
Bottom Line
Outsourcers SHOULD be cheaper than any in-house effort. They should be dedicated to the task you seek to have done, their people should have far more experience than you can ever hope for, and have the advantage of scale. Your outsources should be "on topic" and they should be able to show you existing production along the lines of what you're trying to do.
When it comes to specifications, they should be able to help you understand and tailor their existing systems and tools to fit your needs. Anyone that demands you send them a XXX page "spec" for them to implement to the letter should be PROMPTLY discarded.
Why discarded? Because ground zero development is always best done in-house. Outsourcers can have no prior experience in such, no scale. But, they surely do bring another copy of management overhead expenses to the table.
But even if they offer an existing solution set to what you need, if they are running their business just as poorly as you are, then you get screwed. Many, like EDS et. al., burn all ends of the candle. The seek the cheapest employees (low level, high turnover) and thus are probably less bright than just pulling people off the street. They have no shame in "locking you in" then squeezing you for all you're worth. Etc.
Bad business? Yes. Do they lose customers? Yes, but there's another being born every minute. The sad part is they're poisioning the market's view of an entire industry.
Does your outsourcer have a long term or short term view? Does it serve it's employees well enough that they stay and continue to grow on topic?
Last, and not least... Are you a big enough customer to maintain influence? Are you funding the effort fairly? If you'd pay $1 million to do something in-house, you shouldn't feel all too secure in suckering someone in to do it for far less.
In the MBA world mature means the industry has stopped growing in sales volume (read $$$$), it has nothing to do with technology. It also means whoever is left is just slugging it out for market share. Think laundry soap or soda crackers for examples of mature industries.
To be clear...
"Good Business" - both sides end up feeling the relationship was equitable.
"Bad Business" - one side, or the other, end up being, or feeling they were, taken advantage of.
"poorly run business" - a business that is willing to engage in bad business.
I bring this up because the masses of MBA being churned out are taught maximizing profit is the definition of "good business". That is, however, a new age viewpoint that actually ends up driving most modern companies into doing significant bad business.
What I don't get about outsourcing is how its less expensive, especially at the operational level.
Based on the zillions of meetings we've had with the honchos, on-site help desk functionality is manditory. OK, how is it *cheaper* to have someone else come in and piss of the users than to hire someone to do it as an employee?
An outsourced employee's wage is likely on par with their niche, so you're paying that *AND* you're paying the rather large markup that the outsourcing company charges.
I can believe that an outsourced employee might in special circumstances bring higher level of technical knowledge, but that's seldom valuable in an operational situation, usually in a planning or roll-out situation.
My understanding from the conversations I've had with PHBs is that outsourcing was a big deal in the mid-90s, but a lot of places got burned. The savings weren't that great and the opportunity costs were high. Has that kind of thinking changed?
It's hell out there, at least in Vancouver Canada, where I am, for tech workers. There's no work, or the work that IS available is deskside support for non-technology firms (if you are lucky, with a smattering of sysadminning thrown in).
Oursourcing is all fine and dandy, but are they outsourcing to small tech firms, individuals, or just to the big and expensive tech companies that are laying off people by the thousands and working their leftover staff half to death? My take on what I've seen is the latter.
*sigh* All in the name of artificially keeping up the stock price for the shareholders - what people really gotta realize is that slumps happen. Sometimes the market will dip, sometimes it will surge. In the end it doesn't matter if your stock dips a little if in the long-term the company is viable and had good people working for it.
Kickstart
Outsourcing is often the result of boardroom political backbiting and palm-greasing; but I think to claim that it's because there's a lack of will to control costs over-simplifies, and misses the point. The scenario runs like this : In tought economic times, a CEO/board of directors will decide it's time to cut costs. Corporate officers are usually more willing to cut departments that are 'cost centers' than those which are 'revenue centers'. In my opinion, the reason IT usually gets the shaft is because it's usually the youngest 'cost center' in a company. Accounting, marketing, and HR departments have all been around for ages. There's a perception on the CEO level that these are 'required' departments. Good IT departments, who have prooven themselves as 'cost reducers' are usually a lot more resistant to that perception. Average IT departments (i.e. most of them) still face that problem; especially more so if the company threw tons of money on overhyped efficiency promises in the past few years. The VPs of all the departments know that their heads are potentially on the chopping block. I have seen it happen where the majority of them band together to throw the IT department under the bus, thereby saving their own necks. They recommend letting an outsourced IT company handle the job, since they're supposedly experts in the field (of course, the likes of IBM and GE Capitol feed this perception with their marketing strategies). With the expensive IT department gone, the rest of the VPs then get a year or two to clean up and lean up their departments, before it becomes financially obvious that the IT department wasn't the culprit, and that outsourcing is costing a bundle. At which time, the VPs get together and say "IT costs are killing our profitability, we need our own internal IT department to keep costs down". And so goes the cycle. Seen it happen, been laid off as a result, and will probably be re-hired in a year or two after it all shakes out...
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Process optimization is simple.
1. Write down what you do.
2. Remove wasteful steps.
3. merge/automate redundant steps.
4. Improved solution.
Properly explaining what you want to have done helps. Looking at what you are doing step by step will give the best solution. Sometimes it isn't even a technological solution.
"IBM will save you money" is an oxymoron. They'll make you hire 5 "project managers" per every IT employee that you already have. Then they'll bring in their own IBM consultants because their findings, that took 6 months to prepare, show that your staff cannot implement w/ their current skills. Before you know it, you've blown a mil or two and have nothing to show for it. When all you had to do was to send key people for traning and have them teach the rest when they come back. A little automation of mundane tasks and locked-down desktops doesn't hurt either.
Yeah, a study market trend towards bankruptcy.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Folks,
While we may be in an economic slump right now, we are forgetting that there are upcoming technologies that will likely drive a second tech boom in the second half of this decade.
I cite the following:
1. Cellular phone companies have started on the road to 3G cellular phone technology, technology that could completely transform the way people use cellphones. Imagine bi-directional 384 kilobits/second data transfer, about the same as low-end SDSL, but operating in a wireless fashion and well beyond the reach of 802.11b Wi-Fi; this could allow people to upload and download data fast enough that even high-resolution digital photographs or circa VHS quality video can be transferred quickly. To keep up with the competition from Europe and Japan, expect major rollouts of 3G cellular technology by middle of this decade. Because of the bandwidth requirements of 3G, this will need massive investments in infrastructure to support these new phones.
2. The mandatory imposition of digital television in the USA in accordance to the Advanced Television Standards Committee (ATSC) standards by late this decade. This will mean a lot of new investments in television broadcasting hardware, especially when you have to implement these standards for both over-air and cable broadcasting on a scale far beyond what we've seen so far.
3. The beginning of the switch from IPv4 to IPv6 addressing. Much of our current Internet hardware infrastructure is not yet suited to support IPv6, and many of today's computer operating systems don't yet support IPv6, either. As the switch to IPv6 accelerates there will be considerable investments needed in both software upgrades and network infrastructure upgrades to be IPv6 compatible. Yes, I know network hardware built within the last two years are IPv6 compatible but there is still a huge fraction of installed hardware that is not IPv6 compatible yet.
I would not be surprised there will be a surge in demand for IT hardware and services as these three technologies rapidly rise in usage by the end of 2010.
The answer to this might be succeptible to empirical study. On the one side, some bright, capable people like regular hours and good benefits; on the other some like irregular hours and independence. And - a different question - some may be more bright and capable in the one circumstance than the other.
But the central question is: What business model brings in the best IT people, in whatever formal (or informal) capacity? And on the informal side, if you bring in open source techies, to what extent are they bringing in a large part of the open source community as unpaid accomplices, and how much brilliant capability comes in by that route?
Of course, your business model also has to consist of - well - a business. The .com VC model of "Pile a bunch of sugar here and let the bright, capable ones feed on it, the concentration of them will be enough for success" was stupid, stupid, stupid. Still, given a going business, it's getting the best crew on the oars that matters, not whether their economic relationship to you is that of slaves or sportsmen or enlisted men - except insofar as the relationship type is coherent with engaging a superior crew.
And the faster more business crew effectively, the more their competitors will try to emulate them, and the happier techies in general will be with our prospects - except for the incompetents (many of whom seem to presently have jobs with hosting services) who should be driven out of the field.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
* Vertical Integration is the practice of owning all of the aspects of your business. Rockefeller slaughtered his opposition by buying barrel manufacturing capabilities to store the oil, railroads to transport the oil, etc., all of which lowered his costs and provided a larger degree of control over the major factors immediately outside his core business of selling oil.
I'm constantly amazed at how often businesses don't seem to consider "purchasing" as a viable job title when it comes to their I.T. departments.
The fact is, when you don't assign purchasing and researching tasks to a specific member of your I.T. staff, you end up with a scattered mess of software licensing, fiascos such as the one you described with the bundled system w/19" monitor and RAM upgrade, and many other disasters.
With my previous employer, we had that issue, starting out. It was just generally understood that practically anyone in a salaried position could put in a purchase request, and then their direct manager had to "approve" the order before it was finalized. Seemed simple enough, except people in engineering would always dream up all sorts of hardware and software they "could get lots of use and productivity" out of. Of course, their boss would agree that it "sounded like a good plan" and sign for it. Then, I.T. would get stuck with all the support hassles if the thing wasn't playing nice on our network, didn't work as advertised, or what-not.
Even when we started trying to enforce a more strict policy of "only I.T. purchasing I.T. related goods" - things were still a mess. One person would prefer a certain vendor they used in the past, while another I.T. worker was trying to buy through someone else to keep up a minimum yearly purchase agreement (to lock in a discount).
Something I am seeing in my company, as a CEO and after spending the past year traveling around the midwest talking with other IT staff:
.Net applications and ship huge amounts of money to Redmond.
Java on Linux will lead the industry out of the bust, in at least one area.
1) By providing companies with business systems they can truly own themselves, and are not owned by other companies or cannot be purchased by competitors.
I mean, why pay $22 Million dollars for SAP when you can build your own system, for half the price, with Linux and Java.
Besides, your competitors can't buy what you build. What you do build will be truly an advantage.
2) You say SAP is too complex, too functionally rich to replicate? I say your are right. But most companies don't need SAP, they need a subset of SAP. They also need a system that represents a edge against thier competitors that can't be bought elsewhere.
Something you can get with a Linux and Java solution built homegrown, and probably at half the price.
3) Companies will do it. Why? Because they don't want to upgrade every 2-3 years and invest another million dollars because SAP or Microsoft says so.
The investment is also preserved over the lifetime of the hardware with the simple requirement you need a certified VM for your new target hardware and thats it.
4) Companies want to be able to upgrade when they require it, and when it makes business sense, not when Microsoft shareholders want more money.
This will make costs that are out of control right now, and outside the control of IT oragnizations, very much more controllable from year ot year.
Linux and Java delivers that promise.
In the end, Linux delivers this promise bacause it makes people the important part of this equation.
How?
Well, lots of people ask me how I make money with Linux? They don't seem to understand.
Which, for most of my competitors that wonder how I stay in business month to month, I am quite pleased they don't "Get It" as they gear up to write
Meanwhile, I am paying health insurance benefits, bonuses, and paid vacations to my staff to keep them happy at only $80 bucks an hour for software development. All that and in the state of Wisconsin for that matter. One state that taxes businesses quite brutally I am afraid. (I think we are the top 3 or probably in the #1 spot right now....)
Why? Because I don't have those costs. Which are enourmous in respect to how much I spend on software with Linux and Java for my customers...which is ZERO.
I figured out I must be saving close to $50K per year per programmer by not using Microsoft products for example on one of my customers projects.
The point is, in closing, is that IBM figured it out. More specifically, Lou Gerstner, who you can all thank, if you are a IBM shareholder. If Lou didn't see many of these things comming, almost a decade ago, IBM would be a vastly diffferent company both in size and scope right now.
But like Lou, my company makes money by competiting on the value of your organization, in the open source world, not by:
1) How many units of software I shipped.
2) How many server hardware pieces I shipped.
as the primary revenue stream.
You know what? Thats the LAST thing I think about when doing my companies overall goals and improvements list every year.
Both of the points are out moded methods of producing, manufacturing and basing the future industry of IT on. At least if we want to go from a depression like the US IT market is now experiencing, to another good times market.
What single company is doing more to insure that software and shrink wrap software remains the top reason to buy computers and the status quo remains?
Microsoft.
Microsoft is the enemy of everyone on slashdot who is currently out of work, or is looking to a better economy and better times ahead. More specifically, the 28 billion in cash Microsoft has and what it is doing with it is the real problem.
Why? Because Microsoft desperately knows, that it cannot survive very much longer simply on the desktop if it wants to maintain a monopoly market it worked so hard to legalize in the courts and in dustry.
Instead of leadership at that company that is reorganizing and retooling Microsoft for the future, like Gerstner did for IBM in the 90's, the company is using its vast financial resources to:
1) Buy off congress, judges, and lawyers to rule in thier favor on software rights and patents. I won't go into detail HOW they do this, since they already HAVE done it.
If you have been on Slashdot, and have been keeping tabs, you already know the how.
This is thier first step and it involves the DMCA, EULA's. Specifically attack Linux and free software, and slow it down.
To kill Linux, and the widespread use of software that manages information on the internet they will need something else. Since Linux is free, they can't attack it buy illegally appropriating technology, or through illegal hiring practices or just plain threatening a single entity or startup to scare investors away.
What Microsoft needs, is something equivalent to RAT poison to killoff the vast army of pengiuns.
That poison will come in the form of a harmless DRM law.
But not just any DRM, a friendly to Microsoft DRM is what they are after, and in its current stages, lawyers and judges will provide Microsoft with what it needs to kill not only Linux, but any software produced anywhere in the US that isn't licenses by Microsoft.
What Microsoft is aiming to not just secure its OS, but to secure how information is processed and used.
They won't have to develop anything innovative, they will lets the court system establish precedent and cases, to insure that all future information is only handled by DRM approved systems that make software, handle Email, or browse web pages or process information of any kind.
How?
Simple.
By making it criminal to write free software of any kind. They will do this buy buying off and creating companies that insure information cannot be tranismitted or created without the proper ownership credentials.
They will build into thier OS this requirement, and DRM laws will require that all OS's in the US do the same.
However, the algorithms that implement the DRM, will be owned and licensed by Microsoft, and only Microsoft.
If you create any program or recieve any information created by a Microsoft system, that doesn't have a DRM approved license to determine if you have ownership rights, will be illegal.
You see how this is done? It is done from the desktop, where information is created. That way, all the inroads into the server room can be reversed, and Linux or any free derivative there-of. (BSD, Unix..Macintosh etc.)
Simply because Microsoft knows that is currently the only bastion of its Kingdom not under tremendous erosion right now. This way it can deal with Linux and all competitors, from a position to strength, to dictate how much each of us will pay for DRM right to read/write or create ANY information with our computers.
Sound too incredible to believe? It already is happening, although, what I really mean to say there is already precedent.
It is pretty hard write now to transmit information globally or easily without the USE of Versign certs in a secure way. Sure, you can make your own authority for these scripts, but truth is, it is a pain and is a "so called" security risk.
So Microsoft alread has some precedent to understand how a certain kind of information, that is created can be controlled by one or two companies on such a wide and vast scale.
If you look at how they are approaching this, you can see they are setting themselves up to be the "Versign" of information rights management.
Everyone here agrees, that Verisign is a racket. You pay them for a paper trail. Sure. Tell me though for all this added security, how many equitable "Versign Approved" certs last year do you think were used to rip people off online?
Don't know? Just ask a credit card company or look at your bill the next time you get it.
We are all paying for huge fees on our credit cards just to have the priviledge to use our Credit Cards online.
Doesn't really seem like $300 bucks and all that paper is really helping people or the credit card companies....does it?
Yet Verisign maintains a monopoly. I wonder how they can do that?
Interesting issue isn't it?
It forms many of the foundations for which Microsoft is currently building an attack against everyone here on slashdot, or any user in the world that uses a computer.
Imagine a Microsoft OS that has the same requirements, perhaps in partnership with Verisign, who would make the DRM database.
It would seem Microsoft has all the advantages.
But, for all these, they have one thing against them.
That thing is time and it is a very BIG disadvantage because we are living in a depression time in our industry.
You see, the legal system is not exactly fast, even when you are paying off congressional leaders. Our court system is extremely slow.
You can pay off judges, it has been done before, but I don't think paying off one judge would get Microsoft what it needs like in the AntiTrust case. It needs much more, something almost akin to a law that says you MUST use our software.
But IT in America is showing signs it doesn't want to wait. Many of the people I talk with are ready to chuck thier Microsoft servers and explore alternatives....even on the desktop.
Especially in such hard times.
But the hope for our industry lies in Linux, and where it can take us. To remove cost barriers that many IT professionals have always come to expect or think are requirements to run a business. The hope that people finally become the primary selling and buying points in organizations instead of software and hardware licenses.
Linux is growing by leaps and bounds, and provides a hope for our industry to defeat this madness before it shows up on all our budgets, whether we like it or not because Microsoft makes it illegal to do otherwise.
That is a world I would not want to live in and with a new found hope in Linux and Open Source born of hard times indeed, I think we will avoid it.
When we finally do, a healthy industry of many diversified companies will return, and replace the monopolized, expensive and extremely value poor industry we now have.
Until then, Linux will continue to change the rules, and will offer companies in these uncertain times true value that will allow them to compete on a more sound financial basis when building IT systems as part of a company business model.
Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
..cos Kansas is going bye-bye.
As a reseller you are a middleman, Sun spends the billions on research and development, you reap a large share of the rewards when times are good. During the inflation of the dot-com bubble you helped Sun to keep headcount and warehouse space to a minimum - and your price was a generous discount on Sun hardware and software. Now you are a waste of space. I know of 2 decent Sun resellers in my old vertical market (both of which covered many other markets as well) they provided a tangible value-add - both in terms of technical pre-sales skills, benchmarking facilities and post sales consultancy services. I'm sure they're feeling the pinch at the moment, but I think their customers will return.
If I were running the partner programme at Sun, I would certainly want to weed out the underperforming resellers, especially those who complain about mandatory training sessions. You are a cost of sale and even during the good times your performance was often embarrasing. It's all about value-add, if you're not adding anything other than a customer base for Sun, prepare for those customers to cut out out of the loop and deal direct with Sun.
# init 5
Connection closed.
Oh...
Hackus, you've got it spot on. Linux and Java are the keys to my career/business strategy, too. Choosing an open source platform and open source/open license tools IS the way out of the Microsoft monopoly. With an interest in saving costs in the enterprise, companies aren't going to go with .net-- that would take their costs in the other direction.
Java really is the key here. It doesn't matter what platform you have, your software will run on it. All you need is the JRE for that platform
Always look on the briight side of life! (whistle, whistle)
One of the common approaches to outsourcing is to retain all of your management, and transfer your technical people to the outsourced company. Guess what? Now you have twice as many managers for the same number of workers - on top of that the technical team is supposed to make a profit. It just doesn't add up to either efficiency or cost savings.
O=='=++
I worked at a Honeywell site in the IT dept. as a lowly tier 2 tech and lost my job (along with about 30 other people) when the reigning CEO thought it would be a swell idea to outsource IT to IBM due to all the money Honeywell would "save". (Well, actually Allied Signal would be saving money but that's another issue all together)
I didn't work there long as I had just recently found myself in need of work after being laid off from my "real" job at an avionics firm, but in my brief stay at Honeywell the first thing I noticed was how utterly helpful the help desk and IT dept was. I have never seen end users recieve such royal treatment anywhere and of course that all changed when the transistion started. What normally would take us anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to correct soon became a "guaranteed 72 hour response time" courtesy of IBM's superior service. Keep in mind this could be something as simple as resetting a users password from my desk because they failed to remember it (very common and takes about 10 seconds to fix) but this was now a "Priority 1" problem for IBM which contractually could take up to 72 hours to fix.
Unfortunately CEOs seldom see anything beyond dollar signs and are easily convinced by the bean counters that outsourcing is a sound idea. IBM offered about two thirds of the IT staff jobs, and Honeywell's policy was that if we were offered at least two-thirds our current salary we either had to accept the offer or lose our jobs AND our severance packages. Naturally IBM wanted me and the others low on the totem pole but had no use for those with 20+ years experience... because they didn't want to pay them for their knowledge no doubt.
I'm done venting but to me it seens painfully obvious that outsourcing IT is a bad idea unless your IT department is the worst ever because in the couple of instances I've seen it happen it resulted in a much lower level of service and IMHO IT is not where you want to cut corners. It may seem like a nice way to make your numbers look better but in the long run I believe it will be a costly mistake.
Most of the Linux work that I've observed is being implemented by hacks and amateurs in a hurry and trying to save a buck.
This will turn around and bite the Linux community pretty hard. Be prepared for a major backlash as companies start getting burned by poor implementations...
I do not believe in general, in a T.C.O. (total cost of ownership) savings by going to Linux. The true cost is in systems administration, intellectual property, and data. Hardware, OS, and COTS Apps are not significant by comparison.
So now we have amateur hack systems which aren't realizing significant cost savings.
This spells trouble brewing for Linux.
--
ps - I am a professional linux system administration consultant. I am trying my dangdest to keep the above predictions from coming true - but I fear the worst.
O=='=++
Almost drove me insane reading your post. :)
--
Power to the Peaceful
--
Power to the Peaceful
....and don't believe extreme industry specific experts to make accurate and broad prognostications outside their field which encompass the entire socio/economic paradigm. for a very basic example right now, the worlds and in particular US's economic outlook in general is dismal. all this new and improved sexy IT stuff is still coming, looks promising, all the trends you cite are accurate... BUT--our financial system is in danger of total collapse. Derivative exposure just with the top banks is somewhere between 50 to 100 TRILLION dollars. More or less this means there's that sum's difference betwen digital theoretyical wealth and what exists in reality. Ask joe blow programmer maybe what a derivative is, ask his boss, then his boss. You won't get a good answer until you make it to someone who is extemely economic savvy, ie, another industry expert in that field. Our tech boom could fall flat as soon as the dollar drops to a perceived and factual international balance of payments level of 20% of what it is now-and it just could happen. Here's another, we got this deal called 'war", just as a forinstance, what happens to all that consumer oriented "normal life" tech postulation should there be widespread biological warfare or even just a little "whoops, sorry boss, the little buggers escaped". This is not an unlikely scenario within the next decade, or heck, even the next month or year. Baby nukes? Is it really outside the realm of possibility? What happens to nation/world if a small one goes off in manhattan or washington or san fran or london or berlin? There's no real answer except from the trolls, and they don't count, that's why they have that description. Who knows, but I think for people 100% counting on some sort of IT tech boom job as their single only source of income or "life" in general and then willy nilly go into serious debt thinking the good times are right around the corner and nothing else matters but their particular niche field might be severely dissapointed near or medium term. Chaos theory mostly, wild cards, something not really addressed in bugtraq.
I am not negatively cricisng, just pointing out the big picture scenarios are better dealt with (historically proven more or less) by the big picture guys and not extreme one field specialists.
I'll give you an anecdotal. I used to work auto industry in detroit, late 60's. You couldn't find one person uaw lowest grunt worker to any management level who thought japan would ever be any sort of threat to market share, it just plain didn't exist. It was laughable. Whoops, guess it wasn't.
Now use same history and track record and apply it to the IT field, or any other for that matter. Wildcards come into play that none of those specific experts hardly ever take into account, and because they are wild, and maybe don't exist yet, it's not even possible, but human nature has shown one 100% certainty, they ALWAYS happen. wildcards always get played, any industry, anyplace. some are simply revolutionary and cognitive dissonance sets in across an entire field. The slang term is "murphy's law" and is applicable on any scale you care to look at.
Myself, see no big boom or the economy (very broadly speaking here) getting better, in fact, I see it getting steadily worse(this would take way too much to go into in a small post) on a dropping curve for around 10-20 years, with a 50/50 chance of global heavy warfare inside that time frame. That's only my 2 cents as a generalist. My speciality is loosely descibed as generality on this, to see trends and patterns large and small scale. Threat/problem analysis and mitigation. And in advance.
Games, gadgets and widgets will still make some money,as long as there are consumers to buy them, but they will be gradually replaced with basics of human and national survival, food, energy, healthcare etc. People not working aren't buying. People working for 1/2 what they were working for a few years ago have learned their lesson, but still aren't buying. Nations that think they can become and stay wealthy by only trading wealth and not by producing any have always failed. That's just historic reality, not even hidden anywhere. Companies will do this as well, if they even manage to stay afloat, and with most corporation's widget debtload and huge pension debtload, this is an extreme crapshoot. Look at the fortune 500 companies pension demand they are staring at, which they almost all have borrowed against. It's sorta nasty looking in the not so far distant future there. It's going to cause profound social changes, eveen if they strip the CEOS millions, because the wealth needed for these pensions and healthcare simply does not exist. It ain't there. It's chimeric. Sure, some insane bufoon like sir alan g. can order more funny money created, still won't do much if the prices for everything go up faster than they can keep up with inflationary digits, pick any current south american country now for examples of how fast reality can change. and bankers and brokers are the very worst generally speaking, they get their start by first force feeding themselves at the beginnings of their careers the big lie of what wealth is, that it is just some object that can be conjured out of the air or something, and base their decisions on that lie. And that is EXACTLY why the worlds economy is on shaky grounds now, absolutely no sound base, the walls are pretty, the foundation was made out of cotton candy. Institutionalised "not looking". (nothing personal against any bankers here, btw, you were taught this lie as the truth)
Any secure tech (job) longer-range advances might be more related to those more human-practical and necessary fields then new and improved blinkenlights, ie. That is my recommendations to geekatroids, and diversify, at least two widely disparate incomes, and paper/electronic "savings" or "investments" do not count as "income" until after it's spent on something.
Sounds to me like this Rowland guy can't win in your book. He's an idiot for wanting to outsource and he's an idiot for not outsourcing? Let me guess, he belongs to the opposite political party as you, one that doesn't pander to unions?
Gawd - I think I prefer the beowulf cluster 'jokes'!
It might explain why IBM will benefit and other vendors like Sun Microsystem which don't have a strong service arm will suffer
At first I thought "Huh? Sun has a strong service arm..." Then I saw the Big Fucking IBM ad and realized what was going on.
Jeez. Are you hiring? I'll move to Wisconsin...Denver's job market is in the dumper, and anything I *could* land would be using MS's garbage products in some capacity, anyway...in fact, at the last job, I got laid off because we got some new MS-lovin' CTO in there with a bug up his ass to send more money to Redmond. Go figure.
I think the option of going to Linux or java is so easy... how long do u forsee before a system like SAP is implemented in a company using java/linux with its engineers for T.O.C !!! u will have to go thru the complete product cycle including design .. implementation .. and above all TESTING !!!
even after that u are not sure if what u developed works fine with the requirement.
Do u think any commercial organisation who would like to make some quick money (and implementation) would prefer Linux/ Java for a project of size like SAP !!! no way ....
note: I am not a microsoft supporter. ....
I guess that is what you see. It exists, I don't dispute that. But in quantity as compared to hacks I have seen in the Windows world, it occurs far more often, with much more devastating results for IT organizations with windows for the following reason:
:-)
Linux intrinisically requires a person to have a greater understanding of the science and operational aspects of a computer than Windows does.
What we have to think about here is that a BAD thing?
This requires a greater energy input to learn, and as a result, most Linux people usually come with a greater understanding automatically of the hows and whys of not how to do certain things a particular way.
Windows XP makes things so simple, that most people can setup services and do things easily, without understanding WHY they shouldn't.
This is because Redmond is attempting to put every single possibility of building IT systems into a bunch of dialog boxes built as part of a two directional decision tree governed by OK and CANCEL buttons and anything else the OS makes the decision GRATIS.
Linux has a very different approach and it DOES require a greater input of time and energy.
Is this bad? I am not sure, you decide but here is why:
It doesn't attempt to make anything easy or hard.
What Linux attempts to do, is make the person administrating the server directly responsible for its operational aspects/details, far more so than Windows.
This philosophy embodies 2 things:
1) The person can make the decisions much better than the OS.
2) Give the person the tools to enable his decisions via computer programming or systems language to manage his enterprise.
Very very different philosophy. I like this one better. Primarily because these program snippets can be contributed back into the user community as part of a "Best Administrative Practices" and can be refined by the Admins of Linux as well, because they get access to the source.
So, I guess I see poorly designed systems on the Windows side of things much more than the Linux side.
Except that, with Windows, the poor designs are primarily a result of Windows software, because of the fact that Windows tries to do everything for you, and as such must make a large number of Admin decisions for you.
The result is bad decisions and poor implementations, not just in Administrative side of the Windows OS but also in the software side as well.
What is ironic is the fact that high performance systems as defined by most Windows Admins is expense and security.
For Linux Admins it is speed and uptime.
At least that is what I get when I ask respective Admins what is most important.
So I think you can put your mind at ease and that hacks should be few and far between in our field.
(But don't quote me on that...stupid people do what stupid people can do.)
Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Java on Linux will lead the industry out of the bust, in at least one area.
1) By providing companies with business systems they can truly own themselves, and are not owned by other companies or cannot be purchased by competitors
Since Sun own Java, refuse to submit it for standardization, and haven't open sourced the implementation, you don't truly own it yourself. You have to hope Sun doesn't turn into another Microsoft.
actually I think it makes it read more like spoken english, makes it flow more naturally
:-)
(which might be a cover-up tactic to compensate for BS content)
but it does make him sound like someone who can write nicely
SUV's support terrorism !
I think you worked in my company!
I agree - a dedicated IT purchasing agent would be a great position in the IT organization. It'd make a good junior position. They get to learn the hardware side and how the organization runs. Initially, you'd have to have someone sanity check their decisions (System Architect... or System Admin depending on size of company)-- but I think they'd come up to speed quickly.
We too had the issues the above poster mentioned. It got so bad that a "shadow" IT department was formed by the engineering department. Ultimately, it wasn't until instructions were given to the accounting department that those individuals were not allowed to buy stuff that it finally quit.
Damage was done-- resource allocation was out of whack and burn rate continued to flame away.
Of course, by the time the company was getting it's "stuff" together in that area... the venture capital money was exhausted and the company became "dot gone", with nary a whisper.
Actually there are better options than Java out there to build business software (Python for instance), but they are not backed by big names, therefore their adoption is slow.
Ciao
----
FB
Is IBM's implementation open source? And no, I'm not saying everything you run should be, the OP's case was that you "own" everything, if you use Java+Linux.
And then there's the problem that Sun, at any time, could damage IBM's ability to provide Java, or at least make life intolerable enough that they give up. It would really have to be standardized at the very least before you can possibly argue that Java gives you any extra freedom.
And yes, Python's nice, and free as in beer and speech.
Recognize this, the goal of all the tools and procedures in IT is to whittle away at the number of people and man hours(read cost/jobs) needed to support IT. Eventually better technology will and is replacing alot of workers during their lifetime, or at least lowering the skill level needed( read salary). But even that is not fast enough for the cost cutters at large corps. Out-sourcing is another way of doing the same thing, except now it's someone elses problem, and it can be done rather quickly. Pay a flat rate and let your IT rep bitch at the provider all day. Believe me, Mgmt.does not care if the service is not as good. If it does not fail catastrophically, it's good enough. Besides,after spending most of the 90's seeing folks from cab-drivers to housewives getting certs and degrees in IT related fields, coupled with pressure from overseas workers, who ever thought this was a good field to be in? Plumbers and electricians, skilled trades, that's the field to move to if your still young enough.Better then a doctor even! Bonding is alot cheaper then med-insurance. Skilled trades offer 6 figure salaries within 4-5 years and +60K for guys that just want to work for contractors and not themsleves. Food for thought, how many high school kids aspire to be plumbers? Do you see anyone designing buildings that don't have pipes or electrical outlets?
A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing about
whose profession was the oldest. In the course of their arguments, they
got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon the doctor said, "The
medical profession is clearly the oldest, because Eve was made from Adam's
rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply incredible surgical feat."
The architect did not agree. He said, "But if you look at the Garden
itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of that the Garden
and the world were created. So God must have been an architect."
The computer scientist, who'd listened carefully to all of this, then
commented, "Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...