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Technology Buying Slump
mgcsinc writes "According to this Yahoo article from Reuters, IT buyers are continuing a trend of cutting costs, favoring utility over cutting-edge effect. Market researchers are estimating continuing doldrums in the industry and enterprise businesses see more 'bang for the buck' from making improvements in software as opposed to investing in new infrastructure. This is not necessarily awful, however, for those who hope businesses will start looking toward open source options as the cost effective alternatives..."
At my company we're going all open-source. We're using OpenLDAP, JBoss, and eventually we'll migrate from Oracle to MySQL.
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Well that would explain why at work I get a new 17" iMac instead of one of the new G5's. I knew my boss was cheap and thought I was worthless but I was only asking for a lousy $2,000 computer! It would also explain why I still use the keyboard I spilled soda on over a year ago, even though they supposedly ordered a new one last December.
IT buyers are continuing a trend of cutting costs, favoring utility over cutting-edge effect.
This is the reason we are investing in OS X. In general to be productive, you use the tools that best help you to accomplish the job at hand. Yes, Linux and other open source solutions are often a part of this, but when one desktop system can replace several others including Wintel and traditional UNIX workstations such as SGI and Sun, all while running the same *NIX apps as before right along with productivity applications such as Photoshop and Office, it saves money and increases productivity, making it an easy decision.
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"We have a common strategy. It's common, bulletproof infrastructure with standardized PCs, standardized networks and (security), standardized servers,"
Isn't that what all IT coordinators desire? I think that this is another way of saying they are looking for a longer useful service life on computer systems (due to the slower economy & lack of necessity); Technology (processor, motherboard IO chipsets, storage, etc) is still changing just as quickly as it was in the 90's when we saw the change from MFM -> IDE -> EIDE drives, 8 bit -> 16 bit -> 32 bit buses, 12MHz ram -> 266MHz ram, etc ...
however... I believe that if you take a last-generation system - a P4-1.5GHz for example - It is powerful enough to have a much longer useful service life than a 386sx-16MHz did back in the early 90's;
i.e., in 2003, $50,000 will purchase many more last-generation PC's than it did in 1992 & they will remain useful equipment for a longer period of time due to the current level of technology.
Then again, I could be living in a dreamworld & P4's could be obsolete to the point of uselessness in 3 years...
> Why replace MS software when you can just fire me and hire an Indian for $35k/yr?
Why is this racist? Sounds like he's simply stating an observation. Now if he said "those smelly Indians who would back stab you the first chance they got", that would be racist.
Calling that racist is like saying "The majority of inmates in U.S. pisons are African American" is a racist comment (assuming it's true, to which I have no idea and merely used it as an example). Even if it isn't true, I don't consider it racist - just an incorrect assessment or baseless statement.
"Most serial killers are white!" I'M GUESS I'M RACIST!
Carr claims that for the above reasons:
I agree. The "tech boom" of the 1990's was a pretty sad piece of history, but thankfully it didn't create another Great Depression.
It didn't help that Wall Street took these con jobs "hook, line and sinker". Everyone got too greedy, and there was too much pressure that what little resemblence of ethics that people had collapsed.
That's one really good thing that came/comes from the AMD Intel price war. They've so marginalized the price of CPUs that PCs have an insane amount of power for a mere pittance of price. Heck I could take a $100 bill and upgrade any of my boxes into the Athlon era (CPU, motherboard, and memory included) - then use that box as a competent server. Its almost scary that for a few thousand bucks you actually COULD build a decent server closet.
OK, so take the challenge. Which Open Source applications (client and server) can *really* be used in place of other expensive solutions.
Remember, companies like their Outlook for Calendar, contacts and email - hooked up to an expensive Exchange box running on Win2k.
Then we need a web server, say, Apache, but unfortunately the existing content may be written in ASP or Cold Fusion.
Of course, this is probably all connected up to SQL Server or MSDE.
What about backup utilities (remember boys and girls, there's still Windows on the desktop) and we need Antivirus too.
Now, suppose that I am the manager of a company and I want to do all that, to SAVE me money, but I want everything I had before. Unreasonable? Nope, I am a typical customer.
Question is, can it be done??
Catia and pro-engineer may be doing a MacOSX port to panter next year.
..
This info was from an Apple employee who posted here so take it with a grain of salt.
The problem for the companies that make the products is
a.)No X support.
Apple talked to the Unix vendors and already has a beta version of X tuned just for the mac. It will be included by default to panther.
b.)64-bit support.
Most mathmatical packages have hard coded long long int in c/c++ for to handle large numbers and to obtain better decimal place precision. Most Linux/Windows ports are for AMD64 or Itanium. I think their is a 32-bit version of pro-engineer so I am not to sure. Panther and the new G5's solve this.
c.) Performance
The G4 sucks and no respectable engineering department would buy them when risc or lintel based solution would be faster and cheaper. Again the G5 solves this problem.
D.)Market support
The money is in Linux and Windows NOT APPLE. With IT not upgrading, what is the chance they will buy macs? What about training? Engineers mostly know Windows and some Unix. How do you know that customers might have a Windows only policy or a Unix/Windows policy when purchasing equipment. Apple may need to fund the porting so who knows. This may be the only problem that Apple may have to pay out of its own pocket. MS had to do this when NT was new.
http://saveie6.com/
But we aren't talking about your average american consumer whores. We are talking about supposed proffesionals in a proffesional environment, where utility and functionality should be far above the importance of the coolness factor.
My first thought when I read the article summary was this: "And this is a bad thing because?..."
Really, this is a GOOD sign.
YOU SUCK BALLS!
Nah, it's another history-repeats-itself problem. We're going back to the thin-client environment. PC support costs are growing out of control and managing all the problems involved in deploying corporate apps on them are getting higher and higher. We're going to hit another thin-client connects to "mainframe" environment pretty quickly.
Bandwidth across frame relays will become more and more neccessary and client machines will become more disposable. You'll get a base OS with your neccessary applications that are 'stock' on it anything special to that corp will be served up via a web-services type interface on a dumbed down client app or browser. No more pushing upgrades to systems -- you just update the logic at the backend and viola -- new app.
Just like when you'd hook up to the IBM mainframe ala 3270 terminal emulation and enter your work into a COBOL app -- which was before my time. It's rather exciting to me, as I've been thinking thin client apps since I started programming seriously, circa 1998
Of course, I'm not saying anything most people didn't already know, but /. is my favorite place to rant.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm posting anonymously because I relate some obscure details of my company's network.... Our company is in the student loan financing business, and as the economy gets worse and more people return to school, we find a larger market to do business in. We're experiencing growth at a time when most companies aren't doing major upgrades and changing their network.
This year alone, we're upgrading desktops for a department, rolling out another 150 new ones for a new department ongoing through December, upgrading our achingly old/slow NT 4.0 domain to a (hopefully) easier to maintain win2k3 domain, and replacing our aging nightmare AS/400 with a spiffy new linux application server delivering said app through a web-client written in java.
This year, we hired another guy--an engineer, not a lackey--and we may hire a technician in September if our new team grows as rapidly as we anticipate. Plus, we're building a new data center and populating it with 75% new equipment. The company is quite profitable, and we've never been in better shape.
Sure, there are companies cutting back, but some industries (like mine) are growing. Anybody else experiencing any kind of growth or major $ projects this year?
Exactly true. A few years ago, around 1999, the upgrade cycle for the university I work for was 3 years. You got a new computer every 3 years, and that last year was a real bitch trying to get along.
This year we switched to a 5 year upgrade cycle on most computers and a 6 year upgrade cycle on "low use" - i.e. secretary computers. It makes sense when you think about it. 5 years ago it was 1998 and the fastest chip out there was a 350mhz (iirc). Today, a 350mhz CPU will do just fine running office 2k, windows 2k, and email/browsing the web. It is even usuable with things like photoshop and dreamweaver (assuming you have about 256mb of ram). THe latest machines we buy are 2.8GHZ and I doubt that in 5 years even they will really need to be replaced.
However, student public computers - bought for and by the students - we keep on a 3 year upgrade cycle if for no other reason than to impress incoming students with all the shiny flat panel monitors and 3GHZ processors with DVD/CDRW drives.In reality, they don't need that but they sure as heck like using them and like to think that their money goes to buying worthwhile equipment.
I kindof like it, it involves a heck of alot less work and saves alot of time and energy in what used to be the annual summer hell months of trying to switch and change over 200 some computers.
I order new computers when we have new positions or old ones fail. I upgrade computers when I have an option to make a signifcant performance (or function) increase without hitting one or more other bottlenecks too hard (RAM mostly, CPU possibly, video card theoretically). If the economy slows and no new positions are created, then PC spending slows approriately. If the economy picks up and new positions are created, new PCs are purchased. Why is this enough of a surprise to justify an article?
Well, YOU my friend are exactly the kind of consumer (notice I didn't say customer)that corporations want. You don't question the product, you just go with whatever is more shiny.
Fortunately for the economy, businesses don't base their decisions on what solution is more shiny. They have cold hard numbers in front of them and they pick whatever gives them the most benefit at the cheapest price. So sorry, but what may work on sheep like you will not necessarily work on a competent business.
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