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Technology Spending On The Rise
securitas writes "After the technology industry's so-called nuclear winter that has resulted in thousands of lost jobs over the last three years, the New York Times' Steve Lohr reports that technology spending is finally increasing (Google / mirror). Much of the investment in hardware and software is spurred by the natural corporate replacement cycle, but the positive change offers a glimmer of hope for techies everywhere. IBM CEO Sam Palmisano says that IBM plans 'to add 10,000 workers in fields of emerging demand over the next year.' Based on IBM's current Linux advertising campaign and market projections, this will probably mean hiring staff who are knowledgeable about Linux and open source software. Is this just a blip as some analysts believe, or is it the beginnings of a resurgence for the technology sector?"
to hire 10,000 new employees. The important question is what country will these 10,000 new employees be in, if you know what I mean,
. . . people purchase boxes with new capabilities or more processing power, and they usually want new applications to take advantage of those features.
Why?
People buying new boxes to run their old applications faster does occur sometimes, but isn't the historical norm.
Why?
I have not proposed anything. It is not unreasonable, however, to question both historical norms and historical behaviours and assuming historical norms might well get one into trouble.
So, since we're having a bit of trouble over low level questions let me aim one slightly higher above the horizon.
What feature of the new systems (other than speed) do you see as opening support for new apps that answer some need of business?
One can also ask ( and bear in mind that this is a different question) what app do you see business perceiving some need for that the new machines allow that the old ones didn't?
One thing that seems apparent to me is that one of the possible attributes of a new app over an old from the business point of view is that it takes fewer people to implement and maintain than the old one. In the context of jobs newer more powerful machines with better apps may well mean fewer jobs for people.
This has also been the historical norm for sufficiently large quantities of "history."
Do you propose a new historical norm?
KFG
What feature of the new systems (other than speed) do you see as opening support for new apps that answer some need of business?
Massive amounts of data storage capacity for the buck. Storage capacity growth has been increasing at greater than Moore's Law rates, and at the same time we have been accumulating 800 MB of data per every man woman and child on the face of the Earth every year. The need to manage all of this with software is a staggering business need, and will lead to lots of new software development.
Another area in computer hardware that has been increasing at ridiculous rates is network bandwidth. This has been increasing faster than even storage capacity. The problem with taking advantage of this has been entrenched industrial concerns. Eventually, although maybe not this business cycle bandwidth growth will trigger ANOTHER software revolution where people will truly become walking network nodes. When that happens most offices will totally disappear.
The fact is I think we haven't seen anything yet, and the Internet boom was just the first and weakest wave of what is yet to come.