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Does IT Matter?
geoff313 asks: "I'm sure many of you are aware of the uproar over Nicholas Carr's article 'IT
Doesn't Matter' which was published in the Harvard Business Review, back in May. While many big names in the IT world have responded already to Carr's article (Ballmer has declared it 'Hogwash'
and Fiorina has pronounced it 'Dead Wrong'),
Carr debated vendor executives Monday at the Comdex trade show, proving that the issues he raised are still resonaating through the industry. Do you feel that corporate IT budgets
should be focusing on cutting edge technology to best serve its customer's needs, or should they focus on shoring up what they have now in order to maximize its usefulness to the customer? Some background can be found from the Washington Post,
InfoWorld,
and ZDNet, as well as at Nicholas Carr's site."
"For those of you unfamiliar his philosophy, it can be summed up pretty thoroughly by his statement 'Follow, don't lead,' arguing that the huge advances in the IT industry over the last two decades have erased the strategic advantage to be had by corporations for staying at the cutting edge of technology. In short, he advises 'executives need to shift their attention from IT opportunities to IT risks - from offense
to defense.' Of course the head honchos at IBM and Microsoft disagreed with him, citing Wal-Mart's use of RFID tags to keep track of inventory and other forward thinking IT decisions as a refutation of his thesis.
What I am interested in is the opinion of those in trenches of the IT war."
Developers.. Developers.. Developers.. Developers.. (Thanks Steve for the millions of smiles)
In this article, published in the May 2003 edition of the Harvard Business Review, I examine the evolution of information technology in business and show that it follows a pattern strikingly similar to that of earlier technologies like railroads and electric power. For a brief period, as they are being built into the infrastructure of commerce, these "infrastructural technologies," as I call them, open opportunities for forward-looking companies to gain strong competitive advantages. But as their availability increases and their cost decreases - as they become ubiquitous - they become commodity inputs. From a strategic standpoint, they become invisible; they no longer matter. Seeing IT in this light reveals important new imperatives for the corporate management of information technology. In brief, executives need to shift their attention from IT opportunities to IT risks - from offense to defense.
The article provides a small part of a broader exploration of the influence of information technology on business strategy, which will be published next spring as a book - Does IT Matter? Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage - by the Harvard Business School Press.
You can preorder the book today at a 30% discount from Amazon.com.
download reprint of HBR article
You can now download a copy of "IT Doesn't Matter" from Amazon.com.
responses to article
[note that all the following links worked when originally posted; some may no longer be active]
"IT Doesn't Matter" was featured in a major article on the IT industry by Steve Lohr in the May 4 Sunday New York Times. The article was reprinted on May 5 in the International Herald Tribune.
Computerworld's May 12 issue features an interview with me as well as a rebuttal of my article.
Information Week's editor in chief, Bob Evans, provides another counterpoint to my article in that magazine's May 12 issue. He also says, "The article is thoughtful and sweeping and quite interesting to read. I'd heartily recommend it."
Stewart Alsop mentions "IT Doesn't Matter" in his column in the May 12 edition of Fortune.
A somewhat testy Craig Barrett, Intel's CEO, "fired back" at my article in remarks to reporters before a May 15 analysts meeting, arguing that the IT infrastructure is critical to competitiveness. Judging from his comments, I'm not sure Mr. Barrett actually read the article (I don't blame him; I'm sure he's busy). As I make clear in the piece, the IT infrastructure is indeed essential to competitiveness, particularly at the regional and industry level. My point, however, is that it is no longer a source of advantage at the firm level - it doesn't enable individual companies to distinguish themselves in a meaningful way from their competitors. Essential to competitiveness but inconsequential to strategic advantage: that's why IT is best viewed (and managed) as a commodity.
Steve Lohr has another excellent article on the prospects of the tech industry in the May 16 New York Times (reprinted in the International Herald Tribune). He features my article as well as Craig Barrett's remarks on it. He makes two critical points that are sometimes being lost in the current debate: ". . . it is possible to agree that technology can deliver broad productivity gains without necessarily delivering higher profits or competitive gains for individual companies, a point made by Mr. Carr. It is also possible to agree that the technology industry continues to be innovative and important, without also accepting that it will be a growth industry as it has been in the past."
John Hagel and John Seely Brown have written a response to my article, saying that it "will have a significant impact in the business world" (but that it's "also dangerous").
General Motors CIO Ralph Szygenda offers some thoughtful comments on my article in the May 19 Information Week. He says, "Nicholas Carr may ultimately be correct when he says IT doesn't matter . . . [but] business-process impro
Maybe people should concentrate on doing what they really have to do, and do it well. If it happens to use a computer, fine. Clay tablets might work jsut as well for some applications.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
Ahem...
Just look at the advances over the past few years in toys: Are they really all that fundamentaly diffrent? I mean, cards, cars, and dolls are still the top sellers. Why bother getting a new line of products for the holdiay season? It's not like there's anything new there.
I think I've pointed out the logical flaw sufficently.
When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
Sluggy Freelance.
Is now into Department website activity useage and Intrusion detection...There wasn't a whole lotta that going on in 1997, and your business is pretty hosed without SOME attention being paid to security inside and outside your business walls.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
How many people actually have customers who let them decide how their going to spend their own budgets? Customers want what they want irrespective of your budget.
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
Is the business equivalent of Perl. It Makes Stuff Work. Worrying about IT isn't the right approach. Businesses should decide what they actually need to stay competitive.. and deploy that using only what IT infrastructure they need. IT's a means to an end. It DOES matter, but it's wrong to view it as an end in itself (and hence, an 'issue').
-- INTX Grouch. http://www.midnightblue.net
Sounds like sound bytes for neophytes, commerce drives the IT pony, always has been, always will be. Perhaps to the chagrin of Messers Bulmer & co, who'd like to think that they drive the 'supply & demand' pony.
It does not if you can do without these
1. Send e-mail and instantly communicate with IM services
2. Pay bills and manage finances online
3. Get lot of information about anything you can think of within seconds.
4. Manage every aspect of your life ( jobs, health, you name it) with the help of technology.
If the next president believes in a real high speed network I.T. will become more important because everything including HDTV and Phone will go through that one fiber.
When the question is whether to boldly lead, or cleverly follow, the answer is always both. You lead where you can, where you have opportunities to, because your IT department taking some initiative in expansion means that you can grow the business above it. You have resources, products, and customers, and IT sits in between all three of them to some degree, and makes them possible, just as your maintenance department does. After all it's kind of hard to have meetings if the lights are off, right? And it's hard to do business when you can't get to your databases, or if your customers don't know about your products, or whatever else that isn't possible without IT.
The solution is always to strike a proper balance between expansion and consolidation in all of your departments, lest they grow too large and consume too much of your resources, or fail to grow enough to keep up with the rest of the company. It doesn't matter if we're talking about IT or R&D.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The "huge advance" of RFID tags has yet to demonstrate a large competitive advantage. Although the presumed benefits of tighter inventory tracking, should result in some cost savings, it has yet to be shown that it will either revolutionize Wal-Mart (I mean, how inefficient is their current UPC laser scanner tracking?) or lower costs to the consumer. You can get a lot of milage out of a high-school student at minimum wage with an Intermec scanner... This harkens back to the debate of fancy tape robots vs. high-school students to flip tapes... (the students tended to jam less often, but could get hung-over)
Like most of these things, the answer to the question is not "yes" or "no". Having the best new technology doesn't matter: lots of companies are still running happily on one variant or another of the IBM 360 architecture.
What does matter is that some business models that work don't work unless you have the right (new, or new-ish) technology: you can't have an Amazon.com without advanced web systems, or you can't have it feasibly and cost-effectively.
On the other hand, having a new 20-inch iMac on every desktop doesn't much matter. (Drat.)
The trick with IT -- and about everything else in business -- is to really figure out what does matter to the business, and to work your ass off optimizing that thing that matters.
Computer science is still relatively new. If people are still discovering new things in math, there is definately room for discovery in computer science.
In the end, it is all about consumer needs. The consumer needs more, newer, faster, better.
Using an example I saw given, the best selling toys today are cars, much the same as from the 1940's. The difference is in what these cars can do. Take the top-notch must-have car from 1949, some metal pushcar contraption. The hot cars this years, high-end RC machines with more computing power than launched men to the moon.
IT is more important than ever, even as its importance slowly vanishes, becomes part of the general background noise. The more important it gets, the less noticable it is.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
RFID tags aren't, IMO, "IT". That was a engineering gig maybe spawned from an IT problem (how to better manage inventory and warehouses.) How are these people defining "IT"? Anything that deals with computers and/or technology?
"Some background can be found from the Washington Post, InfoWorld, and ZDNet, as well as at Nicholas Carr's site.""
Ummm...that's a lot of reading.
The IT budget has to be looked at the same exact way as any other departmental budget. What does your company get for the money invested. If your ebay - the money may be well spent in IT. If your bricks and mortar inc you may wish to invest in other areas. It all depends. Only an analytical ruthless, pencil to paper approach will tell you that.
Unfortunately too many executives - scared at their own ineptness when it comes to IT think that a big IT budget and a smart (insert favoritte IT stereotype here) is going to make them a million bucks. Feast your eyes on the dot bomb waste land ladies and gentlemen.
In the end it is the talent of the people that make it work that will be the deciding factor - as long as they were hired after a very careful and down to earth review of what was needed. There is no substitute for hard work, and good analysis.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Basically, companies don't want to change the way their fundamental "business processes" work even when these "processes" don't make any sense. So if you take the same old inefficient way of doing things, and make software to facilitate it, you're still doing it inefficiently. Especially when requirements for "visionary" systems get bogged down with specification by committee - everybody wants to make sure that their department or group level jobs are represented and that nobody designs them out of the picture. Even if a top level executive recognizes that the way things works is too costly and generally sucks, if lots of mid-tier shitheads play the bureaucracy card and bog a system down until it's in le toilette, well, no surprise when the software you end up with is no better than the way you do things now.
It also doesn't help that "IT" is the result of years and years of evolution and almost NOBODY in the business IT world is sufficiently bright to take the big picture, generalize about it, and create a logical, functioning infrastructure to replace it. No, the people who are smart enough to do this generally work for tech-focused companies in more interesting jobs where there are tiers upon tiers of bureaucratic wretchedness breaking everything down.
I work for a local government agency and I see firsthand how the promise of IT is a double-edged sword.
In my department we recently replaced 75 green-screen terminals. Many, many people were happy to see this happen, but in reality most of the new PCs are simply running terminal emulators and are glorified dumb terminals.
So on the face of it, we didn't really do anything but spend a lot of money and make everything prettier... ON THE SURFACE
However, now that the infrastructure is in place, we can begin to really look forward. We are now considering projects that have the promise of eliminating hours of uneccessary work each day and of making public information much more accessible both online and at local kiosks, just to name a couple.
The key is that you can't just implement new technology for technologies sake, which was kinda what the whole "bubble" was all about. You have to take a long term view of how and why you will leverage that technology going forward. May seem obvious to us, but not to all.
I've worked both in academia and in industry. From my perspective the industry is very slow to use the cutting edge research. The stuff I treated as pretty routine in academia is considered a cutting edge in industry. The industry is much more interested in massive projects involving well tested technologies than in, what is the domain of universities, small projects with both high risk and high intellectual value. And while some companies, such as IBM, have a significant research budget, this does not apply to many other high tech leaders.
A religious war is an adult version of a fight over who has the best imaginary friend
Shoring up what you already have is always a good idea, but - should you be doing it? Firefighting is the most non-productive thing an IT department can do, yet is always required to a degree, whether it be battling the latest worm because of a flawed IT policy, or helping Jane Doe with her print problem. Ongoing shoring up is part of IT, but in many companies I've seen, they seem to go through vast periods of cutbacks and inactivity, then somehow fixate on how one new system will be introduced to fix all flaws. IT doesn't work like that.
Then on the other hand, you have cutting edge technologies. Well, yes they can help you out if you have a problem that they solve, but there's no point trying to find a problem for them to solve because they're there. I know one company that ripped up a perfectly good CRM system built in house so they could access the database using web services. Totally pointless. Yet, I know another company that has rolled out an intranet, built a document repository and that has garnered much more immediate results.
So, my answer is a straight 50:50. Firefight, but implement policies that make your job easier as you do so, so you can reduce overall costs, and only implement newer systems if they are required, and even then, don't be blinkered by the latest technologies. Sure, it may be cool, but early adopters always bear the price, but not necessarily the fruits.
The thing is, some of these points are common sense, some need time, and in business you can be guaranteed that people lack both.
No it doesn't!
Doing the job your organisation is meant to do does.
I work at a charity where our primary aim is to help people get back into work after long term unemployment. As a means to this end, we make extensive use of IT.
We have an Exchange server (save the flames), does that matter? No! What matters is that we have a way of knowing when we're able to make appointments for them, it just so happens the best way we have of doing that is using Exchange.
We also run an online centre, where people can come and get use the internet for free, and get training in how to use computers. The fact we have 20 internet connected computers doesn't matter - it's the fact that people have jobs who wouldn't otherwise do, partly thanks to the computers they had access to.
It's all a matter of perspective, IT is just another tool in the box of things that allow you to get the job done. In the same box for us comes knowledge of writing CVs, and being able to relate to people.
Anyone who knows what they're doing will tell you that IT matters only in the sense that it enables good processes. Your IT is a tool that needs to be backed by processes and people.
/. not figure out how to build an iTunes music store from a technical perspective? Does anyone here not know how to create a scalable mail system? That knowledge (or know-how) is commodity knowledge now.
Wal-mart might have realtime inventory statistics across the world, but the reason they have that is because they know what to do with that information. If you gave that capability to Kmart executives, they wouldn't have any idea what to do with it.
The problem with IT, though, is that KMart might actually buy a system that can give them realtime inventory, then not use it. Whoops, there goes tens of millions of dollars.
IT doesn't matter because everyone can do it now. Can anyone on
So no, IT doesn't matter, or it matters - the way electricity matters.
Will employees really want to work for a company that doesn't stay current with technology? I know I would be worried if I felt like my skillset was aging and I would be a less attractive hire to new employers.
I've met a lot of people who got into this industry because they enjoyed the "playful" nature of their work. Without the latest "toys" to play with, many IT workers won't enjoy their work.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
I worked a few years in the IT of a "Fortune 50" drug company. I cannot begin to tell you how many hundreds of thousands of dollars were thrown around for silly and stupid reasons, mostly so Pointy Haired Bosses could play "buzzword bingo" in order to sound important and get promotions.
.Net when all the business needs is email and word processing, I still think W2K is sufficient.
I on the other hand worked in the trenches and off everyone's radar. I set up a Linux server (I could arguably claim to be the beginning of the Linux movement at this place.) and as I learned about a new interesting technology--mostly database and web stuff--I would ponder whether I could build something that would make IT's job easier. Over three major projects I could estimate having saved at least half a million dollars in labor by leveraging "new technology" to improve operations.
Now back to the question: what do we mean when we talk about being "offensive or defensive"? If offensive/proactive means implementing a new technology because the buzzword is hot, piss off and stop wasting money. If it means keeping a few bright people on the cutting edge, investigating whether new technologies can improve overall corporate efficientcy, then by all means YES.
If it means investing zillions of dollars for the eventual Longhorn update and all the new applications that are upgraded to
Murray Todd Williams
well, will IT really matter after we blow our brains out with Nukes?? Will it??
MY SECRET DIARIES
Someday, the people who know how to use computers will rule over those who don't. And there will be a special name for them: secretaries.
--Dilbert (as if anybody here didn't know that)
In reality this is all part of what IBM's On Demand moto is all about
increasing the USEABILITY of what you allready have, tie all your databases, CRM, and everything together... basically Middleware
i think its safe to say that everyone has the hardware.. what they need to be defensive and to utilize it is the software (linux, DB2, webpshere or tivoli)
MS and HPQ disagree because they want you to upgrade and they want to sell you that upgrade.. IBM makes there money on services.
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
Seems to me that he's right about the Current state, and about the possible Future state of IT, but has he addressed the distance btwn the two? Businesses are finding greater and greater growth and opportunity thru the use of IT, when does the upward curve level out. Is it an s-curve? That's the real issue. Has anyone done a forecast, or can anyone?
IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER!
Everyone: IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER! IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER...
Eventually IT will become a simple, cheap, commodity service. All the work that can be performed elsewhere, such as tech support, manufacturing, designing, etc will be farmed out to other countries. The only work performed here will be replacing bad computers. Computers will become like cell phones and other embedded devices. Bad ones will be thrown away or sent away to be repaired. Eventually saying "I work on computers" will be equivilant to saying "I clean houses." It isn't a bad thing, but it isn't the innovative, problem solving work most of us really enjoy.
So what's to happen to us geeks? Many will go into design and project management, and liasons. Many will continue to work for a long time in interoperability. Those with PhDs will make patents so companies that don't actually produce anything can make money. Lots will support other growing fields that need custom work, such as bioelectronic technology, nanotechnology, and those other 'pie in the sky' technologies.
Many will go into programming and hope they can sell their vision/idea to the few major content providers - who'll take it and have it developed further by programmers in lower slobovia.
But it's still another 10-20 years along.
-Adam
"I used to be with IT, but then they changed what IT was. Now what I'm with isn't IT, and what's IT seems weird and scary to me."
"Longhorn is not just a next generation of Windows, it's the next generation of a whole series of products," he said, adding that Longhorn will create "a fundamental big bang" that renews innovation across the industry.
hahahaha....HAHAHAHAHAHA
It just that... Ballmer says the dumbest things. I don't know what idiot in this industry actually thinks that Microsoft is going to let anyone have any profit. and what the hell is a "fundamental big bang"??? I think Deloitte Consulting has the perfect product for him.
I thoroughly disagree with Carr. There is still PLENTY of opportunity for IT to lead, just look at Homeland Security and TIA. IT has just barely begun to bring us the Big Brother that Orwell promised us. Any smart organization, commercial or public, should be pushing the limits of what IT can do today to bring on the oppressive survelliance society!
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Not boring. Lame.
It seems that RFID is a pretty clear refutation to the thesis. RFID will slash inventory costs, while hopefully increasing accurracy. And RFID is clearly Information technology.
/.ed a few weeks ago and I think that is another IT that is making a difference. That has the potential to shrink both the labor needed at a supermarket checkout, as well as shrinking the time needed to buy food (it takes so little time to pay for the food, that the bottleneck is bagging groceries!) With RFID the shopping would be even faster, as one could skip the scanning of groceries as one put them in the shopping cart.
RFID will also make some tech dreams closer to reality, eg a fridge that knows what's inside and what needs replacing.
I visited the Stop and Shop with the "Shopping Buddy" that was
All of the RFID worship is meant to provide a counterpoint to the idea that IT doesn't matter. RFID matters and RFID is IT. IT still matters.
Intellectuals! Liberals! Peacemongers! IDIOTS!!!
It is what runs a large part of business worlds back rooms.
However, cutting edge IT technology doesnt matter.
Most companies are 5+ years behind.. and are quite content.. If it gets the job done and can still find somone that can support them, they have no need to change.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
--Chag
Depends on the definition of IT and how it affects the particular company. Think of a mom-and-pop hardware store that keeps the books (real, live books) in a steno pad with a pen. To me, that't IT and that is very important to that particular firm. To me, IT is a state of business and support of a business, not just a rack of flashing lights and long acronyms. The author should really rethink his piece before narrowing his focus.
Macs as a fetish property
most people's computers are just simple word processing and communication devices. A Pentium 4 can do this. A P3 can do this. A P2 can do this. A Pentium can do this. Heck, even a 486 or 386 can do this. But no, we're stuck on this lunacy of an upgrade treadmill. Hundreds of megabytes needed just to write email. Gigabyte Linux distro downloads. Minimum of [quote sys req.] "400MHz" needed just to run an everyday Linux system (!).
And why does this happen? Because companies like MS & Apple want you to keep buying new computers. They bloat their software. You need ever more to do the same thing. A modern P4 system with WinXP gives a slower user experience to do the _exact_ same things as my 1995 486 system & its software did.
But the largest blame of all rests with us programmers and techy types. Most of us, when it comes to this sort of thing, are morons. I don't say this very often about people, but it is very true. We upgrade all the damn time for no good reason. We bloat our code horribly because we don't care a _damn_ how it runs on any computer more than 2 years old. So we've got something in the order of half a _billion_ 'obselete' computers sitting in attics around the world. All because we can't be bothered to write good code, and we're pathetic in wanting to be 'cool' in having the latest GHz hardware all the time.
Please don't give me that rubbish about how you need all this ram and mhz for modern systems, it just isn't true. Take a look at any Acorn / RISC OS computer for proof.
No. What is it? GET IT What is it? You want it all but you can't have it...
I actually think he's right. IBM e.g. effectively commoditisized (if that's a word) PCs by opening up the their standards years ago, MS having the complentary product "OS/Office" that made them superrich. Consider this: Having Win+MSOffice (please no religious zealotry...:) ) might have given you an advantage 10 yrs ago, if you were one of few and could reorganize your business processes to be much more efficient using it. Nowadays, everybody has it and needs it, you loose that advantage.
This guy Carr just generalizes that to the whole of IT, including the "new" stuff like the net. Beats me, why IBM is crying foul, since they are running this huge PR campaign of "IT as a utility" which is exactly that.
just my 2 cents
The trick is, while that's how businesses work, that's not how PHB's work. PHB's look at case studies involving companies with totally different business needs than their own, which are somewhat embellished by the consulting firm they hired, who is also being paid by by their primary software vendor to encourage them to upgrade.
But then, that's how *other* businesses work.
Carr is right about the ubiquity of IT. Everyone has it, so by and large it's not really a selling point by itself. He's also right that it's really important to shift focus from buying into new ideas to making sure the old ones work.
However, a critical component of the advancement of IT is the "new idea"(surprise). Computer science is still expanding and changing from day to day. As we all know, most ideas are way ahead of their time as far as computing power goes. We always seem to be playing catch-up with our theories. Components get faster and cheaper, and we're continually discovering new and better ways to utilize them to do what we need to do. Take the current boom in wireless technologies as an example. It will change the way a lot of companies do business. To survive and moreover to compete these companies must be able to adapt to new technologies. Of course not all businesses will have to ride that bleeding edge but the effects will trickle down.
The bar is still being raised. I can see a leveling off happening in the future, but as the price of hardware continues to drop we can be sure that IT will still be relevant as newly affordable/feasible ideas come to light.
Crystal Meth: Would you ingest somthing made from a poisonous gas and an explosive metal? You do it every day -- Salt!
And IT turned out to be a damn scooter... hmph.
ah, handybundler, my favorite of the bundlers.
It doesn't, now everyone get out so I can have my pick of the jobs that haven't been sent to india or east europe.
I work in a small graphics/prepress shop, and if something works, we keep it until it no longer works.
When a new problem comes up, we see if our existing architecture will solve it, if not, then we start researching the newest choices out there.
For example, our server was a used Sun, which we picked up from an imploded dot.bomb (god bless San Francisco's used equipment market.)It works fine for our 30 or so people, however, we need a high powered rip to deal with all the various post script that comes through here, as quickly as possible. So we spent an assload of time researching the various rips and bought the latest greatest of the brand we chose. Runs fine on that poor ol' used Sun.
Granted this is a simple example, but, if it ain't broke why fix it?
If you are one in a million, then there are six thousand people who are just like you.
From my weblog:
An article titled "IT Doesn't Matter" by Nicholas G. Carr published in May 2003 issue of venerable Harvard Business Review, announcing the elevation of IT into a mature infrastructure, in the same league as rail-road, electricity and hence incapable of providing any strategic advantage, seems to have generated good amount of controlversy. Fortune columnist David Kirkpatrick wrote in his column Stupid-Journal Alert: Why HBR's View of Tech Is Dangerous: "One of the article's most glaring flaws is its complete disregard for the centrality of software." Pete Delisi wrote in SOUND OFF column of CIO magazine: "What I believe he misses is that IT is not only a transport technology, as are all the other technologies he compares it to. IT is also a "processing" technology capable of doing more than carrying electronic signals or goods, which basically arrive at their destination without major value being added by the technology in the transport process."
The HBR article defines IT (Information Technology -- if you are still wondering) as the technologies used for processing, storing, and transporting information in digital form. But still uses specific embodiments of IT such as number of hosts connected to the Internet as an indicator of IT's overall maturation. Conclusions drawn from state of a specific IT segment cannot be applied to the the whole of IT. I agree that the Internet itself may be in a fairly advanced stage of development. But then, the Internet, however important, is just a segment of IT and cannot be equated with IT. IT is much broader and has seen evolution of many such segments: Transaction Processing, Personal Computing, Desk Top Publishing, Multi-Media and so on. The Internet is only one among many manifestations of IT.
In my opinion, this is the biggest flaw of the HBR article -- It takes a fairly narrow view of IT. It may be okay to compare the Internet with Railroad but it is not fair to compare IT with Railroad. Comparison with the general category of Trasnportation would be more appropriate. Maturing of Railroad did not preclude aviation based transport or even the network of highways for the ground transportation!
Fundamentally, there isn't much of a difference here. If your business needs require a cutting-edge solution, implement one. However, money spent on "gee this is cool" equipment/software in excess of the business need is wasted.
To put it in perspective, at the peak of the .com era (1998) we were still providing email to ~1000 people with an eight-year-old Sun 670MP. I was constantly amazed at conferences and classes when other IT departments insisted on E10000 servers to provide email for 100 people. They had spent in excess of $100k for the ultimate server for a low-bandwidth, low-CPU service.
Another interesting data point is the number of CRM, HR, and financial systems that are developed but never reach deployment. Businesses try to get the all-singing, all-dancing solution and it turns out the technology does not yet exist or final system is simply too complex. However, the consultants get to keep their money and things continue to work using the legacy system.
I want to have his babies.
Years ago NME opined of the band "Wild Horses," While we have Electricity we will have Bands like this! Today we have the Harvard Business School, and while it exists we will have err, gentlemen, like Carr.
IT does matter. It will continue to matter till such time some far more advanced concept sweeps it aside, just as the computer finally nudged Caxton's Press to one side in the last decade.
The example of using RFID tags at Walmart is actually proving the point that IT does matter. Walmart is one of the most truly, colossally computer intensive companies on the planet. Just ask KMart if Walmarts' IT efforts were worthless and a waste of time.
Without IT as we know it today, companies like GE could not exist. They would collapse under their own weight in paper. They require bleeding edge technology just to manage Terabytes of data, forget about actually doing anything to sift those terabytes and make sense of them. Without Information Technology much of the US economy would not exist. IT matters, it pulled us out of the morass of the 70's, the height of the lack-of-information-technology era.
Carr seems to fail in all points, because he is the quintessential academic. He has no concept of what is at the heart of real business, or that real businesses very heart is now a computer.
IT a commodity? Only if peoples brains are such.
Unplug a whole bunch of shit. Watch the chaos.
:P
THEN ask people if IT matters.
I realise that your statement was somewhat in jest, but actually I don't think that's true a lot of the time. If this is what you mean by "new technology" (as opposed to things like "web services", XML, .NET, etc.) then there are clear benefits.
Firstly, users with big or multiple monitors are often measurably more productive when using a computer all day. A colleague at work has just got a second monitor. It's just an old but serviceable 17" box, but it makes him more efficient, and he loves it.
And that, of course, is a second good reason to spend that little extra on the hardware people use all day: it has a morale-boosting effect. Employers that treat their staff well get treated well in return.
And of course, Macs are vastly superior to Windoze boxes anyway. <ducks> :-)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I've worked in the trenches for almost 20yrs. I have to say he hit the nail on the head.
:-)
Why should a business spend a shed load of money to gain no advantage? They shouldn't they should look to buy IT as a utility or infrasturture.
Why is Open Source booming? A lot of devleopers/managers realise that all they need is software that does the job, anything extra is supurflous. They'll glady help/pay to write the software as long as they only pay once.
The first business that adopts the less is more approach to software will dramatically reduce IT costs. 90% functionality is more than enough for anybody
List the applications a business needs and then see if they are available. The race is on, which Open Source projects are going to be the 800lb gorilla.
My list
Low level PL C/C++
Business PL (Java/Perl/Python)
OS Linux (Debian)
Desktop (KDE,Gnome)
Web Server Apache
Browser Mozilla
Office Suite Open Office
Database SAP DB
Accounts Package (Gnu Cash)
ERP Compiere
CRM
BI
You'll notice there are no commercial products. Business will require open source in the future, why pay for upgrades when you can get it at low cost.
A closed source company will be required to defend itself with ip law. Expect to see more and more patent wars waged, rather like the pharma companies. A patent is a license to print money but when it expires so does your money. Generic Drugs=Generic software.
The question is do you want to work in IT when your only job is gluing other peoples code together? If not you'd better start thinking about which project you wish to work on.
You think vertical markets are going to help you, think again. How many forms of banking are there? How many types of insurance.. etc etc The first big OS project in these markets will probably never be over taken.
IT will only ever be a large expense to those companies that can derive profit from that expense.
IT is only important inasmuch as any other part of an endeavor's infrastructure. As such it's up there probably with things like your physical plant, accounting department, etc. You probably can't operate without it at this point and be big, but having it is not going to give you any competitive advantage.
I think recently the "right" IT "solution" has been viewed as the sack full of magic beans that will turn shoddy business concepts or a bunch of ne'er do wells into world beaters, or the secret sauce that will make you better than your closest competitors. I think many have been burned by thinking this way over the last few years.
In light of this realization I think the pendulum of perceived value of IT has swung (perhaps a bit too far) back into line with the actual value provided by IT. IT today is like steno pools, typewriters and courriers of several decades ago. You never heard businesses hyping their "high powered technologically advanced" steno pools before - so now too with IT. IT is not a business advantage, just an underlying, non noteworthy part of doing business.
What's also important to realize is that more often than not it's the personell in the IT department that are the value rather than a particular technology. Being able to skillfully recommend, acquire, deploy, maintain and perhaps even create custom technologies in harmony with the requirements of a given business is much more important than any particular IT technology in and of itself, and that is the realm of people (either consultants or in house), not technology.
Both of these realizations are of course dissonant to the concerns of those who like to sell IT "solutions", so it's no surprise that they are fighting this reality so strongly.
There is still a lot left that corporate can do to take better advantage of IT. There is a whole line of new customers who prefer to use technology instead of the old methods of doing business. How many of us try Google'ing for Pizza instead of using the telephone? Or use on-line banking instead of walk-in teller? Have you spent hours researching your next car on-line instead of trusting a salesman? Or buy products through the convience of the Internet instead of drive 15 minutes to a shop that you know who carry's the same item?
I am this type of person. And I feel I'm not alone. Business of old just might be walking into it's grave.
Corporate should focus more on better supporting their customers. Not just through Internet, or WML, but also through personalized products. I think that in the future a customer might be able to not only pick their shoe color/style and size, but also the show width, the arch height, the lace style, the comfort level of the sole, and style of the tread. And have that specific shoe delivered to them the next day.
Correction: It was MeatBalls with Bill Murray.
Your favorite of the bundlers,
-hb, past my 2pad limit.
But do they? Would a secretary typing up her letters be any less productive using Word 2000, running on Windows 2000, on a PIII/500, than she is using Word 2002, running on Windows XP, on a PIV/1.6GHz?
Sometimes upgrades have definite value; see my earlier comment in this thread about monitors. Other times, they make no real difference at all, and it's just a numbers game, where the prize is... nothing.
Today, as always, most of the serious work is done on older, tried and tested systems. The users of the most recent toys are either the few who genuinely do require state of the art power and/or technology to do their work, or those who like to be on the bleeding edge, because.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
[This is a broad reply, not necessarily directed at the parent post(er).]
I find myself drawing this distinction for people fairly often. Let's see it again:
IT is not Computer Science.
Similarly, Computer Science is not IT
Yes, there is some overlap, but the IT guy in the trenches very probably will not need to know how to design a compiler (or an OS, or an ASIC...); CS guy probably won't need to know how to set up a router. Before people on both sides start flaming, I am not saying that one is better or more important than the other. Look at it this way: CS is often strategic (i.e. long term) in nature; IT is generally tactical.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Ok, do you think Steven Lucas was shoring up his existing technologies when I made Star Wars Episode II? I don't think so!
Creating the first movie ever shot 100% in digital, and edited that way as well, that was a bold forward looking movement. Now obviously he had the support of Microsoft and Linux, showing that these two companies can indeed work together.
Do you think he could have made such a bold technological advance WITHOUT the help of the two largest software companies? I don't think so!
This guy might have some interesting ideas, when he suggests we drop our IT departments, but where would that put the big-six accounting firms? Arthur Andersen sure couldn't do their accounting job without computers, most companies with over 47 employees NEED computers to deal with the payroll! THINK ABOUT IT!
I didn't read the article, but I liked the star wars movie, and I think the guy is wrong to put that down. Even if film looks better most of the time, modern digital technology is sure to catch up!
Technology is supposed to enable us to do more. As long as it does that, tech is a success. The hardware companies wil convince you that that means more Mhz and more disk.
In reality though, if you can put to use that PIII-700 to do something productive, then it is a success.
For an analogy consider a Cray vs a TRS-80. A Cray running a bubble sort will be beaten by a TRS-80 running QuickSort for just a few thousand elements. The same is true for tech in general. Work smart, not hard.
There are times where raw Mhz are needed, these are real-time requirements or due to lag creating some kind of penalty (if it takes 20 mins to get an answwr back, you'll be more selective in your questions, where as if it took milli-senconds, you'd take time to ask more creative questions - this was the prupoe behind Beowolf clusters)
And again, we see work smart not hard. Put those PIII-700 to work as a cluster, working smart, not hard.
Better processes are key. Brute force allows you to compensate for lack of a good process, but you pay a premium.
I see all too often PDAs being used instead of note pads. PDAs many be status simbles and nifty, but I can put notes in and read notes back off a pad of paper faster than the fastest PDA users.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
We all need to stop thinking of IT as a field apart from the rest of the world, and start looking at the world and to see how it can be made better. Sometimes IT will be part of that solution. Sometimes not. Sometimes the solution will be to remove (gasp!) high tech "solutions" that failed to deliver.
Most of the IT companies spent the last 25 years convincing companies and consumers to buy desktop computers, laptop computers, servers, and software in order to boost productivity. Plenty of low tech jobs were replaced by a bunch of high tech solutions and a smaller number of high tech jobs. Companies now routinely process zillions of transactions very quickly using very few workers. It may be that productivity can be increased even further in this way, but the huge gains of the last two decades are probably tapped out. IT may not be the motivation for the next huge runup in stock prices, but saying that it doesn't matter is like saying that mutual funds don't matter in the market. They may have fallen out of favor, but they're still a huge force to be reckoned with.
I'd like to see IT applied in ways that really make our world better, instead of (just) more efficient. IT has long promised to improve health care, and has largely delivered on that, but it has also lead in part to the increased cost of health care. Let's use it to drive down costs. IT has made a lot of things much more convenient, but at the cost of privacy. Let's use IT to protect privacy and better control our own information.
There are a million directions that IT can go in, and thanks to massive parallelism in our society it can go in those directions all at once. Let's get on it.
In the film, Tucker, a man and his dream, an auto exec testified "you never innovate until your competitors force you do". Now consider what has happened to the US auto industry. If the US doesn't get guys like that out of positions of leadership, the US will go the way of the US auto industry.
Once we define what IT is then we would have a better chance at finding out whether it matters or not. IT would be easier to put IT in its proper place of context. Until then the eternal question of whether IT matters will remain answered...
Jonathanjk.com
Man, I feel so out if it right now.
I used to be totally with it, but now I'm so out of it, I don't even know what it currently is.
. . . goddamn kids today.
Aw, fudge.
My main concern with the IT market is jobs. We tried damn the torpedoes full steam ahead and look where it got us. Me along with a bunch of qualified IT people searching with not much luck for a job any job. That's why I am focusing my job search hunt for IT positions in non-IT companies because I believe that IT as a product alone has failed.
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Steve Ballmer says it matters?
Carly "Jet Babe" Fiorina says it matters?
All we need is Darl McBride to join with these two twits, and we've got a quorum of incorrect opinions!
(Well come on, it's not like they've got anything ELSE right so far)
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
No, IT Doesn't.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I just took over IT at the medium advertising agency I work for. The previous guy had entirely subscribed to the theory of "New. Bigger. Better." If I could get back the last 2 years budget, I'd be in heaven. He bought because "New technology means advancement."
Whereas I've been purchasing based on what technology is actually going to improve our production, which suprisingly isn't much. We've got piles of Dual G4s that were top of the line last year, and I'm purchasing eMacs, because with the money I save (and no actual difference for what my employees do with the machine), I can invest in better networking, and invest in people (yah raises!).
For some reason people think that the latest upgrade will always increase productivity. We have machines that have been around for the last 3 years doing nothing, and I now have our back-end MySQL databases running off of them, have our web-server running off of them, using them as file-servers.
And it makes a real difference in my budget, when I can make do with current equipment, it gives me a lot more room for expansion, compared to the practice of replacing non-obsolete equipment every other year.
I think corporate America wastes more technology by not utilizing it to its fullest (which sometimes means having decade old equipment) than it could possibly realize.
Ryan Stultz
Given that so many admins spend so much time patching and testing patches, it seems that a good part of the IT industry is already devoted to shoring up systems already in place.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
IT may not matter, but it's still better than dealing with the airlines.
Whether a company has enough IT or needs more depends on whether the IT staff can convince the business people of the ROI of IT projects. The prior ROI of recent projects will determine how much cred the IT staff have with the business side. The projected future ROI of proposed IT projects will determine what the business should do, assuming they take the advice of IT department. There are four combinations for the prior ROI of IT and the future ROI of IT. They are:
1. High prior ROI, high future ROI: An IT-intensive company that derives huge competative advantage by staying ahead of the IT curve.
2. High prior ROI, poor future ROI: An IT-saturated company that can stay with what it has.
3. Poor prior ROI, high future ROI: An IT-bungled company that wil have an uphill battle convincing executives that IT is now worth it.
4. Poor prior ROI, poor future ROI: A company that needs no IT, has PHBs, or a company with an incompetent IT staff.
The investment side of ROI is not too hard to measure using capex and TCO data for IT. But the return side of ROI is where many people miss the boat -- both in upfront estimation and in delivery. If the IT department wants respect, they need to measure business performance and be able to say how business performance will improve with any new IT projects. Then, the IT people need measure the before and after so they can prove that the project was successful from a business standpoint.
The bottom line for IT is the bottom line for the company. Create a good track record of providing return on IT investment and then propose more new projects that provide good ROI. Unless the company is totally under the influence of petty PHBs, any smart CFO is going to greenlight a project that has high ROI.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Personally, Ive always viewed reactionary, defensive strategies to be losing strategies. Only by having an offensive (no pun intended), proactive mindset will people generally succeed. Intelligence and creativity arent defensive traits.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Carr countered saying that he is not advocating complacency but skepticism. "Companies shouldn't be complacent; the word I would use is skeptical," he said
...you get the idea.
Bang on! I've often referred to Information Technology as "Data Technology". The main difference is the ability to act on data. If you can make better decisions based on processing data, it becomes information.
Too much of Information Technology is wasted on learning tools. New versions of software is release which precipitates a purchase of books, seminars and (more importantly) time.
Linux appeals to me because it uses a fairly static set of tools, which can be combined to solve problems. It isn't as pretty as Windows, but the time I've invested in learning tools well has paid off in less time learning stuff I don't need (TMTOWTDI). I focus more on my boring old ASCII files with the business information I need and less on figuring out why my latest version of Word is causing a GPF in a newly reloaded version of Windows XP that can't open the Word doc that I typed up last week, which precipitated the reload in the first place because Word locked up when I was trying to extract information from the data I'd collected...
Ruby on Rails Screencast
"I used to be with IT, then they changed what IT is, now what i'm with isn't IT and what's IT seems strange and frightening to me"
--grandpa simpson
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
My company would make a good case study.
Three years ago we had a Solaris network, Sun workstations, Netscape mail and calendar server, etc. There were five sysadmins for 1200 employees. An "Intro to UNIX" class was held twice a year, and an "Advanced UNIX" class once a year. All in all, it was a traditional, stable, robust, and boring infrastructure.
Then we got bought out by a huge multinational. We went Microsoft-only. We're now on a Windows network, Win2K and WinXP workstations, Exchange server, etc. We have 20 MCSE's for 1000 employees. Introduction to Windows classes are held quarterly, with additional classes in Word, Access, PowerPoint, etc. Our network is now unstable, frequently down, and very exciting. We have to reboot our workstations to apply patches about twice a week.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Grandpa Simpson: I used to be with it, but then they changed what "it" was. Now what I'm with isn't it. And what's "it" seems weird and scary to me.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I don't know if you have looked at many of those other employers but most are not hiring right now! I am developing applications that are boring. But you know what? Im getting paid at the moment (well.. at least I think I am =) All those "In it for the toys" people are now sitting on there butts reading the help wanted section.
My experience: Went to work for company that implemented nice large finance system because business plan anticipated huge growth. Started just before they lost biggest client, 9/11, and terrible business environment. Business plan useless. Budget cutbacks, no new projects, eventually outsourcing nice finance system. Me laid off.
Ideal situation: PHBs don't care much about IT as glamour department but have decent business sense and fund good, well justified projects. Me do challenging creative useful stuff and don't worry about making datacenter pretty for PHBs.
Oh, and PROFIT!!
One checkout clerk, eight dollars per hour, 8 clerks per shift, three shifts per day, fifteen hundred thirty six dollars, 365 days per year, five hundred sixty thousand dollars. And change. Face of Walmart shareholders when each store posts an additional $560k in profit because of IT and RFID? Priceless.
Good one, Sir! :-)
MOD Parent UP
We covered the article in an IT strategy class. Basic conclusion. Only if it's your core strategy. Only if what you do and who you are depends on it, and you continue to invest in IT. Otherwise, second place is good enough (Try telling K-Mart that about Wal-Mart though).
Does what matter?
As a metrologist, I am acutely aware that my job is not a "valued added" function. I work for an aerospace company that is one of the 30 companies whose stocks make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average. What I do, day in and day out, does not help sell product. What I mean is, consumers expect their avionics to meet spec. They do not expect to pay extra to have the test equipment that was used to align these devices calibrated; they take that for granted. As such, it adds no saleable quality to the end product. If aerospace companies could do without a calibration department, they would certainly do so. Luckily (from my point of view) certain agencies DO understand the importance of having measurements based on traceable national and international standards (like the FAA, and ISO). And hopefully it will help make the difference between your airliner landing on that runway in the fog, and touching down in the swamp just to the left. But still, my job function is considered "indirect" and does not help sell the product.
I see IT as being in the same same boat...companies NEED an effective IT department to stay competitive, but consumers are not willing to pay extra for it. It is a foregone conclusion by consumers that effcient companies have an effective IT infrastructure.
Like calibration, IT is not likely to be missed until the effects of its disappearance are noticed.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
I still live on the wrong side of a rural dial-up that get crapped on by electric fences. I expect to get broadband in a few years. IT is being commoditised. Running the batch jobs to do billing was once a "high tech" thing, now it gets farmed out to the lowest bidder (maybe offshore). It used to be that the Silicon Valley was the place to do stuff because that's where everyone was and the communications was a bottleneck. Now we have pretty good phones and internet world wide and a programmer in Pakistan is at no disadvantage to one in Sunnyvale. IT is just becoming a tool. Knowing low to use it is becoming less and less important. Analogy: Fifty years ago you needed to know how to set the advance/retard on a vehicle's ignition to start it reliably; now you don't have to worry about it or the choke. Likewise internet connections are "just there" for many people. Of course people that sell computer equipment don't want to view their product as commodity because that reduces perceived value.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
...and expenses are meant to be as low as possible. We report in through the CFO, and our responsibilities include: monitoring cell phone usage and costs, monitoring postage use and costs, running mission critical servers on the bare minimum possible (or worse) hardware, in addition to the usual support, recovery and continuity processes, etc. IT in our company is nothing more than a line item.
Do you feel that corporate IT budgets should be focusing on cutting edge technology to best serve its customer's needs, or should they focus on shoring up what they have now in order to maximize its usefulness to the customer?
This statement I agree with, though perhaps in a different way than the way in which Mr. Carr would agree.
I feel that business has placed vastly greater importance on new features than on product quality. The result is a lot of bugs, and code that is difficult to maintain. If we (IT people) were rewarded for stability and quality as well as we are for new features, I think everyone would be happier. Since the reward structure reflects business's desire for more features sooner, it is a constant struggle to keep developers aware that things like refactoring and unit testing lead to a better product and faster development in the long run - many respond, "I'm not concerned with the long run, because my boss told me to get this done now." It is difficult to argue with this pragmatic philosophy (though, being an idealist, I do persist in leaping 'pon the back of mighty Rocinante and charging the windmill).
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
is very important to productivity...
:)
Since every Microsoft product has so many bugs.
As has been said here already in more roundabout ways, the author of the article is mainly correct and the reaction is mainly not about what the article was about. And irrelevant.
:)
I think the gist of the article (IT is becoming a commodity, the advantage of "having IT" is disappearing BECAUSE it is becoming necessary to compete, etc) is correct.
But that doesn't mean that IT is threatened any more than automaking jobs are threatened when everybody has a car. It just means it's a little less sexy when it's not exclusive.
People still need good IT personnel, it's just that "everyone" has IT people now. Technology will continue to improve, adoption of new stuff will continue, but it's no longer the exclusive advantage of the "bleeding edge."
The reastion has been pretty funny, however, as leading IT industry figures who didn't read the article respond as if their jobs were on the line.
I think slashdot is the wrong crowd to discuss this matter. We have a bad habbit of judging IT on terms of technical merit and cool factor.
On the other hand I have never read a post by a slashdotter about actually calculating TCO and putting that into a cost-benefit analysis. Plus throw in issues like current value, future value. potential savings adjustment for inflation. This is how businesses will continue to measure the needs for IT in their organization.
So all in all, Adam Smiths invisible hand will also guide IT trends as well. See its not so much a matter of who has the best whatever system but a matter of which companies re-invest in IT wisely.
As far as leading and following goes, that is just a risk benefit issue. I bet most companies have been minimizing risk lately by avoiding big capital investments in new systems. So given the recent economic conditions, one would expect a reduction in risky activity. However since the recession is technically over, and we should be moving into economic expansion, now might be the ideal time for more technology leaders to emerge. I think that as more companies realize we are heading towards growth again Nicholas Carr will be proven quite wrong. He probably already is since all this is based on trend analysis which means these predictions are really only observations of the last 6+ months.
Slashdot is an anagram for Has Dolts, and I am Dolt number 468543
Carr says we have picked all the low-hanging fruit. Most of the fundamental rollouts have taken place. Even the most luddite of businesses have realized what adding a computer can do.
Now though, it's time to build out. Automating, digitizing, scanning all the direct jobs of workers using paper - most of that is now digital. It's done or being done. The job of IT now isn't the fancy visible work, it's the grunt work of making all that stuff interoperate. Making it pretty and easy to use.
How many of the tools in most offices were something someone cobbled together? Or workers that use ten different stand-alone apps and instead of moving data from paper to a form, now just cut and paste, over and over and over, from form to form. Example: Watch the receptionist at your dentists office move data from their contact database to the insurance database. Watch at the insurance company as a cube worker moves that data to another standalone database.
Think about how ugly and user-hostile many of those applications are. They fail and fall apart because the data has to be 'just-so.' Each app requires half a day of training even if the employee already knows how to do the job.
Make the app so natural and easy to use that it removes that training requirement. Make those databases talk to each other. Test it and fix it to make the data entry easy.
The job ahead of IT isn't the fashionable stuff of the last twenty years but it's also deeper and more difficult. It's also going to enable new innovation. There will be fashionable new apps to be invented that we haven't even thought of that will only be possible because the easy work is done and everything everywhere is digitally accessible.
approach to the issue. Neither agression nor defense. Just do what needs to be done. I can't tell you how much the misuse of analogy in my industry affects me. People don't just go wrong. They do it spectacularly by thinking that life is an analog of *insert the name of a sport here*. Obviously things in life are similar, but they are separate and should stay that way. Men and women, stuff like that. :-)
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
The biggest problem with this article is that Mr. Carr purposefully wanted to stir controversy (as he has himself admitted) with an incendiary salvo that could not fail to stir people up. The consequence is that I would guess that less than ten percent of the folks that are commenting and responding to this article, have not read the entire thing.
Mr. Carr's point is that internal IT is not necessarily a strategic asset for a corporation and in many cases should be outsourced. One can argue that without a strong IT group, Fedex would be just another shipping company, not the model of efficiency that they are today. Most companies though, could outsource their IT departments without skipping a beat. This however, suoperficially only changes where the paycheck for the IT folks comes from as you still need to provide support and infrastructure unless you want to replace all those computers with typewriters, correction fluid and filing cabinets.
So the question becomes why not outsource such a commodity as support, user setups, email, etc.? I have been an MIS manager/IT Director/CIO (funny how the titles change and the job stays the same) for more than 15 years, and I guarantee you that you can't save money by outsourcing without severely degrading the support that you provide to end users. An internal IT support person who knows his user base, is committed to the company's success and is familiar with the industry they work in, is going to be a hell of a lot more invested in his job and providing quality support than a hired company that in all likelihood is providing support, to add insult to injury, over the phone from some central location.
When you dig deeper and take the long view, without a strong, comprehensive IT department, you will fail to seize the strategic opportunities because there will be nobody there to identify them.
I don't know. But that's a very good question -- the greatest question, even -- and I'm glad slashdot has finally covered it. I hope we will soon find out if it matters.
..but the gloss may be wearing off the magazine pages.
A typical IT dept is based on:
helpdesk: helping the other employess use the technology at hand
solutions: finding the right answer for the employee's needs.
implementation: installing/configuring said technology.
maintenace: backups, user profile management, repair, etc.
Of course a contactor's duties may vary slightly from this, but is still quite similar.
IT used to be the holy grail of buisiness, if you didn't have it, you looked lame. Truth be told, some buisinesses don't need IT, but a good large portion of them should think about having some IT in their organization.
Large retail establishments can benefit greatly from this, for inventory and cash tracking perspectives it's practically a requesite. But a small convenience store may not need any IT. Maybe a security camera of two, but that's it.
Auto garages can benefit from IT as well. They could have a system that does automatic quotes based on the car and type of service needed, as well as inventory of common parts, tracking of man-hours, and performance metrics. A small garage though may not need all of this however, as it might not be financially reasonable.
Basically, if an IT solution cannot pay itself off after a year, it's not a good idea. If it can be paid off in less than a year, it just might be an improvement worth paying for.
About the irrelevance of IT and the loss of half a million tech jobs, just give me my shake and fries.
As is painfully obvious with the recent bust in IT jobs, the issue lies with the decision makers. The ability to discover the latest buzzwords and impress the check signers does not make one a visionary. IT is a crucial segment of most businesses. The issue is what needs to be accomplished. You could set up a .NET or J2EE environment, use web services, XML, and a host of technology to get the job done, but is that necessary? Yeah, it sounds good to say that the company is on the cutting edge, but when you look at the return on investment, is it really a good move? So, by having buzz-word oriented managers IT projects may become larger than necessary and in turn make the IT department look like they are playing with the latest technology at the expense of the company. Maybe what is needed are more experienced managers who understand the task at hand is to deliver a functional project - under budget and on time. If you aren't going to fully use a technology, then why invest the time? Why put this money into the new technology now when your company isn't going to be using it until 5 years from now. As we have seen, a lot changes in 5 years. Get a solid, simple core and build on that.
Mods, yes, hello, the parent is mine...i hadn't intended for my post to be "interesting" it was intended to be "funny" because i was trying to be philosophical with that post...i dunno i think it went over your heads. Either that are it was too "in" with IT!
Jonathanjk.com
an old program from the early 80's with NO MOUSE. Some things are perfect when they are invented. Like Fractal Design Painter and Oreos.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
For the /. crowd this should be a GOOD THING! Just like with pushing Linux, the new push is going to be how well do we USE our systems to get business done. In my shop the management still doesn't get it. Part of IT [the most forgotten part] is knowlage management...allowing workers to handle more tasks, and go home on time...Therein lies the real problem right now. The easy problems have been solved. Now we're at the stage in the game where it's the nitty-gritty business that needs looked at. The successful programmers are going to be working IN businesses rather than at a software company. Your also going to need to be good at business, engineering, accounting, etc. to be able to spin time-saving apps quickly...and set up systems that improve the REAL business..reduce defects, improve ordering time...rather than just making the computers "prettier". It's a world where OSS should do quite nicely...as programmers move to being "freelance" rather than working for "megacorp".
We've seen our average cost for a PC come down from $3500 to I recently specc'ed a system @ $500 each without monitor... we plan on recycling the monitor. While this is expected, it's a dramatic increase in performance at a much reduced cost. and the longer you wait the less disruption. We used to replace every 3 years, but we're seeing that be stretched out to 4-5 years easy now.
Hey it works for NASA!
Oh wait,
no it doesn't...
Seeing how I have never met someone in an IT position who's servers were fast enough, or whose network bandwidth to his server was quite enough. It seems in my expereince that the small business market is quite strong in buying new computer equipment at this time, mostly because prices are extremely low, combined with alot of throw in's. For example Dell upgrading all lease computers displays to LCD for esentially the same price, and throwing in personal UPS's for each of the new machines for some customers. This kind of deal is hard to pass up for a small software company, who has outstripped thier server capacity, as many have, and continue to do.
Ohhh, IT not it...
Q.
Insert Signature Here
I have to laugh when people make such sweeping generalizations. The fact is that for some companies IT doesn't matter. These are old school operations where pretty much every last opportunity for optimization has already been exploited.
But for other companies the answer is very different. Business conditions are such that applications of technologies make large economic differences to the company.
Making such a broad characterization is silly.
I doubt it. There will always be a human element that is susceptible to failure, even if it's only who loads the stuff on the truck.
IMHO, the single biggest problem with many companies today is that they neglect the human element, and their service suffers as a result. How often today do you find that a company gets things wrong and then claims it's all the computer's fault? How often today can you even find a company that will give you personal service, if your needs are subtly different from Joe Consumer? Just in business with IT suppliers, I've seen numerous orders delayed, misleading information about delivery times supplied, wrong parts delivered, missing components, components of wrong spec delivered, incorrect invoices and more, all because of human errors and/or flaws in the IT infrastructure.
Until businesses realise that IT is not a magic want that obviates the need for people skills and good customer service, and that IT systems are fallible themselves, all the new toys will still do as much harm as good in many cases.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I would say "no". IT/Ginger/Segway turned out to be a high-priced scooter for the walking-averse and not cheap fusion power, hoverboards or affordable sexbots for geeks like we were expecting.
We were SO scammed.
IT is this.. IT is that. Does anyone here really think you can describe an entire totally diverse industry like IT and badge it one way or another? Thats plain nuts. Each company and organsiation has their own needs, and target audience. So trying to discern how an entire industry should tackle product development as a blanket method is dumb.
Should a research and dev company retard their technology development? Should a database developer create advanced new incompatible database technology?
I wonder whether this planet is spinning forwards or backwards..
Now, THAT is what I call a brilliant pun! :)
Been waiting for a chance to vent about this...
I haven't read the article (I'm not paying $7 to read a steaming pile of bullshit), but I don't need to read it to know what it's all about and why...
From what I gather his argument is that IT is becoming a commodity like office supplies, etc. and that it's not worth spending/innovating because the returns won't be worth it. This is more or less what I would expect from a "business guy" who doesn't know jack shit about the IT industry or what's going on in it. I work for a healthcare company that is making major leaps and bounds in IT that will have real results in terms of PATIENT CARE...i.e. improving the quality of patient care. Oh and, by the way, some of those initiatives will reduce the cost of healthcare while improving the quality. I can name you a bunch of examples just from my company of how IT will be having a major impact on people's lives. I guess this guy won't care about how IT can help doctors do their jobs better until it's his family member in the hospital...sure hope he doesn't go to a hospital where the people in charge take his worthless advice.
That's just the healthcare industry. There is still TONS of ground to cover in fields like security...not just incremental improvements but entire new services. Think of the ramifications if we are able to develop digital signatures that are actually trustworthy: that will open up TONS of new possibilities and services that people can provide on line, in adddition to vastly improving the types of services we already have.
Beyond that, there are the cultural ramifications. I know it's not cool to think about anything more than making rich guys richer in the business world in America today, but if we want to stop the downward spiral towards a culture of greed and dumbness that America is in we might have to change that attitude. We have just started to see the changes that IT has caused in the way we meet people and interact. WHO we are able to build relationships with has changed completely as has the nature of those relationships. I can't even begin to tell you how much I have learned, how many people that I would have *no* idea about that I have met on line. That kind of stuff is life changing and may help us avoid the disaster that we are accelerating towards in terms of our relationship to ourselves and to the rest of the world. There is still much ground to cover in this arena...again, we have only scratched the surface of this.
It sucks that this article is getting so much attention because, really, it's not worthy of it. It's just another shortsighted article written about an industry about which the author knows nothing. These business guys love to see their name in print and that's all this is. What's depressing is that someone who could be in charge of such a supposedly prestigious magazine could be so short sighted. I guess vision is a commodity in short supply in the US these days. That's unfortunate and does not bode well for our future considering that all of our production type jobs are going off shore.
I'm sure there will be those who dismiss my line of thinking as geek-over-optimism, but that's missing the point. I seriously doubt people like the author have a good enough grasp on the technology to see the ramifications. You can see it a lot of times in the difference between younger IT people who grew up with the technology and those who got into it later in life. There is an intrinsic understanding there that you just can't learn without growing up with it. That level of understanding allows you to get some grasp on how much potential this technology has...even if the exact form of it is still a mystery. There are plenty of examples why he is wrong today...think about all the areas we have not even explored yet. I don't blame the author for being a product of a non-IT generation but I do blame him for running his mouth about a subject about which he obviously knows 0. His words carry weight and he is throwing that weight in the wrong direction.
Over the last 3 or so years, our IT dept has analysed the business practices, built the infrastructure, and deployed tools to reduce turnaround time for a specific request from 2 days to 2 hours to 30 minutes. That is a significant impact on the overall business.
We're taking the back end processes from 2 days to mere minutes.
A sales person can write a proposal, offsite somewhere, and have a Y/N answer back in minutes. Minutes, only because a human actually has to review it.
Finance finally has a firm grasp on the actual month to month revenue and revenue prediction. Previously, if you asked 3 people, you'd get 4 answers, after a day or two of futzing around. Now...anyone, incl the CEO, has it at his fingertips, anywhere in the world.
We've created dedicated, outwardlooking tools for our clients (that they didn't even know they wanted) that have directly resulted in new sales. "OMG! That is great. Sign us up!"
Those are specific, bottom line related issues that only IT could bring to the table. It took quite a while for the non-IT people to grasp what we were trying to do. But once they got to work with the actual hardcore benefits...ohh boy, did they see the light.
Another thing I've noticed, is that IT seems to be the glue between all the other factions. Marketing, sales, management, etc. all have their little fiefdoms. And IT can generally bring them together. That also means learning to say NO when required.
I like analogies. If you don't, quit reading.
To me, IT is like plumbing. Before we had plumbing, it sucked pretty badly to have to walk to the well to get fresh water. And just how fresh was it? No purification systems. It could have bacteria in it and you might die from drinking it. Then, along comes plumbing and gets the water to our house. Purification systems came about and gave us clean(er) water to drink and use for cooking, making tea, showering (some of us anyway) and such. Life was good. I bet when plumbing first came out, plumbers were thought of as the shit. They received high salaries (some still do) and all the young guys just out of college wanted to be a plumber because it was cool and getting water to people was cool (okay, maybe not all of the young guys and okay, maybe it wasn't that cool. This is an analogy after all.)
So, along comes IT (Information Technology) and computers. Before IT, we had to go to the library to get books and do research (like going to the well, this kinda sucked) we also had to do all of our math on paper with pencils. This kind of sucked too. It also limited the scale of our calculations. We also had to resort to Playboys for porn. Kind of embarassing to go to the store and buy a Playboy from the girl at the register. We also had to pay for our music and movies (really, we still should, but most of us don't.)
Well, you get the picture. IT is like plumbing and information is like water. Granted, water is more essential to life. But information can be as well. It has made us incredibly more productive and efficient. Sure, it has created new problems and issues, but it has helped us to solve a lot of problems and issues as well.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that IT does matter as plumbing matters. As time goes on we'll begin taking IT for granted (as we do clean drinking water and nice warm showers.) But, IT DOES matter and IMHO, anyone who says different is, well, just not that smart. That is all I have to say about that. Thanks for reading.
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
I can say that IT isn't necessary, but sure makes things more convenient. There are a number of businesses that exist without computers, they are mainly retail shops and the like (lemonade stands,cash/check only antiques, yada). In order for IT to actually be necessary would mean that you cannot do business at all without it.
If we didn't have the internet, we'd resort to telephones and fax machines for long distance communication. Snail mail is another option, although not as fast. Databases are a way more convenient form of file cabinets full of binders, but for some reason most accounting departments keep the paper along with the electric.
I'm not particularly worried about losing my job in IT, or afraid of someone calling my job unnecessary. I don't think my job is necessary. The whole point of my job is to ease the burden of my co-workers, by making their payrolls go faster and easier, by eliminating as much paper from the interoffice ordering and communication, or by providing support for co-workers when Outlook is barfing. All of it has functioned without computers before, it could very well do it without them again. Perhaps they wouldn't be quite so efficient, but that wouldn't hinder the actual function of the business.
The only places where IT matters are in those businesses that have bet the bank on IT. MS, IBM, and HP are all places that look at such a paper as detrimental to their position. If people in business realize that innovation does not necessarily mean upgrade, but also includes better internal programming and process auditing, all of those big tech companies will take a hit in sales.
Look at the years after the bubble burst, for instance. The business community proved how unnecessay IT really was, which my bretheren are still very sore about. Businesses found that they needed to focus on cost cutting and efficiency, both were things that didn't need bleeding edge hardware and platforms to accomplish. Cost cutting came into being through the massive release of IT workers, through limiting the spending on new servers and pipes, and through reorganization. Efficiency came when reorganization forced workers to do their jobs better, and not be so distracted by the nerf balls and ping pong tables.
Granted, many excellent workers were cut, and many poor workers were kept. This is the nature of the upper level management beast. Eventually, those people will get rolled out of their jobs, and those positions will be re-filled by the competant ones. There will not be so many positions, though, mostly because the focus of IT will be on maintaining regular operations and on optimizing current applications. There will be little room for creativity, but it can be sneaked in in the name of "easing the burden of co-workers."
IT has lost it's glamour, and everyone (including the deluded IT guys) has finally realized that IT hasn't changed much since the 70's and 80's. The mid-late 90's were an enigma, perhaps the actual recognition of this strange section of business, but it was just everything blown out of proportion in the end.
IT really isn't as necessary as IBM, MS, and HP would like people to think. These businesses have excelled recently in creating extra expense in business, just so that they can show how it could be cut with bleeding edge technology. The stuff is nice to drool over, but technology that is two-ten years old can still fulfill that role, and the cost has already been paid. IT's role is now to be intelligent with the data, to work with it efficiently, and to maximize the effectiveness of this hardware.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
The title does not really give fully define his point that staying at the cutting edge of technology may not give companies an edge in the business world. I would think it would depend on the company. Most companies don't need cutting edge; they need to focus on using existing technologies to help them be more productive and cut costs.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
It is true that a lot of the IT budget is wasted. It is true that most companies spend more than they should have to, especially on software. On the other hand I have been in many shops whose software developers were wasting a fair amount of time using obsolete and too slow machines. But I think much of the problem even for developers is not the hardware but the over-inflated price of inadequate software.
I especially find it very sad that so many shops are wed to overpriced MS products even when perfectly workable OS alternatives exist. Microsoft seeks and always will seek to draw the most dollars for the least real innovation and benefit. The way Windows works itself requires local copies of many megabytes of software when most of that software could have its components shared and brought in as needed on a fast Lan. Users should not be blamed because the dominant player makes a defective file sharing OS!
Real competitive advantage will come with real software advantage, not bloated safe-buy hype. This hype is seen clearly in enterprise software also. J2EE has become a buzzword without really delivering any competitive advantage that I have witnessed. A few large players get tremendous press and trust and rake in big bugs when the innovation, if any, is most likely in the little known new offerings from relatively unknown individuals and companies. The trick is finding these true innovations and using them in a safe and competent way. This cannot be done easily if at all if the source is closed.
Actually, I worry a bit when I hear people say that "the I.T. budget has to be looked at the exact same way as any other departmental budget".
IMHO, this is an over-generalization.
When you're talking about the budget for accounting, sales staff, or most other departments commonly found in companies - you're dealing with fairly concrete issues. You already know (or should know), for example, the average amount of revenue your sales force generates on a monthly basis. Most of their expenses are fairly fixed. (Perhaps you compensate them for the mileage they put on their vehicles, and that's going to roughly stay within certain parameters - since a given salesperson can only travel so many miles per day, week or month. You get the idea....)
If you invest in something new for these people, you can watch the change in revenue they bring in over the months that follow, and get a good idea if the new addition helped them be more efficient, or if it was just "fluff".
In I.T. - things are pretty nebulous, and often inter-twined with other departments. I.T. provides a service to the other parts of the company, so fretting too much over whether or not I.T. is directly adding to the bottom line isn't beneficial to anyone. I.T. may, in fact, be a big, continuous liability for a company - but that doesn't mean it isn't valuable. In fact, it might not be valuable - *but* it depends largely on how well they're helping the other departments do their jobs.
Say the sales force I mentioned above decides to go with a new "CRM" software package, to more efficiently work with customers. This, initially, might be seen as an example of "I.T. adding to the company's bottom line", if the package works out well and sales are up. But eventually, that same package will be forgotten about and taken for granted UNTIL it starts breaking down. When I.T. puts in long hours and spends money on updates for the package to fix bugs and keep the CRM database from getting corrupt, or when the RAID array storing it crashes and money is spend to repair it - THEN, I.T. is seen as "hurting the bottom line".
This is why it's just not a great idea to over-analyze I.T.'s supposed "return on investment".
This story, right next to 500,000 jobs lost.
.com era. And most of us laughed at it, because it was stupid, pointless, and irrelevent. The bulk of the things developed was, to be blunt, total hogwash. Period.
.coms, however. I remember almost spitting my coffee when I hit a headline, "New 3 Dimensional Database" in some trade rag. And yes, it was just a new buzzword for crap we've been doing in FoxBase, Foxpro, DBase, C, APPLE BASIC, and even COBOL for years. Yep, real new. Had a big price tag on it, too. And people bought it.
...and so on. Morons selling the same old trash, with a newer and bigger buzzword. Idiots buying it, because they're too lazy to learn, over their head, or just plain useless.
A few years ago, there was this huge
The hogwash wasn't just limited to
Then, "Client Server" was also a big buzzword. Yep, real new. Uh...
Of course, "client server" got worn out, and people hated it. So, they invented a new word - "Thin Client". THAT was NEW! In fact, if you got one REVOLUTIONARY enough, it'd even have VT100 emulation! Or Wyse50! Oh, hell, that's not new at all.
Then the website craze began. Morons charging $500/hr to "write html code", and be "html coders". Colleges actually offer degrees in this crap today. Students actually major in it. "Yes, I have a degree in Notepad, with a minor in writing code in HTML". Uh huh. Could you mail me that MAKE file for that new webpage? The linker is puking on mine...
So, the product industry is full of useless junk, and they repackage that exact same junk every xxx months with a new name (q.v. PocketPC 2002, vs Windows Mobile 2003. Or, MS Word 95, 97, 98, 99, 2000, 2001, 2002, XP, ETC, ET AL. Or, HP's new marketing campaign. Perfect example.)
And, the consumer (corporate) market is full of useless dolts, who buy the new versions thinking it'll deliver the product they were hoping to get, 12 versions ago when they originally bought it. And meanwhile, they didn't actually *need* it in the first place, because it didn't solve any real problems or enable anything new.
And the reason the consumer (corporate) market is full of these dolts, is because most of them actually THINK that the annotation of text with little bracket signs is "coding". They're clueless, intellectually lazy, and they're only in it because "Mom said it'd be a great career!"
They think the definition of an expert is someone who knows one more buzzword than you. In other words, they're suckers.
Eventually, they get fired / downsized / put out of business. And, they flood the market with all of these credentials, and they DEVALUE those credentials because they themselves are too stupid or lazy to fulfill the roles those credentials allow. "PhD for L1 Tech Support?" "Well, the guy with the 4 BS degrees couldn't handle HTML Programming. I think we need an expert in Notepad this time."
So, the market gets pissed off, and tries to normalize itself. We don't need an upgrade every week... we need a toaster, that does exactly what we need to fulfill our business requirements. Period. Once we get it, it should last for decades without being touched.
I've still got a pair of '286s floating around my shop, crunching away at whatever... because they do the job, and that's all they do, and there is NO POINT in changing them. And when someone discovers them, they stare in horror. "Why don't you upgrade them!!?" Uh, that 286 is a telenet interface to a black-box that has exactly one 300 baud serial interface. The reason it's a 286 is because I couldn't find an XT with a working floppy.
And oddly, usually they "get it" at that point... but they don't like it. They'd literally drop $1500 for a loaded 4Ghz WinXP Pro box with 20 gigs of ram, 100 gigs of drive space... to do nothing more than trap a TCP packet, and pump it out a serial port at 300 baud. Most of you reading this are probably thinking the same thing... "Jesus, dump that piece of $#%^".
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
Double Absolutely Agreed.
A department (the most profitable one) where I work still uses 6+ beige Macs with SCSI and (semi) automated CDR backup as it's backbone; where the rest of the place relies on a huge Sun server which isn't the godsend they expected. Mostly, the users don't know how to use "the new server."
Note: "users using it"
It's not hardware or software, it's the solution to the problem. What do you need, IT can help facilitate it...
Also Note: I am not IT (IANIT?)
No esta aqui!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I was actually very pissed off about this today. I call it the widgetizing of America. Everyone and everyjob is neatly classified and catergorized so that it can be easy outsourced or "right shored". "Right Shore" is the new buzzword for shipping jobs to Asia/India. Anyone is High School or College should really be thinking hard about two things 1) voting and 2) what job can they prepare for that can't be "right-shored".
.... and according to CEO's all this stuff is commidity (sic).
IT, manufacturing, technical design work, medical diagnostic work, financial analysis, text book proofing, medical research
What's really happening is that UnFree Trade is killing America. As long as overcompensated CEO's can achieve their quarterly earning targets, they could care less what long-term damage they do to the country or companies they are running. This is nothing more than blind, stupid, greed. The only question is "How hard is America going to crash?" I wonder how many people will lose their jobs, pentions, and healthcare this year as our CEO's continue to commoditize, outsource, and offshore with the blessing of our politicians (and ultimately consumers).
It's tragic that a country founded on the pioneer spirit, hard work ethic, and innovation is now dismissing everything that made it great, calling it a commidity and then getting the service performed by what amounts to slave labor. I am personally trying to break my additiction to cheap foreign goods, but can't seem to find anything made here. Recently I found a manufacturer called Jaton that makes nvidia video cards in California. I was so impressed I bought 4 of them.
ROI, TCO, IT, etc is all waffle.
.. but for some problems the best option may well be Feng Shui, a new whiteboard, or even an upgrade to the kettle in the staff room.
A business sells stuff in the hope of turning a profit.
In the course of doing business, the people in the company have to do certain things - like advertise, talk to customers, talk to suppliers, build and service the products, keep the books up to date, etc.
Each of these activities is a royal pain in the ass, and every business is swamped with problems and inefficencies in all of these areas.
All the business owner wants to know is - 'Hey, IT dude, these are my biggest headaches today - how much time and money do we need to spend to make these headaches go away'.
More often than not, the IT dude will propose some electronic solution to remove the day to day headaches
I really think that the best 'IT strategy' for any business is to simply treat each real-life headache as a separate issue, and knock em on the head one after the other, as quickly as possible.
I would advise any non-IT management types to be extremely suspicious of any IT person who proposed some grand unified vision of the future, which would be delivered at some unknown time, and would be guaranteed to solve all their headaches - both current and unseen headaches to come. They are basically saying - Hand me an open cheque book, and continue to be plagued with your current set of problems for an indefinate period, whilst we go away and develop this miracle cure for you - here are the ROI projections that justify the expense.
Now, the problem for the (sane) IT provider is to be able to implement the quick fix to solve today's problems without creating a hopeless morass of incompatible solutions that need to be integrated tommorow. Whatever solution you build today, needs to be open enough for you to either plug into or extend tommorow. This is only remotely possible using a completely OpenSource infrastructure that you control. Trying to do this with any collection of 3rd party proprietry products is just suicidal - it will simply never work. Even if it does manage to hang together today (by whatever miracle), you can bet that future strategic moves from the 3rd party proprietry vendors are going to rip your solution apart, and create much bigger problems tommorow than the original problems that you are addressing today.
We have already seen a thousand examples of internal IT departments which are nothing more than marketting arms for a proprietry vendor - basically a parasitic unit who's loyalty lies not with the business that pays their wages, but some foreign organisation who is fleecing the business in licence fees. Such IT departments need to be revealed for what they really are - and then cast out from their long suffering hosts, just like one would remove a bloated tapeworm from the bowels of a suffering dog.
An IT department that is working FOR the business that employs them, should have a TODO list that covers today's problems, and be working on providing fast solutions to these problems. The IT department should be paying for all hardware uprades and licences out of it's own fixed budget. Once these things come at the expense of their own wages, you will be amazed at how little 3rd party software is really 'needed' after all, or be astounded to find out how much life is left in that 'old' server that was installed 2 years ago.
Having said all that, it should be recognised that the IT department is not the holder of Corporate IP. Any code developed by the IT department (in order to solve todays problems for the business) should be allowed to flow back into the larger system as GPL'ed code, simply because that is the way that IT works. The business is there to make and sell widgets - let IT get on with it's job of serving the business in GPL'ed peace.
As an analogy - if your plumbing broke in the office, and the company maintenance dude knocked together some intriguing
NT = no text
...shoring up what they have now in order to maximize its usefulness...
I would shore up the usefulness of the IT infrastructure of my company rather than slap another requisition on the table for a brand new server. This is a Microsoft based network with the network and servers taking good pressure from the users. A few years ago I would've tried to push management for better servers and gigabit ethernet, but one should see such problems as challenges to their skills.
Smarter placement of switches, interswitch links moved to gigabit, tuning the MS SQL server, replacing the winproxy firewall with openbsd, getting a cisco 1700, moving services to makeshift servers, stuff like that will allow a company to wait another year before investing in cutting edge. It will also require some creativity and activity on behalf of the IT guys.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Well the problem with that statement is that it can make your company stagnant. For example, about 10 years ago the company I work at was hand drafting all of its technical drawings. That worked fine. However, they decided to spend tons of money on computers for drafting stations, and in the long run, that worked out great.
Five years later, they decided that the pen plotter that they had that took 3 minutes per D-size drawing should be upgraded to a multi-thousand dollar laser plotting machine that could make the same drawing in 10 seconds. Obviously, this type of investment was well worth it.
Lastly, just recently we moved the mechanical engineers mostly off of AutoCAD and onto Solidworks. The licenses and the much faster computers needed to run the new software cost thousands, yet we are seeing the benefits.
All of these things weren't needed, but they increased productivity. A lot of things will serve the company's or customer's needs, but some will do it faster and more efficient. That is what is meant by cutting edge.
If you can have a better mousetrap built, then you better do it before your competitors do. That's really all there is to it. Some of the examples cited (such as Walmart) are quite good examples of companies seeking out this "better mousetrap" and using it to great competitive advantage.
... or so i hope.
That's the prevailing view inside the IT industry.
On the other hand, customers of the IT industry are starting to ask themselfs "How exactly will the latest and greatest, ten times as expensive, solar powered, neon illuminated saying 'Sorry for the inconvenience' just before traping the mouse mousetrap help us catch more mice?"
Hype is out - realism is in
IT is needed in a quite a few places, no matter what some people think. From what I have seen the smartest people in can't even figure out how to turn a computer on, but some how they can find the velocity of a swallow caring a coconut for either an African or a European swallow. How does that work? As far as to "Lead or Follow" thing, that is a catch 22 in my option. If you lead you find problems and not many other people have found, so troubleshooting can be a pain some times, because no one know about it. But you have the latest and greatest technology. If you follow and you have problems, it is more likely that other people may have already found it and have a fix for it. So troubleshooting can be a little easier. But you are a little behind on technology. In IT there will always be something wrong or someone that does not appreciate what you do, and how hard you work to make them happy. So just do what you can and get that paycheck. That is what I do. And that is my two cents.
Anyone can pull a trigger, but it takes talent to use a chainsaw
Carr's article is just flame bait people...
I learned that IT means the ability to look up things on Google. I swear my whole job has become that. I don't even try to keep it a secret. When there's a problem I Google it. Because likely someone had the same problem, and was nice/smart enough to post it. This is why I'm looking for a new/more challenging job. Troubleshooting why someone can't print to a copier, which involves turning off the copier and turning it back on, is getting old :-).
But, increased productivity does suit the corporation's needs.
The way to decide whether to implement a change is to determine if the cost to implement will cause an in crease in revenue in the long run.
Allowing techincal drawings to be printed faster, increasing the productivity of that department, can be translated into decreased costs, in the long run it's cheaper to do.
However, I've seen systems that were implemented without cost/benefit analysis or, more likely, were analyzed but changed dramatically during the project, obliterating any benefit from the project. And often the cause was on the development side: insufficient requirements gathering or a love of cutting edge technology completely unsuited to the task (How often have you seen 'modernizing' as the reason for a project when the goal was to get some developers experience in the latest greatest thing? I've seen it way too often.}
I have thought about this for a while now. I work somewhere that promotes the "latest tech". It's good stuff and I get to keep lots of different skills up, but I have learned something over the last couple of years that bothers me:
The latest tech is not always the answer. Most problems are common and can be addressed nicely with existing tech, provided one has both support from PHB's and the skills to handle the problem.
Funny thing, I am finding many of my "new" skills involve learning about the new stuff while many of the problems remain the same. (I am sure this is not true for all industries, but for mine this appears to be the case.)
Problem is that I see many folks can spend some time and energy really applying what they have and get a very high percentage of the return without all the expense, pain and other things that go with new solutions.
I love tech, but lately I really wonder if the next layer of stuff coming down the line is really worth it all.
In a very real sense, maybe "IT" does not matter as much these days.
Blogging because I can...
I've been in the IT business since well before "IT" was a term. In fact I took a real job some years back and they put "IT Specialist" on my business card and I didn't even know what that meant. I was always just a computer guy and a computer consultant when I was talking to fancy people.
Anyway I can't begin to tell you how many times I've tried to talk clients of out giving me money to "upgrade" their old dos based package to the new modern windows version. Their productity drops off in a big way at first and overall somewhat. The people who used that old software knew it's flaws and keyboard shortcuts and could wiz right through it. Sure the reports looked pretty crude by today's true-type font standards and the learning curve for new people was pretty damn steep, but it was quick and reliable and you didn;t ahve to move your hands off the keyboard to fumble for that highly overated mouse thing.
They never listen to me and always do the "upgrade" because they believe their lives will be richer and more productive but it seldom works out that way. If software vendors would/could do their jobs correctly then my client's would be correct. But no one seems to be able to write the perfect software in today's environment.
Show me an accounting package and I'll show you some software that needs at least two other programs to actually do real-life business accounting. Plus you'll have to have some humans around to re-type the same data into those 2 other required programs and introduce just enough flaws in the data to make things interesting.
Show me an operating system/windows environment and it's either easy to use and setup and buggy as hell or a real bitch to setup, fairly stable but not real easy to use. It's like the old saying I can do it fast, do it cheap or do it well.... pick any 2.
There should be a business operating system (not an OS)... it should keep track of your time, schedule your appointments, do POS and invoicing, do payroll, track employee vacations, print Christmas cards, do the accounting, handle shipping, keep inventory , print newsletters, accept credit cards, order on demand, fill out your tax returns, be your phone system and voicemail, and just generally tell you how well your business did today. It should accessable from the the internet and secure. All of this data is related and needs to be in one central location and manipulated by one app that can detect and display trends in an inteligent manner. People like Walmart and Mcdonald's get it and have the budget to almost pull it off, but the small to medium size businesses are in dire need of this type of package.
We've got all of the pieces to pull this off but no one has been able to tie them all together and maybe no one ever will. If we could do that we would contribute greatly, of course many middle managers and data entry people will be out of a job along with comput...er IT Specialists like myself.
G
Not much people responding here seem to have read the original article.
What Mr Carr says (rightfully in my opinion) is that IT is not strategic for a company. Why? Maybe WalMart can use RFID to keep a better inventory, BUT any other company can do the same, with the same gains. That's why it's not strategic (in a Porter sense, this means: IT doesn't differentiate you from your competitors).
Of course commodity-IT (commercial or open source packages) is useful, but replicable. On the other hand, in-house developments, with propietary information that won't be shared with competitors (for example Google search algorythms) are VERY strategic.
Public software packages and hardware, consultant based customization can be copied by any company and hence irrelevant from the strategic point of view (I repeat, it doesn't mean it is not useful)
Having worked in a large corporation, budgets are one of the biggest roadblocks to this kind of thinking for two reasons: firstly, it's nigh on impossible to get extra funding even when it would give a benefit if you're out of budget and secondly, budgets lead to an end of year splurge to use up any remaining funds. "Accountants know the cost of everything and the value of nothing" sounds silly until you've worked in that kind of enviroment.
*Your* business needs are to sell more technology to "the customer". That means whatever the latest fad is. Java, Windows, .Net, Grid, Linux, whatever, it doesn't really matter and the more the better. The more complex and convoluted you can make the environment, the more money you can get out of "the customer".
You'll find that most management are fairly incompetent, especially the IT management who have outsourced their operation, they are by definition incompetent, it's easy to sell them large white elephants which they can claim to their bosses will improve productivity or reduce costs. Especially when the media are harking on and on about how wonderful the latest IT gadget is. Of course, it does nothing of the sort, usually with marginal benefits and large increases in complexity but they have to hide the fact to avoid looking incompetent and to hold onto the empire of underlings they've built.
The beauty of the outsourcing situation is that other managers seeing these projects get jealous and implement other similar large white elephants.
This is corporate culture today.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I was at the European Technology Forum Technology Summit event in London recently where Mike Lynch (Ph.D), CEO of Autonomy gave a keynote speech responding to this article. Essentially, Mike said that the article is "fundamentally wrong" and "anyone who asserts IT doesn't matter must be from another planet". A very interesting read... we've barely scratched the surface when it comes to IT. Autonomy develop software to manage unstructured information, something current IT is not very good at.
"Wal-Mart's use of RFID tags to keep track of inventory"
:)
and what a huge success that was
Two keywords often missed in the analysis of the IT industry are implementation and support.
Up until around 2000, the IT industry was in the implementation phase for the most part. Companies were either in the process of implementing their first major IT integration, or were in the process of upgrading to a more modern one.
The implementation phase ended right along with the dot-com bust, leading to the double-whammy we all know and love.
Now we are in a support phase. Most companies already have an IT infrastructure in place -- those that don't are too small to require one. Work has shifted from new system build-out to the support and optimization of an existing system.
Slower growth and being less amicible to change are two of the hallmarks of the support phase. To change something, you have to have a good reason to change it. Will spending $20M on a total backoffice upgrade and desktop refresh net the company benefits in excess of $20M? Will those benefits be worth the hassle it will cause?
This is a lot of the reason that IT job growth has dropped. It's not just outsourcing -- although outsourcing does play a part in it. It simply takes less people to maintain a system than it does to build it.
This, sadly, will not change anytime soon.
...is sometimes the way back.
X Terminals were a great idea but in a time where machines and network infrastructure were too slow to support them. They have pretty much gone away.
Today your average desktop class machine is really enough to support several dozen regular business users.
Add openMOSIX into the mix, and one virtual machine made up of a small handful of real machines can suddenly support hundreds of users' desktops. New machines can easily be rotated into the cluster (live) while old machines are rotated out when they become obsolete.
On the actual desk itself, something like a VNC terminal appliance is all one needs. Lifespan of one of these units is several times what a PC would last.
A sysadmin with 300 users is now really supporting only one workstation (whose processes are being migrated to maybe a dozen or two other workstations who have direct access to the master node's file system).
This isn't pie in the sky. It's based on very old ideas re-applied using new technologies that weren't available when the ideas were first tried. It actually works very well using the hardware and software available to us today.
I have to laugh when my users think that what I'm doing is bleeding edge. This is old school UNIX administration.
Once you have a goal, and work toward that goal, there is no "investment" (aka ego saving) in using one tool, product, or vendor over another. When something stops working for you, the choice is obvious; use it right, fix it, or replace it.
Individuals should be able to pick tools that they want, but only if the tools improve the process -- and they have to understand what that that process is!
SEI CMM, for example, is one good process that is often complained about and sometimes used as if it were a magic wand. It's not.
Like any defined process, it takes effort and consistancy. It should be held as if violating the process is a moral, ethical, failure -- kind of like lying.
One manager or even a CEO should not drop the process the moment it becomes uncomfortable or gets in the way of some agenda. Even when the process is skirted, it should be clear that doing so is the wrong thing to do, even though there are momentary benifits. The reasons for skirting the process should be clear and reasonable to everyone. Do it too much, or BS the reasons why the process was dumped, and people will see that what applies to front-line IT does not apply to management, and the front-line folks will drop the process also.
Hold people accountable, but do not use the process as a political tool. It doesn't work that way, and doing so will be seen as a cheap abusive ploy anyway.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Carr's comments are on the face of them obvious: with railways and electricity it's very true that as they became ubiquitous they became less valuable.
It's basic supply and demand. However he misses a critical point. Where the railways and the internet are basic infrastructural technologies, information technology is far wider. While all a railway can do is take you from A to B, IT can do - well almost anything.
A far better comparison would be internet bandwidth provision - that really is a commodity infrastructure, which was built with the same bubble mentality and is now ubiquitous and low-value.
But to comapare all of IT, from word processing to AI to controlling space probes to stuff that hasn't been invented yet, with such a basic technology a railways is just dumb.
I should change my major to something I can make a living at?
Sure it matters for such a poor country.
Doing the details right is hard, hard work. Witness both MS and Linux to see this: MS can't get the security thing down and Linux still fails at the ease of use thing, despite a lot of smart people working on both.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
You must be new here.
Actually, WP5.1 had some pretty decent revision features :)
I'll fess up and admit that I don't still use WP5.1, nor would I really want to. It's nice having a word processor with a WYSIWYG interface.
I sort of agree about feature bloat, but this has been a problem for 10 years. WP5.1 had a LOT of features, as this thread demonstrates.
Step 1: Keep it cautious. Use the scientific method on all vendor claims. (Hypothesize, experiment, evaluate, repeat) Never believe a vendor...any vendor! They are trying to sell something. Approach all vendors as if they are car salesmen. They will spit, lie, steal, and bamboozle anyone to make a sale.
Step 2: Keep the people. Don't try to do everything that can be done with a computer just because it can be done with a computer. People can be much more efficient and flexible. This is an advantage. Use computers to make your people stronger and free them to perform the important customer facing tasks.
Step 3: Keep it fun. Do what you can to make necessary computer usage invisible or fun for all your customers.
Step 4: Keep it short. Don't require multiple screens to perform a task unless it can not be avoided. Make transactions as short and as information filled as possible.
Step 5: Keep it simple. Simple usually costs less to build, run, use, and maintain.
Step 6: Keep it clean. Avoid the feeping creaturisms.
Step 7: Keep it sane. Avoid doing IT projects without serious and committed business related backing. (Unless your job or business is pie-in-the-sky searching-for-diamonds-in-the-rough cutting edge research, that is a different set of risks.)
Step 8. Let it run. It is is working, don't fix it.
rhoward
StarSailer
Yah. That's the stupid thing about budgets. If you don't spend it all, you are usually "punished" with a reduced budget (making life difficult when you really need money next year).
So people are likely to spend exactly the amount they have intentionally overbudgeted. Which works out to a lot if every department does it.
Accountants and finance people should just use/create a better method than these style budgets for controlling expenses.
IT and IT spending itself doesn't matter. It is what new, advantageous FUNCTIONS you can produce for what cost in dollars and time that matter.
If the projects and equipment you invest in provide your company an advantage in the marketplace (better product, faster delivery, more convenience to the customer, lower sales costs, whatever), or produce a net reduction in costs (other dept's costs are reduced by more than you spend), IT is doing its job.
If you can do this by identifying new equipment and software that can be deployed to your organization's advantage awsome. If you can do this by better utilizing old equipment, great. If you are just buying stuff because you're stuck in a maintenance agremment, or without verifying that it will actually help people, you aren't diong your job.
Notice this doesn't mention any particular technology or product, It is ITs job to identify those, whether it be the latest supercoputer or a flock of carrier pigeons -- the job of IT is to find the best tool for the job and implement it well.
Moreover, and this is done far too infrequently, the job of IT is to identify strategic opportunities created by new technologies and offer those as a way to give their organization a strategic advantage. Too many IT folks just think of themselves as plumbers and then wonder why they don't have a seat at the exec table.
Increasing productivity is a need. However nothing you list above sounds like it's cutting edge - 10 years ago was right in the middle of the change to CAD drafting. Cutting edge would be deciding that the systems they have aren't any good, and deciding that a .NET or J2EE based system for managing the drawings is required.
Heh but in some cases the redundancy is a good thing.
For example I heard the Military equivalent of PHBs/MBAs cut the head count on warships added lots of whizbang stuff to automate things. Apparently there were tons of redundant people on the warship.
However what they don't get is that a warship's major role is fighting wars. When a warship gets torpedoed, lots of those people are killed, lots of those systems are blown up.
The warship would be very useful if it can still finish and even win the battle with what's left.
As far as I know, people tend to be more flexible than all those systems (which are often rather "brittle"). They can improvise.
I suppose this doesn't apply to a commercial organisation in most cases. But humans are social animals.
As someone who does "IT" for a living, the main difference that people (especially marketdroids) don't *get* about IT is that it is primarily a service for INTERNAL customers (ie, employees) and not for EXTERNAL customers (ie, the people who buy your company's stuff). IT is, and increasingly so, a highly integrated part of the daily life of your company's internal customers -- their employees. Everything from punching clocks first thing in the morning, to checking the compnay's current stock price, to research on your competitors is done through IT these days. Your IT is what makes one intelligent data miner the equivalent of ten offline bean-counters. Your IT is what puts your CEO in ten cities a week, raising morale and selling investers on the future of your company and pulling up the value of your options.
Your IT will not make your product look glamerous; it will not regrow your (external) customer's hair or make their wives beautiful again. Your IT will not be the main point in any product you try to sell, from baked beans with bacon to databases with GUIs. Having IT for the sake of IT will not be the reason your company sells more.
And the article makes this point--IT is "irrelevant" because it will not help you gain more (external)customers. IT is a common resource that your competitors can use as well. This is correct, but so utterly wrong I want to vomit.
The fact is it's your INTERNAL CUSTOMERS--PEOPLE--which will be the difference. They need all the tools that you can provide. If this means a dual-monitor setup on a quad Xeon P4 then by all means, spend on it. You will need the best to compete with the best, and I'll wager dollars to donuts that the company selling similar widgets down the street isn't going to hold back if they can get any advantage, technological or other.
If you want a sports analogy, the bottom line is that IT is that extra inch of padding that helps your goalie make the save, that helps your pitcher get an extra MPH on his fastball, and gives your point guard the confidence to sink it from the foul line. It is no replacement for skill, determination, intelligence and hard work. Any company that uses it as a crutch or a baloon to tie their hopes of success on, deserves to be left in the dust.
Invest in IT. Invest in your people. Not hype.
I think the author (Nicholas G. Carr) is mostly correct. His basic point is that IT is not an option these days, it is a requirement, much like electricity. This is not to say that there won't be cost savings from new IT developments, just that it's better to let others find them and determine which ones are best, so that you can use them without the development costs. As someone else posted here, IT is nearly always a cost center,
I am surprised that nobody has commented on this gem from the article:
Hmmmm.
Milalwi
While most people thought it was magic unleashed on the world, I saw the Internet as a developed captive military technology released into the commercial sector. It was like a grant from the DoD. Is there more where that came from?
If you can sit back and receive defense technology and all you have to do is product development, then of course it makes no sense to burn cash on long-term R&D. Many economists and political scientists think that R&D is more efficient and effective in the public sector anyway. R&D in the private sector yields patents, which end up limiting the economic impact of the technology developed.
I can swallow Carr's ideas if he means companies should pool their resources into a creative commons for serious R&D, and then everyone can share the intellectual harvest. I can't swallow his recommendations if he means that advancing IT is too risky or otherwise unprofitable for anyone to bother with.
Ironically, IT has no value when you don't know how it reduces waste and generates economic benefits. If you do what Carr recommends, sooner or later you will think yourself right through the "IT is pointless" argument because you will understand the needs and know your idea coming from practical business operational knowledge, is a good IT risk.
I'm not saying I agree with Carr, but I wholeheartedly agree with him promoting this kind of debate! Also, are the people in commercial sector IT qualified to distinguish between a good idea and a bad one? I still believe we have a serious shortage of smart people. I think we should slow down IT to the rate at which smart people can deliver good IT.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
Reading through the comments, I see that a lot of different Slashdotters have a lot of different conceptions of what we're referring to when we say "IT" -- what its boundaries are, the purposes it serves.
It's meaningless to ask the question "Does IT matter?" if there isn't a consistent definition for what IT is.
Hopefully, Presidents and CEOs everywhere will take this article seriously, stop buying shit from Microsoft, Oracle, etc. and lay off as many "IT" middle managers and system babysitters as they can (friendly casualties will be inevitable, but they always are!). The throngs of chair-warmers streaming to university CS faculties will finally stop (because it sure as hell hasn't slowed down enough!)! While companies everywhere are starting to put real solutions to work and getting back the levels of database stability and utility others have enjoyed since the 70s, real CS research will resume at universities (hopefully the Homeland Security Department will channel some of it's money into this and not into the pockets of private "IT" solutions firms), and Free Software will become the dominant licensing paradigm. Because suddenly you can't milk money out of them anymore, people will abandon languages and tools that were hot in the 70s, and the state of the art of the 80s will be reborn and flourish. Hell, maybe even AI will resurface (it sure seems to be now with the natural-language search problems getting so much attention).
This is when the real productivity gains start. Businesses adopting these technologies will once again possess competitive advantage over those that don't. As more and more people start using it, overzealous reporters start hyping it, and all sorts of carpetbaggers leech on. The bubble inflates under their hot wind, and subsequently bursts. Most everybody realizes this was all a scam, someone or another finally gets the idea that "technology doesn't matter," everyone who was doing the real work is out of a job, and the unchangeable circle of market life goes on spinning!
In the great CONS chain of life, you can either be the CAR or be in the CDR.
http://www.fmi.ca/journal/fall2003/Jones_f.pdf http://www.fmi.ca/journal/fall2003/Jones_e.pdf
___Abuse of power comes as no surprise___
spend the money on themselves
It's downloadable free from here
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
stupid faggot
I cant remember the exact quote, but Nietzsche said something to the effect that often the best course of action is to do nothing, but that insecure (he may have said pathological) people have great trouble doing nothing, even when that is the best course.
Like everything, what to do (and not to do) is best judged with wisdom and experience. Sadly, those traits arent always pursued in management or leaders.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
you just add water and a high speed pump :-))
encode data using spin and vector
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
Geez, what kind of geeks are you people?
Depends on what the definition of "matters" is.
Information Technology is becoming part of the infrastructure that we all should be able to depend on without thinking much about it or spending a lot to use it.
Methinks that, using the definition of "matters" in "Steve Ballmer says it matters", IT DOES NOT MATTER. Consider WallMart. It's a combination of IT and Management Culture that takes advantage of IT. Take away the Management Culture, and the system will start to fall apart. Take away the IT and they will regrow the IT, probably cheaper and better.
Right...
Jonathanjk.com
Man, someone needs to give this guy a Cyber Wedgie I think :)
Seriously, my opinion is that the DOT-com crash was due to everyone always being on the
'bleeding' edge and spending wasteful money that would have better been spent on the Clients that they support. Anyone with the mind of "I've got to have the latest & greatest" is going to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Let's hope that the article was more indepth than that. (Sorry, I haven't read it but thought this point here might be useful)
You "BOY" come over here and show me all the ins-and-outs of this machine so I can get rid of you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Okay boss, let's see, hmmmmmmm this is an "ENTER" key it is like "return" on your old typewriter. Okay, that's all there is to know. Oh, and dont forget about the firewall.
Scares 'em every time.
"Firewall????????????"
Yeah, dont worry it's Linux based software and easy to pick up....
Hehehe, I love this job...
Thankless, yes, but who cares..............
The key to productive IT is finding technology bottlenecks and determining the best solution. However, the term best solution is a tricky one that must look at several aspects. The cost of a 20-inch iMac isn't the issue, rather the ROI. If the employee that receives that 20-inch upgrade, or possibly a second flat screen becomes $1000's more productive, then the cost is justified... However, if you go out and buy everyone, including the guy that "only does 20 minutes of real work a day" a cutting edge computer, then you will end up wondering what went wrong while filing for bankruptcy. The same is true when making large HW or SW purchases/upgrades. Go ahead and spend the big $$$ if it is what will give you a competitive advantage. However, the latest and greatest only makes sense if the situation requires it. My last thought is that if you can find the right employees, you can arm them what your competitions throws out after they upgrade, and they will still be able to get more output (to some degree). Then use the money that you save to make sure that they are happy...also hire a few interns to let them watch what real productivity is all about.
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.