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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)
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)
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
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.
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.
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.
Breakfast served all day!
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.
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
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)
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 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
Here's why he's wrong. Supply Chain Management. E-commerce has completely re-written all the rules of businesses and the information sharing btwn them up and down the supply chain from resource suppliers to recyclers. Does anyone here know why they're able to get something they've ordered on the internet (even a computer) shipped in 3 days? Because of the changes IT has made on the Business model. Most people who know what they're talking about believe 'SAME DAY SHIPPING" is not a dream but a reality within a year or two. If IT can accomplish that, there are no ceilings.
Clients ask for things and you have to deliver what they want on their timetable, using whatever tech they want. Sometimes you have to save them from their irrational selves, in process.
I do things for clients the way they want them, that I don't think make sense a fair amount of the time. I've certainly built applications and databases in ways I wouldn't do them for myself.
I, in turn, get to make vendors who do work for me (on behlaf of my clients) to do it on my timetable using the tech I want.
It's a nice happy circle. As long as you don't let your clients get you to do too much for nothing, who cares if the tech you used is cutting edge or not.
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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
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
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
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)
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.
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