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Technology Paradise Lost
The dust cover blurb summarizes Keller's position: "...American corporations let IT grow until it reached one half of all corporate capital spending by the year 2000. Now, chastened by their spending failures, IT managers are converging on a new consensus: to exploit IT competitively they must use their smarts over big money. ... Counterintuitively, companies that spend less in order to get more from information technology will likely be the big winners." That's quite a claim, and a thorough reading of the book finds that Keller only supports half of that thesis.
The thought is reiterated early in the book: "...companies can move ahead over the next few years without large increases in their IT budgets. The only thing a company needs is a different perspective." (page xii). That prescription sounds suspiciously similar to the oversimplistic advice found in positive thinking self-help books. Keller does not yet make explicit what the different perspective will do for business. Perhaps it should be taken at face value, in that it will allow companies to move ahead without increasing their IT budgets. But is continued progress without budget increases such a massive gain? More significantly, how does that address the larger issues of failed IT projects, to which he alludes earlier? In my opinion, that issue is of much greater consequence.
Keller correctly points to some of the reasons why the heady e-commerce binges are not about to return: increasing scrutiny of IT budgets, greater demand for return on investment (ROI), cheaper and simpler solutions, offshoring of software development, lower wages to American programmers, abandonment of failing projects, Internet-based architecture, and adoption of open source software (OSS), such as Linux. Addressing these changes at a more strategic level, Keller notes that, "After years of questionable returns, cost overruns, and increased complexity, companies are pushing financial rigor to IT groups." (page 6).
The book's first seven chapters discuss the primary factors in leading to reduced IT expenditures, at least within the U.S. business community. But the last four chapters go over previous ground, with more variations on the theme of reduced IT spending, interspersed with several examples from various corporations. The reader may get the sense that not much new information or recommendations are being offered, but instead that these four chapters are serving as filler, to beef up the size of the book. Otherwise, it would be more obvious that the book's usable contents could be boiled down into one meaty article.
Keller's primary thesis, that American IT could in the future produce more returns for less investment, has two primary components. The near-term and likely long-term trend for declining corporate spending on IT, is well established in his book. In fact, one could argue that reduced IT spending is not something that American companies will adopt by choice, but instead will be forced upon them due to deflationary pressures, increased costs for natural resources, and declining ability to pass along cost increases to U.S. consumers falling further behind financially. But the flip side of his thesis, that companies will get even more results despite spending less money, is not nearly as well substantiated. Not a single one of the chapters in the book is devoted to demonstrating that this is happening, or will happen. Companies may be able to maintain current levels of service despite reduced funding; but greater results per dollar invested (i.e., efficiency) does not imply greater results on an absolute basis. As such, Keller's big claim noted earlier, is only half fulfilled.
The critical questions -- concerning the proper role and funding of IT -- are presented in the book couched in the language used by high-level business managers, who speak in vague terms about "technology" and "infrastructure," and yet have little or no real understanding of how it truly works, having spent their earlier years pursuing MBAs rather than programming computers. It could be argued that such general terminology must necessarily be used when discussing information technology among business managers. That may be true, but it does not lessen the dangers of fuzzy thinking and overly broad conclusions found in Keller's book and in the typical articles discussing IT purpose, strategy, and utilization. In particular, such excessively broad strokes, in my experience, not only mask the ignorance of the IT manager demanding miracles from their staff, but invariably increases the odds that upper management will be seduced by the handwaving consulting firms -- and thus fall prey to the mistakes delineated by Keller.
Of all the inapt analogies in the book, its title is perhaps the most egregious. Alluding to John Milton's famous narrative poem, "technology paradise lost" implies that there was a time when IT resource usage was idyllic, if not perfect. Yet by Keller's own account, the misspending and failed projects, followed by financial discipline imposed by the outside world, are anything but heaven-sent. One cannot lose what has never been found.
Weighing in at 243 pages, Technology Paradise Lost is a quicker read than many other business books. Part of that is due to the unfortunate repetition of a few core ideas. Fortunately, the book has just enough tables, charts, and breakouts, to add some visual variety to the text.
The book benefits from the author's clear writing style, no doubt honed from over two decades of creating articles, documents, and presentations intended for business managers. Keller does a solid job of utilizing real world statistics and examples to back up his assessments.
Despite the repetition, sloppy analogies, and business-speak generality, Technology Paradise Lost offers a valid discussion of changes currently being experienced by the American IT industry as it grudgingly recovers from the Internet boom and bust. The book may be of value to IT managers who, for whatever reason, are ignorant of the obvious transformations that are taking place. Yet, any IT industry participant who devotes even a modicum of time to monitoring the latest developments and trends, should be well aware of IT budget trimming, offshoring, open source software, and other cost-saving methods. Otherwise, to be so out of touch with reality would be inexcusable. On the other hand, that was one of the primary symptoms before and during the widespread dot-com insanity, and could easily account for any beliefs in its imminent return.
Michael J. Ross is a freelance writer, computer consultant, and the editor of PristinePlanet.com's free newsletter." You can purchase Technology Paradise Lost from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
So make this book available to reduce the competition then? I suppose that is valid. I would still like to know about programming for the mathematic and linguistic aspects. As we progress to transhumanism, our thought process may become more Java and less Jaya (dialect in Chad).
Transcend Humanity. Please.
True Technologic Paradise FOUND?
Maybe now that all the fantastic and unrealistic business views of IT are gone, we can concentrate on science and actually learning something?
One problem with the boom days is that people were building out infrastructure without a lot of information as to (1) how much infrastructure was enough, and (2) without a real business driver.
This is probably due to the lack of experience in most corporations at the time. If you listened to vendors, you needed multiple redundant 64-way Sun boxes to keep your website up and running. Oh, and you'll need a couple of T-1s to feed all that, firewalls, multiple DMZs, and the management software for it.
These days people know that's BS. Why do we need GigE to the desktop? We don't. That's stupid. Why do we need more horsepower? We don't. It's not cost effective. Does this piece of software or hardware actually help our business make money? No? Don't buy it then.
Really, IT supports business. It's an enabling technology, but back in the day nobody really knew enough to figure out what parts really were worth it and what parts weren't. The vendors, obviously, oversold everything. The press were just as ignorant as the customers.
Even today, finding scalability/load/capacity information for most equipment is difficult to impossible. Luckily, now there's a body of knowledge (lore) that you can draw on. Before, there was nothing except vendor propaganda.
He's really forgetting the obvious:
10 years ago we were just starting to grapple with the new technologies that the Internet brought about. Applications over TCP/IP, the Web, all sorts of routers, switches and new appliances: all of that necessitated a long and steep learning curve.
Today we have 10 years of experience in all of this "stuff", which makes us enormously more knowledgeable and productive. From all perspectives, hardware vendors are now able to service customers with much more targeted, effective and cheaper offerings (notice the move from software to hardware appliances and custom chips), and IT staffs now know how to use all of these toys properly, what works and what doesn't.
It's all mostly a matter of experience. That's why IT budgets will remain flat for a while longer.
The critical questions -- concerning the proper role and funding of IT -- are presented in the book couched in the language used by high-level business managers, who speak in vague terms about "technology" and "infrastructure," and yet have little or no real understanding of how it truly works, having spent their earlier years pursuing MBAs rather than programming computers
The people you describe above are the people who control the purse strings. They couldn't care less about the underlying bits and pieces. How much is it going to cost and what's the benefit to the business?
Having "great IT" isn't worth a warm bucket of spit as a key differentiator these days.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Hardware is getting cheaper and will continue to do so. I built a computer for $1500 in 2000. Today, it's probably worth $100 (maybe not that much) today. A 1 GB Ram module for it retails for around $120. Even if I bought and installed the Ram module, I *still* probably couldn't sell the computer for more than $100.
I see people advertising 'Almost New' HP and Dell laptops on ebay. They sell for a fraction of the original price. Service and support are what costs *real* money these days. Three year service contracts start out at $350. When you have to buy a $350 service contract on a $600 PC, you know where the *true* costs are for the manufacturer.
That 1 GB memory module probably only cost about 20 bucks or so to make. That's why it'd be foolosh to buy it new and pay $120 for it.
By selling out so easily to business, technology has been held back in many ways. It was a matter of offering the brains and the creative geeks some money, so they would use their knowledge for evil, rather than good. I think I prefer the 80s, where at least there was still some idealism.
What did the 90s boom give us? Fucking internet advertising and banner ads. Overpaid HTML jockeys with no skill. Trolls, script-kiddies and fools. Pyramid schemes. "Bloggers." And we can never go back to those blissful ad-free, blog-free days.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Actually it's the venture capitalists that WON. I know of several East coast VCs that took both their clients and the banks to the cleaners and made off like bandits. They still have their millions while the people who invested with them, as well as the people they were supposed to give money to have nothing. Go figure. It was the VC that kept the money...no one else. Not all VCs are like this, but my personal opinion is to stay clear of those who were the big names in the .bust era.
You are exactly right. This is what I thought all along. Y2K was a great excuse for IT departments to spend lots of money to upgrade equipment to make it Y2K compliant. I know I saw a lot of purchases made that weren't really necessary for Y2K but were slid under the table as part of the Y2K expenditures.
.com firms, was "nothing", and they are no longer here.
I think Y2K, combined with ignorant investors who thought "computers" would be the "plastics" of the '60s, really artificially pumped up the industry. After Y2K came and went, so did the massive expenditures. The party ended, and people wanted to know what REAL product was being produced for all the money. The answer, for a lot of
Steve
I note that the reviewer doesn't like the title either. There are several things that all get tied up in "the bubble" that were really separate otherwise.
I think many people, even those of us who lived through it, discount the impact of Y2K on the marketplace. IT spending increased quickly in the late 90s as companies realized they had to address Y2K issues or (potentially) perish. As a result, much work was done that had previously been put off, sometimes for decades. There were massive migrations, massive upgrades, and massive change -- much of it long overdue. This created a bubble in hiring and purchasing, and that bubble largely burst about 15 seconds after midnight local time when Y2K happened and little else.
The internet bubble started earlier, and burst a little later. While Y2K was a 2-3 year bubble on a fast track, the internet bubble was a 5 year bubble that started slow but kept accellerating.
It's also hard to discount the impact of politics in the US on the economy. There are those who say that the bursting of the internet bubble has as much to do with tech stocks being overvalued as it did with George W. Bush practicing economic fear-mongering on the campaign trail -- in essence, talking the economy down. One thing appears clear: when Clinton took office, he had promised tax cuts, but upon meeting with Alan Greenspan, Clinton blinked; when W. took office, and met with Greenspan, Greenspan blinked.
Setting aside the market collapse, both bubbles did a lot to set the stage for long-term success. Y2K forced companies to make investments that will (mostly) stand them in good stead, and forced them to modernize their systems. The internet bubble pushed things past critical mass and got (almost) everyone on the bandwagon. Between 1995 and 2001, American industry probably advanced (or caught up) 20-30 years.
The market collapse may have been a long-term good thing as well, at least in the sense that everything got modernized, bunches of new tech got proven, then we collectively slammed on the brakes and spent the next 3-4 years retrenching. In that time, Apple and IBM have become market leaders in new areas, and a recession is a wonderful thing if you want to force people to consider free software.
I'm not saying all the pain was good. Many people did, indeed, lose paradise. But to me, it looks less and less like a train wreck in hindsight.
http://drteknikal.blogspot.com/
...and it ain't coming back. What we are seeing is a regression to the mean.
In the Internet days, major enterprises with traditional business models watched in horror as Amazon appeared to make the whole world obsolete. Priceline, nothing more than a travel agent, at one time had a higher market cap than all the major US airlines combined. This was a historic misallocation of capital, comparable to the overinvestment in radio in the 1920s.
Every CEO in America asked himself whether a pimply geek like Jeff Bezos could blow up out of nowhere and destroy his whole business just like that. We know how stupid that was in hindsight, but fear is an incredibly powerful motivator. The result was a tremendous amount of IT overspending. And for those of us who were right in the middle of it, it was rational at the time!