IT Snake Oil — Six Tech Cure-Alls That Went Bunk

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Dan Tynan surveys six 'transformational' tech-panacea sales pitches that have left egg on at least some IT department faces. Billed with legendary promises, each of the six technologies — five old, one new — has earned the dubious distinction of being the hype king of its respective era, falling far short of legendary promises. Consultant greed, analyst oversight, dirty vendor tricks — 'the one thing you can count on in the land of IT is a slick vendor presentation and a whole lot of hype. Eras shift, technologies change, but the sales pitch always sounds eerily familiar. In virtually every decade there's at least one transformational technology that promises to revolutionize the enterprise, slash operational costs, reduce capital expenditures, align your IT initiatives with your core business practices, boost employee productivity, and leave your breath clean and minty fresh.' Today, cloud computing, virtualization, and tablet PCs are vying for the hype crown." What other horrible hype stories do some of our seasoned vets have?

Comments

virtualization? WHAT hype?

[alizard]

I've been running it on my Linux desktop for years... with first, a Windows 98SE guest in Win4Lin, now WinXP and Win7 guests in Sun Virtualbox. The only reason why I don't have an OSX guest is that Apple won't sell one to me that'll run without hacking. This tech works exactly as advertised for me. I can run Linux and Windows apps against my datapool easily without having to keep two or more machines running to do this.

YMMV, especially if you're using something other than Virtualbox.