According to Thomas Siebel, a man who certainly knows a thing or ten about enterprise software, Information Technology simply isn’t where it’s at, both growth-wise and career-wise:
No new technological advances, he believes, would impel I.T. customers to replace the computer technology they already had: “I would suggest to you that most of what’s going on today is not very exciting.”
(Read the article in the New York Times.)
I am sure almost all IT practitioners will heartily - and quickly - disagree.
Some very basic (anecdotal) fact-checking. In our business, we *are* seeing customers questioning the wisdom of software upgrades. Developing the business case for moving from one release of CRM to another is a longer cycle than it would have been in, say, 1999 or even 2006.
So in that, Mr. Siebel is indeed right. Naturally, such data points tempt us all to compare IT with mature businesses like electric utilities. When did you last comparison-shop or voluntarily replace your electricity provider?
But like all most generalizations, that sort of straight-line extrapolation is wrong. Only because the straight-line assumes a static, unchanging business environment, one in which all existing IT investments will soldier on bravely, never complaining about increasing transaction volumes, new markets, mergers, acquisitions, new regulations etc.
Let’s forget the enterprise for a second and look at ourselves, the private consumers of technology. Have *we* stopped bringing more technology into our lives? Television manufacturers want us to splurge on their latest offerings but a website wants me to stop viewing TV on my TV. Another website wants me never to buy another CD download another MP3 and simply stream what, when and where I like.
My point simply being, technological advances *are* continuing, they are changing us and they are changing our buying behavior. Just because everyone has a cellphone or an iPod or a laptop is no reason at all to discount and dismiss the future. Who could have predicted the (re-)emergence of the Netbook in 2009?
Similarly, just because all large companies already run ERP, CRM, data warehouses and portals is no reason to believe this is the end-state.
Even today, every new conversation with a customer or a prospect leaves me a little surprised at how much there is still left to be done in enterprise IT. And how can it not be? After all, the business environment is not standing still. It is morphing and evolving all the time. Is there a CIO on this planet who truly believes he or she has achieved a blissful state of equilibrium with the business?
Could it be that the current model of IT - not just the infrastructure but everything - is reaching it’s logical conclusion and will be replaced by something better? Contrast, for example, the Internet and web-based applications to the mainframe software applications from the 1960s, the so-called Golden Period of IT. That is exactly the stuff of entrepreneurship and innovation.
Well, I am still optimistic and I say Thomas Siebel is wrong. Companies are and will be motivated to replace and upgrade and to solve familiar problems with new ideas and approaches.
How all of this gets packaged and delivered to the user might be far more simplified in 2015, but this business of packaging and delivering will go on for a long, long time.