I quite liked this analogy of fixing a roof, when talking about “maintenance/upkeep” type of IT projects.
Companies don’t like to spend money on fixing the roof and as we all know, changing the foundation is rarely an option. So what’s left? The walls, of course. But pulling those down means you are going to hit some water pipes somewhere.
Now I think I’ve gone too far with the construction metaphor.
Matt Asay, in his “Open Road” column on CNET:
“On Monday, Goldman Sachs released an update to its “IT Spending Survey” report, and now projects a 9 percent decline in global IT spending, and a 12 percent decline in developed economies.”
(You will have to click on the chart accompanying the article to look at the statistics.)
No surprises there - “cost reduction” is the #1 high priority for companies right now and Microsoft Vista upgrades is at the bottom of the list.”SaaS” is also near the bottom, which is surprising given all the (well-deserved) hoopla around it these days. (That directly contradicts the #1 priority. Won’t SaaS help companies reduce cost of IT ownership?)
But what about SOA and composite applications? The latter, in our experience, are not yet showing up on IT budgets even though companies are finding them very useful to solve real business problems.