Jason Stamper's Blog: February 2008 Archives

Why IT matters more, to more people, than ever
February 07, 2008

It’s been five years since Nicholas Carr, editor of the Harvard Business Review, wrote a now infamous article, "IT Doesn't Matter". Most technology vendors and indeed plenty of analysts took umbrage at this assertion, but was Carr right then, and is he still right today?

First we need to establish what Carr actually said. He said that what he calls "infrastructural technologies" would become ubiquitous in the not-too-distant future. As he puts it, "as their availability increases and their cost decreases - as they become ubiquitous - they become commodity inputs."

But is becoming a commodity the same as no longer mattering -- of no longer holding any importance? I believe that Oracle’s acquisition of BEA for $8.5bn is just one proof-point for the fact that infrastructural technologies are anything but commodity.

Not only do they still matter, they matter more and more to companies for whom integration – between data, systems and applications – is the biggest thing holding back many strategic projects.

Carr is right that there is constant evolution in all areas of technology, and that technologies that once held competitive advantage become a little less of a differentiator once they are readily and cheaply available to all.

But even with technologies that have become commoditised by virtue of being cheaply and readily available, there is still the question of exactly how those technologies are applied. Even the best tools, if not woven successfully into the fabric of a firm’s business processes, have the potential to do more harm than good.

For example, a survey a couple of years ago of 600 employees at blue chip companies in the UK by Priority Management, found that 11% of employees consider email to be the cause of most disruption to their working day. But for many other staff, email clearly has the ability to dramatically boost productivity.

The other thing that Carr underestimates is the pace of change in IT. IT is not static. There are constant inventions, improvements and combinations of existing technologies that once again create the potential to boost competitive advantage. For every technology that Carr would say has become commoditized, another is around the corner that only early adopters will benefit from.

When Carr wrote his paper about infrastructural technologies becoming commoditised, for instance, the Enterprise Service Bus and the SOA Registry/Repository were just emerging. Today they are far more mature and perhaps even to some extent commoditised, yet they still matter to those who have built their SOA infrastructures around them.

As for technology as a whole, I believe it matters more, to more people, than ever. Here's why...

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Posted by Jason Stamper on 04:28 PM | Comments (4)

Microsoft’s bid values Yahoo! at 40% of Google
February 01, 2008

The blogoshpere and indeed more traditional news outlets are reeling at the news earlier today that Microsoft has offered $44.6bn to acquire Yahoo!.

It’s not yet known just how much of a premium Microsoft is willing to pay for that exclamation mark at the end of Yahoo’s name, but analysts are already saying the exclamation mark was a “deal-maker” for Microsoft.

A senior Gartner analyst has been quoted as saying, “Look, Microsoft could have gone for Google since Micosoft’s market cap is over $287bn and Google is a miserly $121.3bn. But Google doesn’t have an exclamation mark in its trademark, and sources say that Gates and Ballmer particularly liked the impact and energy that the exclamation mark brings to Yahoo!’s brand.”

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Posted by Jason Stamper on 05:04 PM | Comments (0)

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