20071017 the chickens come home to roost - plembo/onemoretech GitHub Wiki

title: The chickens come home to roost link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2007/10/17/the-chickens-come-home-to-roost/ author: lembobro description: post_id: 620 created: 2007/10/17 17:35:21 created_gmt: 2007/10/17 17:35:21 comment_status: open post_name: the-chickens-come-home-to-roost status: publish post_type: post

The chickens come home to roost

Or, as a headline in The Register put it, Kill the CIO: Bad budget news for the big boys. The heart of the matter:

It’s budgeting season, and this year is no exception for big corporate IT departments, and the big IT industry players who feed on them. Pressure is yet again on reducing IT costs, and especially costly IT people…

… for a growing number of CIOs, their IT staff is so depleted from historic cost cutting, that they often don’t have the horsepower to work beyond keeping the trains running…

… At some stage, these CIOs crack and outsource, which means passing the IT baton to an external organization that has to provide the same services and levels for less cost, while expecting a 30 per cent profit on the business in the process. Yeah, that really works!

There’s lots more in the article that’s a worthwhile read. I liked how the author set up the dichotomy between what they call “Big Science” (e.g. ERP implementations based on SAP or Oracle) and “Big Commodity” (employing lower cost open systems based on Internet and other standards with generic or second tier hardware), the two reigning paradigms on how IT gets done which have driven us all to where we are today.

In considering the options available to corporate IT I especially liked what was described as the “IT [no] brainer option”:

…reduce IT cost by de-layering corporate computerization. First nixing applications that provide no bankable or strategic business benefit. Then killing political refugee systems that were supposed to be replaced by those yesteryear Big Science projects, but whose owners who dodged budget responsibility, refused to let go.

Of course, as the author points out, this option will probably not get much play with the corporate IT crowd or their sacred cow vendors because it “… would involve working with the business folks and helping them understand real IT economics. Far, far too risky for an endangered species!”