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I think the concept of continually selling "upgrades", as done Microsoft and
Adobe, has been a driving factor in the current "slowdown". It has also been
a major driver in the open source movement. Since IBM and Sun have started
supporting open source to a certain extent, I think other corporate CIOs are
starting to re-evaluate their paradigms and reconsider their purchasing
strategies.
Sun's StarOffice is pretty decent -- next release may be ready for prime
time (IMHO, YMMV). KDE is developing KWord (and several other good apps in
KOffice) which looks like it will give FrameMaker a strong run for the money
when it matures a little more. These are poised to take a substantial market
share from Microsoft/Adobe in the next few years. Recently, Adobe released a
limited-feature "beta" of FrameMaker for Linux, but chose not to pursue it
"due to lack of market acceptance" or some such excuse. My feed back to them
was "no way" on their proposal to charge the same price as the Windows and
Mac versions and "maybe" on their question about purchasing support. The
point is, competetive products are on the horizon that do not ding your
budget $495 per seat every year or so for an "upgrade".
We don't even need to re-hash the issues of OS stability. Windows isn't.
Maybe Microsoft's .NET idea will be a factor. I haven't heard much
enthusiasm from anyone outside of Redmond for this idea. Our company is all
Microsoft, as are most of our major customers, but we (and our customers)
have started investigating the possibility of a migration to Linux or
another variant of Unix. It seems that the younger "new kids" in IT are
pushing the issue.
John Gilger
Senior Technical Writer
Acres Gaming, Inc.
702.914.5585
-----Original Message-----
From: Elna Tymes [mailto:etymes -at- lts -dot- com]
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2001 11:34 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Is IT growth slowing?
There has been a recent spate of articles in business magazines about
the failure of IT to live up to its promise of reducing workload while
improving worker productivity. This may be nothing more than sour
grapes, but it's worth paying attention to. Many companies have
experienced the constant need for more and better hardware and software,
and the way that each new upgrade to a system results in more things
that need attending to - kinda like a baby and the way it grows. There
are rumblings that part of the current economic problems in the computer
industry in general have to do with large numbers of client companies
deciding to make do with yesterday's technology - with the rationale
that 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.'
Following the lead of Microsoft, most software and hardware
manufacturers have adopted the policy of continual upgrades to existing
products as a means of assuring revenue growth. Are we reaching - or
have we reached - the point where this policy is no longer warranted,
resulting in less demand for IT professionals across the board? It
could be argued that this downturn is mostly a marketing blip, but one
which is going to cause companies in the industry to have to rethink how
they provide value to their customers. It could also be argued that
this is a major turning point for the whole industry.
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