• It's the economy, stupid. Predictions about the financial health of IT are like weather forecasts: if you don't like what you hear, change the channel. Still, it's a good idea to keep a weather eye open on which way the wind's blowing.
  
  
• Offshore outsourcing has developed the force of a tsunami. Is it a threat or the wave of the future?
  
  
• Buyers, vendors and channels - can't we all just get along? The three-legged stool that IT sits on needs constant adjustment to stop all of us from toppling over.
  
  
• Vendors, the care and feeding of. Your business can't grow without new and better technology, but if you're not a skilled negotiator, you can come away from the bargaining table minus some fingers.
  
  

Inside IBM’s software plans The company that once wedded itself to proprietary systems from the System/36 and System/38 minicomputer to the MVS-based mainframe has become a champion of industry standards with a vengeance. IBM faced down Microsoft and a slew of other competitors by maintaining its mainframe business and diving headfirst into the Unix and then Linux businesses. (Sep. 2004 Application Developemt Trends)

The Mainframe is Back Sales of IBM's mainframe, now referred to as the zSeries, are growing at remarkable rate, not experienced since its hey day - indeed if current mainframe growth continues, then the mainframe is emerging like a phoenix from the flames. According to IBM CEO, it comes from the move to On Demand and server consolidation. However, there can be little doubt that the jewel in the mainframe crown is Linux. (Jul. 2004 IT-Analysis)

IBM enjoys incredible popularity in China While IBM's "product monopoly" in the mainframe market of the Chinese banking industry is not worth worrying, its "service monopoly" should not be neglected. The hazards mainly include: 1. IBM services are offered at a prohibitively high price 2. Due to its monopolistic position, IBM does not have to make efforts to improve its services and quality 3. Being under the thumb of IBM, the Chinese banking industry is exposed to huge potential risks. (Jun. 2004 China Economic Net)

IT Turnarounds Troubled IT organizations exhibit five basic symptoms. They're chaotic, unfocused, poorly led, demoralized and alienated. Fortunately, there's a remedy. In the first month, build your senior team, seize control of spending, refocus your resources, select a morale-building milestone, and create a balanced scorecard. (Sep. 2003 Computerworld)

Contract case could hurt reverse engineering The case involves a software inventor who alleged that a vendor violated his software's end user licence agreement which forbade users from reverse engineering his software. There was no evidence of cracking encrypted source code or anything of that nature. Before this case, it was perfectly legal to evaluate a competitor's product. (Jun. 2003 ComputerWeekly)

Is Big Blue the Next Big Thing? A group of engineers is working on building a formal, general model of the connections between a firm's strategy, its operations and its underlying IT infrastructure. As strategy changes at the top, new systems configurations will be spat out automatically for the IT department at the bottom. This idea is striking in its ambition. (Jun. 2003 The Economist)

Brace yourself for a renewed boardroom backlash against IT People will come screaming at the IT department claiming we spend money building unproductive toys. This is very dangerous, as IT is going through a difficult time, and the baby will go out with the bathwater. People will say that IT doesn’t matter and we will see more large-scale outsourcing. (Jun. 2003 ComputerWeekly)

IT Doesn't Matter Information technology has followed a pattern strikingly similar to earlier technologies like railroads and electric power. As their availability increases and their cost decreases - as they become ubiquitous - they become commodity inputs. From a strategic standpoint, they become invisible; they no longer matter. (May 2003 Nicholas Carr)

Trimming Software Licensing Costs With new capacity management technologies in future versions of Tivoli, Big Blue will deliver a sub-capacity licensing strategy for its mainframe customers as well. ILM had a lot of fear or negative connotations with it, and we’re trying to get our arms around exactly why that is, to make sure that we don’t do that with Tivoli License Manager. (Apr. 2003 Enterprise Systems Journal)

More bang for the IT buck Companies can save 10 to 20 percent or more on what they currently spend for many IT goods by more rigorously managing how much they buy, how they bargain for it, and how they handle their purchases. Purchasing IT goods, such as mainframe software or customized enterprise software, requires heavy user input. Business users take the lead in these purchases, with strong assistance from IT procurement. (Mar. 2003 Optimize magazine)

Want to Lower Costs? Mainframe’s the Way to Go The survey discovered that for groups of 300 to 400 users, mainframes offer the lowest TCO while distributed PCs are the most costly. Midrange platforms, such as the AS/400 and Open VMS, fall somewhere in between. The reason is that developing and training staff represents about 50 percent to 70 percent of the total cost. (Mar. Software Development Times)

Cutting Mainframe Costs: Processors The rate of mainframe technology improvement and price decline has slowed down. At the same time, maintenance costs are increasing and upgrade costs are out of control. The good news is that all of these bad trends can be reversed by negotiation and changing IBM’s approach. (Dec. 2002 Xephon)

IT Developer Trends With integration as the predominant strategy and ROI the intended result, IT is calling more than ever on outside experts to achieve these corporate goals. Few may be hiring, but 70 percent of development shops are outsourcing at least some project work. (Dec. 2002 Line56)

Mega outsourcing deals lose their shine The number of large outsourcing contracts given to a single vendor will decline in future, as such deals are risky and difficult to finance. A strategy that employs multiple outsourcers helps reduce risk. (Nov. 2002 VNU Net)

Note to CIOs: Keep the Mainframe Legacy App Enterprises with large, mainframe-based legacy applications that provide CRM and ERP functionality may want to consider keeping them and upgrading them exactly where they live -- on the big box. If you're just getting a packaged application to replicate an existing application, you should at least carefully investigate the possibility of upgrading it in place. (Oct. 2002 CRM Buyer)

The Truth about Customer References Customer references come with baggage — big, unwieldy baggage. All this means that customer references — especially in the realm of big enterprise software projects like ERP and CRM—have ceased to have much real meaning. (Aug. 2002 CIO)

The Dozen: 2002 IBM may be the closest we have to a "category killer" in the IT business, potentially marginalizing the likes of Oracle, and someday, even Microsoft. IBM software has never competed more strongly. And in hardware, the company is reaping the benefits of R&D for its mainframe, Unix, and pervasive platforms. (Jan. 2002 Intelligent Enterprise)

Big players will go for bargain-basement deals A veritable tsunami of acquisitions is on the cards as large IT players look to increase profits by snapping up small software companies. Small nimble software companies are weathering the current storm relatively well, while hardware giants are in the doldrums. (Aug. 2001 Xephon)

It's Good to be Blue As the competition lopped off heads this way and that, Big Blue kept growing new businesses and breathed new life into business units that seemed destined for the museum (the company's mainframe business continues to grow). Yep, IBM is an open standards company these days. That's good news for IT, as the world still needs a counterbalance to the Microsoft "embrace and extend, Windows über alles" philosophy. (Aug. 2001 CIO)

Focus on competing widens The OMB has unveiled a proposed rule that would make contracts between federal agencies, known formally as Inter-Service Support Agreements, subject to competition. Industry groups were incensed in 1997 when the FAA selected the USDA for its Integrated Computing Environment-Mainframe and Networking outsourcing contract. (July 2001 Federal Computer Weekly)