COMMENTARY--In the last two years, the bean counters have taken control of technology spending, but is this just part of a much bigger cycle?

It's hard to believe two years have passed since we launched Technology & Business, but if I dig around the pile of magazines on my desk long enough, there's the November 2001 edition with Bill Gates on the cover. Two years may not be a terribly long time in the grand scheme of things, but you couldn't have picked a more tumultuous period in the IT industry. Or maybe it just seems that way.

Back when we started, the dot-com boom was hanging on to the edge by its fingernails, before spectacularly crashing down a matter of months later. By that stage, a new mindset was already emerging: "No more hare-brained schemes without a business plan!" businesses finally said, putting their feet down. "No more spending without clearly defined returns!"

But like all backlashes, the last two years of financial obsession have gone too far, and the pendulum will swing back again. What's going to happen when it does?

The IT industry's current obsession with return on investment has passed its peak and is well on the way to the trough of disillusionment, to borrow from Gartner's hype cycle. Analysts are describing these penny-pinching days as "the new normal", as if it's always going to be this way, so we'd better just get used to it. This is particularly short-sighted of them, particularly the same analysts who tell us about hype cycles.

We're beginning to realise that if we judge IT projects simply by whether or not they can generate a fast and easy return, we'll end up neglecting the projects that--though long term--will allow us to transform our businesses and give us competitive advantage. That may sound like a hangover from the dot-com days, but the last two years has not dulled my belief that IT can make radical changes and have sweeping benefits to businesses that do it right.

Speaking of the hype cycle, it's about time there was a hype cycle for hype cycles. Currently, Gartner analysts and journos are fond of applying the hype cycle to just about every new technology or idea that comes along. I've been guilty of this myself, obviously. But in the end the hype cycle is merely a descriptive tool, not a prescriptive one. Although all technologies, presumably, go through this cycle, the cycle can't tell us which of them will emerge at the end making a difference to people's lives, and which will be all hot air. And the irony of spin-meisters like Gartner talking about hype is--I hope--not lost on you.

Analysts are describing these penny-pinching days as “the new normal”, as if it’s always going to be this way, so we’d better just get used to it. This is particularly short-sighted of them, particularly the same analysts who tell us about hype cycles.

So while we're currently all very pleased with the hype cycle, I suspect the hype cycle itself will soon crash and burn from its own peak of inflated expectations, will emerge chastened, and eventually find its niche. Perhaps the point of this will be to remind us that the IT industry inevitably goes through this cycle, but it doesn't necessarily tell us how things will be at the end of it.

For those of us who entered the industry in the last five years or so, it's hard to see. All we've known is the steep slope up to the peak of the dot-com craze, and then the subsequent crash. Having a sense of perspective--that there have been crashes before, and there will be peaks again--is a reassuring thought. On the other hand, it doesn't help make the car payments when we've had to take a salary cut to get a job--if we're lucky enough to have one.

I think the IT industry will grow out of its current doldrums when people start to state the business benefits of IT as more than simply a financial return. When we talk about IT in terms of what it will allow us to do that we couldn't before, the money will--eventually--flow again.

Copyright © 2009 CBS Interactive, a CBS Company. All Rights Reserved.
ZDNET is a registered service mark of CBS Interactive. ZDNET Logo is a service mark of CBS Interactive.