COMMENTARY--There's nothing we can do... We're living in an environment of uncertainty--or are we?
How come no one ever seems to be able to be happy in this industry?
Oh, sure, Microsoft was "superexcited" at the recent launch of Windows Server 2003. And technology writers continue to tell us how thrilled we should be to live in an age where we have so much at our disposal. So why then is everyone so grumpy?
Yes, we've been through some rough times: from Y2K to GST to the war in Iraq. And what has all that meant to the IT industry? You there--the one handing out the pink slips... what's that you're saying? There's a "global economic downturn"? Everyone's waiting around for the "recovery"?
And let's not forget how the dot-com crash has ruined everthing!
All that just doesn't make sense to me. We're looking at the whole situation wrong. It's like a New Yorker cartoon by Richard Cline, in which two employees are chatting in the office. One remarks to the other, "The difference between a correction and a crash is usually your portfolio."
People in the IT industry still seem to think we're in a hole that we've got to climb out of--a hole blasted by that damn tech crash. Even at the recent IDC Directions seminar, IDC vice president and managing director Chris Fell showed a supposedly grim slide comparing Australian IT spending by year-on-year growth (the black line in the figure) and cumulative growth (the gold bars). And he, like so many others, looked at this graph and observed that we are living in a "sustained environment of uncertainty".
The thing is, if you look at that year-on-year growth line, it begins to look suspiciously like Gartner's hype curve (yes, I know I trot this out every so often, but the similarity in this case is uncanny). And if you imagine that spending line to be following the peaks and troughs of the dot-com hype cycle, then we are now actually entering a sustained environment of certainty (or, to use Gartner's term, "we're on the plateau of productivity"). The only real period of uncertainty we've experienced is at the height of the dot-com boom!
So that leaves all the other excuses people in IT have for not spending: wars, taxes, terrorists. There is no doubt that the world is changing, and we in IT (like every other industry) have to change to keep up. If anyone can tell me how not spending is going to help us cope, I'd love to hear from you. Sure we're not going to hit the levels of 1998, but hopefully we've learned a lesson from that disaster. From what I've heard from visitors from overseas IT vendors, Australia has an amazing reputation for spending smart. I think it's time we recognised that, and stopped waiting for some magical economic green light.
This is the recovery, baby--so let's wake up and smell the opportunity.
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