Technology Paradise Lost

Description

An engine of the world economy—the computer industry—is sputtering. What happened? Will it regain its power and again drive economic growth as in the past? No.

That’s the surprising conclusion reached by Erik Keller, a central player in the booming IT world of the 1990s. Driven by fear of being left behind, American corporations let IT grow until it reached one half of all corporate capital spending by the year 2000. Now, chastened by their spending failures, IT managers are converging on a new consensus: to exploit IT competitively they must use their smarts over big money.

This shift in thinking comes just as free, open-source software, low-cost international programming labor, and new technologies combine to make the new approach possible. A former Research Fellow at Gartner, Keller had an insider’s view of the irrational spending at many Fortune 500 companies, personally influencing billions of dollars of technology acquisitions.

In Technology Paradise Lost Keller describes how the new thinking is working inside some of the country’s most complex and successful organizations—including Merrill Lynch, JetBlue, Harrah’s, and Motorola—which have cut IT spending to gain a competitive edge, and experienced marked gains to their bottom lines. As it advances, the new IT think will cause further massive disruptions in the computer business, with fundamental changes in the ways software is developed, sold, and used. Efficiency of IT investment will grow as excess fat is squeezed out of IT salaries, software system costs, and consultants’ fees.

In an unexpected twist, Keller argues that even as IT spending is reduced its importance for competitiveness will grow. Reduced spending does not mean IT has become a commodity. Counterintuitively, companies that spend less in order to get more from information technology will likely be the big winners.

Contents
preface ix
acknowledgments xiii 1 Paradise lost? 1 2 IT spending: a brief history 13 3 Less bang for the IT buck 29 4 Show me the productivity 47 5 Too much of a good thing 68 6 Businessólean and simple 90 7 Offshoring: the new trend 116 8 Cutting the IT budget down to size 137 9 The four paths of IT spending 153 10 Reaching the Path of Profits 170 11 Itís not business as usual 186 epilogue Stepping back to get ahead 211
 
notes 219
index 233

Author
Erik Keller: A 20-year veteran of the IT industry, Keller is currently a highly sought-after consultant and speaker. Over ten years at Gartner he advised more than 1,000 companies including many of the Fortune 100. Keller accurately foresaw many industry trends and is known as the "father of ERP."