Comment Articles

It doesn't matter whether IT matters

Published: 02 Oct 2003 09:50 BST

Industry leadership and technology leadership are not necessarily two halves of the same coin. Many companies who aspire to be technology leaders fall on their faces. Just being first to market with a new technology innovation is no guarantee of success. It may provide a temporary advantage, but as Carr suggests, longer term it is unsustainable. A few companies may possess some secret sauce or patented technology that provides a unique advantage, but this is the rare exception.

If you believe that the vast majority of IT is becoming more of a commodity, then the unique advantages based solely on technology for any company are limited. And, it appears that the most powerful vendors are driving their customers in the direction of commodity, or utility-like, solutions.

Sun, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, SAP, BEA, PeopleSoft are all preaching the virtues of more homogenised software stacks and more standardised hardware. The software Brahmins will tell you that you can avoid the high costs of integration by using pre-integrated software and emerging standards like Web services. Cost and complexity are not your friends, but simplicity and standards are. Whether you are Wal-Mart or a small wholesaler, you have access to the same set of infrastructure technologies.

Whereas the philosophy in the past has been to align technology with your business processes, the new mantra is to align your business with the technology. The functionality for most applications and industry-specific tasks out-of-the-box is preferable to the cost and complexity involved in extensive software customisation.

This is the pragmatic approach, a less romantic commentary on the power of technology to transform businesses. The commoditising of basic infrastructure hardware and software services that Carr predicts doesn't mean that customisation is an anathema or that technology innovation is arrested.

The notion of off-the-shelf software for enterprise applications is unrealistic, unless the implementation scope is narrow. But, the complexity of customisation is being moderated by the rise of Web services and improved integration tools.