======================================================================== ENTERPRISE STRATEGIES: AHEAD OF THE CURVE http://www.infoworld.com ======================================================================== Tuesday, December 21, 2004
THE ECONOMY SERVES UP A HARD PILL TO SWALLOW By Tom Yager Posted December 17, 2004 3:00 PM Pacific Time The reason you're still reading stories and hearing speeches about the economic recovery is because everyone is praying that things are still crappy enough to get better. ADVERTISEMENT -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- RESEARCH STUDY: THE KEY TO BUSINESS SERVICE MANAGEMENT Today's enterprise is increasingly dependent on IT, to the point that operating without its services is nearly impossible. Are you on the shortest path to IT-business alignment? Find out when you download this complimentary benchmark study from Filigree Research, sponsored by BMC Software. You'll learn about the current state of IT-business alignment in 565 IT organizations around the world. http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=A8D3E3:2B910B2 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Sorry to break the news, but the Federal Reserve System won't suffer the economy any more malingering. We're being weaned off narcotic interest rates after having been on them a little too long -- long enough to fantasize that we'd always be able to get another bump of credit with a simple phone call. Like it or not, our hospital stay is over. Much as we'd like to, we can't stay sick forever. Like recuperating patients milking one more day of fluffed pillows, Jell-O, and morphine, we're wringing the last sweet drops of free money, low cost of goods, and comparatively cheap labor out of the economy. The best advice for coping with a return to the real world reaches back to that parent or relative who forced you to darn socks, build bird houses, or change the oil in the station wagon because -- all together now: Someday you might need to do this for yourself. At the time, all you wanted to do was ride your bike or play baseball, but take a moment now to thank the person whom you thought was wasting your time. Your life lessons in self-sufficiency will serve you well as you get to know the son of the son of the new economy. I think he's going to be a homely little cuss at best. The ultrasound is inconclusive for horns and a tail. I know it's difficult to think of the present economy as a healthy one for technology, partly for the reason I mentioned above -- we want to be coddled for as long as possible -- but also because R&D, which stalled during the recession, has only been back online for a little more than a year. Nobody is loving this engineering fest more than I. Surely there must be an endless supply of cheaper and faster technology for less and less money. I predict that this is as good as it gets, at least for a quite a while, and I'm not alone in this. High tech's high rollers are collectively retreating into their bunkers again, just as they did leading into the recession. Big technology vendors have economic and market analysts on retainer, and while they're not always right, you can at least credit them with enough smarts to hold a wet finger aloft. On what I presume is professional advice, vendors (example: AMD, IBM, and Motorola) are shedding or shifting manufacturing to overseas facilities, delaying the introduction of high-end products (example: Apple, Microsoft, and Sun), bringing tech to other global markets first (example: Nokia and Research In Motion), and cutting the features of products yet to be introduced (example: Microsoft). That's their strategy. It doesn't help you much except to wake you from your dream of the $50 rack server. I recommend recalling the advice of mentors and practice doing, making, and fixing for yourself those things that the recovery, what I call the itty-bitty bubble, may have convinced you would be handled for you at ever-decreasing costs. It's time to keep your acquisition and operating costs flat, or declining, while inflation drives up your overall costs. I'm sure it can be done. I learned to do it while darning socks. Tom Yager is technical director of the InfoWorld Test Center. ======================================================================== Stay On Top of Open Source Want to keep up on the hottest developments in the open source world? Want more information about Linux? Let InfoWorld bring you cutting-edge coverage every week in the Linux and Open Source Report. 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