Instead of being harmful to the IT industry, increased competition for reduced IT spend is forcing vendors to get real about what they are developing and bringing to market. This is having a profoundly positive impact on the development processes.
Software developers, for example, can no longer afford high project failure rates that were particularly common in the boom years. Sadly, greater budgets seem to be synonymous with greater wastage and carelessness.
Although competition is greater than ever between IT suppliers, ironically, so is co-operation. The IT industry is undoubtedly seeing a huge upswing in collaborative projects and strategic partnerships in these leaner times.
Competitive focus has shifted from core technologies to the customer. Competitive advantage is becoming less about technological advantage and more about meeting customer needs.
Increasing numbers of IT vendors are realising that it is only through meeting customer needs and expectations can they be guaranteed of a future. Even large corporations are being forced to get real about their product sets.
Customers driving development
The IT industry is undoubtedly seeing a huge upswing in collaborative projects and strategic partnerships in these leaner times.
Warwick Ashford, technology editor, ITWeb
During this week`s Rational Software Development User Conference in Grapevine, Texas, the need to be more customer-driven in software development has been a recurrent theme.
Roger Oberg, IBM Rational marketing VP, pointed out that customer advisory boards were an important part of the conference. He says it is through these boards that his company derives invaluable feedback from customers.
Oberg says input from customers and user groups has led to the development of products that meet real world requirements. He says for IBM Rational this means meeting the needs for standardisation, compliance and high availability of networks.
Standardisation was another recurrent theme at the conference, and again I believe this has been driven by customer demand. In order to survive, IT suppliers need to be sure they get a big enough share of the contracts being awarded. This has resulted in a shift of power. The customer is king at last and consequently has much greater power to influence IT development.
Customers are demanding standardisation to reduce the cost and complexity normally associated with multi-platform systems. I would argue this is a very strong reason for companies like Computer Associates, Sun Microsystems and IBM embracing and supporting open standards.
Just this week IBM announced an academic initiative to collaborate with IT training institutions around the world in teaching open standard skills necessary to meet the changes in the IT workplace.
Although many IT consumers are bemoaning the need to comply with new regulatory legislation, Oberg points out that the reasoning behind most of this legislation is protection and security. Although compliance is going to be painful for many companies, it is already having a positive effect on software development. Developers have to place a greater emphasis on traceability in software design, which will bring important benefits to business processes, says Oberg.
Getting it right - at last
Business continuity, multi-site support and data replication have all become priorities for IT developers because of demands from consumers requiring tools to deal with new business threats and requirements. By developing greater network capabilities, IT suppliers are merely meeting the real world requirements of their customers for resilient, robust, secure, always-available distributed networks.
During the opening session of the conference, Buell Duncan, IBM ISV GM, said the IT industry had become one of very complex relationships such as the one between IBM and SAP.
Prevailing conditions within the IT industry have dictated that it makes best sense for these and other IT vendors such as Sun Microsystems and Microsoft to function as both competitors and partners.
In my humble analysis, IT suppliers are finally getting it right by getting real about market conditions and taking cognisance of customer needs. This response to the demand for more mature strategies is good because they typically lead to better products and better value, while still guaranteeing a market for vendors. Finally, everyone is a winner.
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