I know it's just an HP (HPQ) information-technology (IT) blah-blah-blah services announcement. It's just more PR blather about nothing consequential. But it bothers me when a company -- especially one I admire -- backs up an announcement with supposedly meaningful/supposedly independent market research.
And in the case of the research announced May 12 by HP about something called "innovation gridlock," it's also just bad research. You can't interview people about BS marketing terms such as "innovation gridlock" and "elasticity" (the way HP defines it) that no one has ever heard of and pretend you divined meaningful results from the interviews. It's like describing the symptoms of a disease no one has ever heard of -- or even has -- to a hypochondriac and asking him if he has it.
The research is also flawed because its aggregate results are based on the same number of people being interviewed in the Emirates as the UK. And the same amount of people in Mexico as France and Germany combined. You also can't meaningfully combine the responses of non-IT "C" level execs and technologists in your conclusions.
Always looking for the good side of things, the interviews were said to be conducted by telephone and the results might be applicable in one or two countries where the "n" was large enough to be statistically significant and the respondents were more homogenous.
Add to all the methodological flaws the fact that the findings are hardly new news: enterprises spend more as a percentage of total IT spend running their existing applications than they do running new applications. The conclusions are right up there with the guy that is claiming that every dollar spent on IT products and services is wasted.
Of course enterprises spend more on exisitng applications, Everyone wants email. A lot of people need CICS to keep churning. We do have a bill of materials and the government says we have to pay people in a certain way.
And any business executive that says he or she failed to take action to keep up with competitors or meet changing business needs because of the IT budget would be fired by his or her board. Business people do not look at the IT budget separate from other expenses and resources. If a project is truly important, you just find the money and people somewhere else.
Of course if some idea is not important to you -- IT based or otherwise, but you are the sort of executive that doesn't want to hurt employees' feelings, you tell them the budget is an impediment. But if you are such an executive, you won't be in your job long.
I am happy to see that business people in general are looking for less-than-1-year paybacks on IT investments. The good executives always have considered that the right way to go.
-- Dennis Byron
(no financial interest in companies mentioned.)
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