November - 2004 issue > Cover Feature

By Venkat Ramana

The buzz-word for the coming years will be business intelligence software. ERP, CRM, SCM and a host of other back office and customer-facing automation software have transformed the enterprise from paper silos to massive boxes of electronic data or information. Now all that the “intelligent” enterprise needs to do is take a shovel to the data and start clearing up and stacking information into useful banks. Presto! They are now more agile, informed, responsive...more about this in a bit.

There is a strange contrarian slicing of the market opinion today. On the one hand, CIOs haven’t stopped wringing hands about their shrinking IT budgets, unused shelfware, and the island-like applications that dot their enterprise architecture, all adding to the stress within the IT departments. On the other hand, enterprises are making do with much less than before—notably with people. Layoffs have become a standard feature in improving quarterly results, yet companies haven’t become any less efficient due to this, says an industry analyst. And this has a lot to do with the IT empowering teams within each department to perform better.

Randy Bean, managing partner at NewVantage is cautious in his analysis of the enteprise software market. In the wake of rampant investments in new technology products and firms during the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, Fortune 1000 (F1000) businesses are showing greater caution than ever when it comes to incurring potential risk. With tens of millions of dollars of software investments sitting unused, underused, or with companies no longer in existence, big F1000 buyers are looking to take the safe route.

As one F1000 CIO recently expressed it, “If we could buy everything from IBM we would, even if we had to wait a few years to get the functionality we needed.” The implications of this new mindset for emerging technology firms and their investors are troubling. More and more large firms, even in an improved IT spending environment, are deferring investments in emerging solutions, or are taking the more conservative approach of choosing to wait for an established vendor to develop the required functionality.

Even in the instance of those emerging firms that are experiencing success in selling a new technology solutions, many are being compelled to execute the deal through a large systems integrator such as IBM Global Solutions—prompting the question: who is the customer now? IBM or the enterprise? Bean is concerned that this may stifle the innovation process.

If you have more query about magazine please send mail to

May 12	April 12	March 12	Feb 12