Department of grim reaping
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IT departments are using fewer vendors, not just because the market is maturing but also due to the lack of innovative and disruptive technologies
Here's a thought: According to research by Information Week, the average IT department bought technology from 82 vendors in 2000; last year that figure was down to 33; this year, it's 27. On hearing this, your first thoughts might well be that this just portrays the natural steps of a maturing industry - consolidation, M&A, streamlined supply chains.
Perhaps. But the metric also shows an absence of any kind of truly disruptive technologies that really capture the corporate imagination and stimulate purchases.
And it's not for want of trying: RFID tags; voice-over-IP telephony; 3G phone services; there is a long list of technologies that have been vaunted as 'the next big thing'. However, a quick look at some success stories in recent times shows how little innovation we're really seeing.
Take hosting customer relationship management provider Salesforce.com or open source application server maker JBoss: both have had successful years, but they're not offering anything particularly new.
Instead, the disruptive and innovative aspect of their technology is to offer something that already exists in the market, but to do so at a much lower cost than the competition.
