Computerworld has an article titled…
Study: IT jobs will drop in 2009
…that reports the findings of a Goldman-Sachs survey of top CIOs (100 decision making managers at mostly Fortune 1000 firms). The article quotes Goldman Sachs speaking in terms of a cost-constrained IT budget scenario. OK, that makes sense given the current economic outlook. They go on to say that server virtualization and server consolidation are their No. 1 and No. 2 priorities. This makes sense too. The 3rd through 5th priorities are cost-cutting, application integration, and data center consolidation. So far, so good. The summary finishes up saying that the bottom of the priority list consists of grid computing, open-source software, content management and cloud computing.
Charles King of Pund-IT, Inc., is quoted saying that the surveyed managers and CIOs simply don’t understand the value of their low-priority items. I agree with Mr. King. In an budget constrained IT environment, Open Source and Cloud Computing are exactly the kinds of technologies that should at least be evaluated.
If you run into any of the Microsoft Open Source Labs (Port 25) people at OSCON, you might want to ask them if they could say a few words about these items sent to the bottom of the priority list by Fortune 1000 decision makers.
Huh? I think the CIOs know that their jobs is to protect the data and information that are the life blood of their organizations.
I think they also know that what works for small businesses, entertainment, and sales & marketing just isn't appropriate for their operational systems.
Completely agree, Todd-- isn’t this the equivalent of reacting to a gas price increase by postponing your purchase of a Prius, and driving your Hummer for awhile longer?
We do think that the thought leaders in cloud computing shoulder some of the blame for this attitude, however. We all get so excited about the potential of cloud computing that it sometimes sounds futuristic, as if it were like some spaceship that will provide commuter service to the moon, instead of like a reliable Prius, perfect for your daily commute.
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http://www.appirio.com/blog/index.php
Kool Aid: I think you might want to take another look at the IT world. Open Source is used by entities of all sizes including the extremely large organizations like the U.S. Dept. of Defense (really many large organizations), Google, Yahoo, IBM, Oracle, etc.