Gartner in Cahoots?
Gartner loves to be on the leading edge -- inventing new terms, releasing feisty statements and generally acting like a know-it-all.
But here's the deal, I trust you far more than I trust Gartner, so I will present their latest hypothesis and see what you think.
Gartner coined the term 'IT debt' to refer to the dollar amount it would take to get all your applications up-to-date. The assumption is that older software leaves a shop vulnerable, which pushes you to be on the latest version -- or else (are you sure Microsoft didn't write this report?).
In any case, it would cost a half a trillion bucks (more than double the size of the current enterprise software market) to get these apps to where Gartner feels they should be.
Here it is from the horse's mouth (or something else, you decide): "A modern enterprise or public sector organization is likely to be critically dependent on a number of business applications. Each one is at a particular point in a complex life cycle; each one is slowly, but inevitably, diverging from its ideal state toward a suboptimal state and, potentially, toward obsolescence or failure," says Andy Kyte, a Gartner VP who is saying things software vendors absolutely love to hear.
Does this mean the software wasn't good to begin with or does it just flake out over time (like a copy of Windows XP that was installed a while ago)? You tell me at dbarney@red mondmag.com.
Posted by Doug Barney on 09/27/2010 at 1:18 PM