Martin Butler, founder and president of Butler Group, issued this challenge to the IT industry during the launch of the Information Economics Journal at the Barber-Surgeon’s Hall in London. Martin Butler proposed that the technological inefficiencies were due to a two way lack of communication between businesses that fail to fully understand its systems, and the IT industry, which does not aim to provide the most apt system for a new user.
“The IT industry has failed to renew or alter its outlook in the past twenty years and yet businesses still make the error of depending on it to match IT systems to their needs without monitoring the success rate of any new installation. It is time a system of measurement was put into place.”
Martin was joined in his discussion by a panel of industry figures, which included Mike Lynch, CEO, Autonomy; Allan Russell, senior VP Strategy, SAS Europe; Tony Heywood, senior VP EMEA, Hummingbird; Peter Matthews, technology strategist, office of the CTO, Computer Associates; Larry Levy, CEO, Semagix and James Demetriades, founder and CEO, SeeBeyond.
Not surprisingly, some of the panel members rigorously contested Martin Butler ‘s views.
Larry Levy, CEO, Semagix , remarked, “It is businesses which expect amazing results from their systems without taking the time to understand them first. They often fail to leave any time for their systems to mature or to establish themselves and instead get rid of perfectly good systems after one or two errors. Such an attitude costs businesses millions of pounds a year and only increases the friction between them and the IT Industry”.
Several members of the panel agreed with this point of view highlighting businesses’ increasing tendency to delegate responsibilities to the IT Industry that should, in fact, remain within the business itself. As Mike Adami-Sampson, founder and VP product strategy, MatrixOne , pointed out, “The IT Industry is constantly blamed for things which it has no control over. Businesses need to become more realistic about what their IT systems can actually achieve for them otherwise such an attitude is doomed to end in disaster”.
Yet Mike Lynch, CEO, Autonomy, disagreed with the IT industry sympathisers, “There is a conspiracy by the IT vendors not to show the pros and cons of their systems,” he argued. “It is due to this that it is vital for businesses to put in place measuring devices in order to monitor the effectiveness of their systems and the IEJ will enable many businesses to gain a much clearer idea of their systems’ abilities”. Alan Murphy, CTO and MD of Technology Services, TSO , finally underlined this belief, “The IEJ is a step in the right direction in order to provoke a change in attitude between the IT Industry and businesses.”
To an audience of vendors, journalists, analysts and users, Martin Butler detailed the need for the Information Economics Journal, which will address, on a quarterly basis, the IT vendor and end user communities, the expectations of each and the creation of a joint understanding or philosophy that can bind both parties in achieving value from information technology.
2003-10-29
Em Foco – Opinião