For IT Spending, Don't Believe the Hype
About this time last year, as fears of a recession began to take hold, we put together our 2008 IT Spending package. The mood wasn't too bad yet: spending was down and cost-cutting pressures were up, but there was still money around for critical projects. But not a whole lot of panic. (Surprisingly, we saw the same thing in December in our Future of IT study.) Still, as expected, plenty of things went wrong. For example, CIOs predicted big spending on a bunch of technologies that, according to our upcoming IT spending research, didn't quite match the hype in 2008. Despite the expected spending cuts in 2009, I'm sure we'll see plenty of over-hyping as we look back next year. But what drives the hype? For one, IT vendors are in the business of selling certain products, so their marketing campaigns have a great deal of influence over CIOs' spending decisions. That's a given. Then there's the never-ending desire to innovate and experiment with new technologies. I'm guessing we won't see too much of that this year, but you never know. (I guess the media is partially to blame, too.) But I could be wrong. Tell us, what drives your spending decisions? Why do you think certain technologies get over-hyped? |
