I am watching a live video feed of Bob Suh, Chief Technology Strategist at Accenture present a keynote at the AlwaysOn conference. Lots of words, but kept coming to: There's plenty of innovation, not enough adoption in the US. Chinese CIOs have little legacy, and so are earlier adopters of SOA, and more willing to take risks. So the basic message to Western CIOs - do more new stuff.
He then joined a panel which also had Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Vice President, Technical Strategy and Innovation, IBM. Irving talked more about his concerns about the US being overly concerned about illegal immigration and moral issues about stem cell research. He also had a refreshing view on Open Source - the cat's out of the bag. Quit fighting it.
But here's the irony. The two companies are poster children for why CIO budgets are so full of utility, legacy budgets and have little left for innovation spend. Irving can talk Open Source, but only a small sliver of IBM revenues comes from Linux. Most of the rest comes for closed model software and services revenues. Accenture represents several $ 100 + million ERP and custom developed projects that their clients are still amortizing years later. Many CIOs cannot wait to re-negotiate their multi-year outsourcing deals with each.
It's fine for them to talk innovation. But till they innovate their own business models, not sure they have street cred...
