Can there be too much innovation? This week as I wrote a column on innovation for sandhill.com and as I read this Phil Wainewright post about CIO skepticism about SaaS, I had that sinking feeling that we may have too much technology innovation chasing too few available dollars and too few attention cycles.
Web 2.0, Office 2.0, SaaS, SOA, Open Source, Third Party Maintenance, systems management innovations - just in the software space so many new products and vendors are screaming from CIO attention. Then there are mobility, sensor, VoIP, blades, utility computing, global delivery, BPO, project based outsourcing innovations...
All these children - how do we pamper them all? And when we do not give them attention, will they not pout and complain about how the parents just don't get it or are playing favorites? Is this the tech version of the remake of "Cheaper by the Dozen" with food fights and sibling rivalries?
The reality is with total IT budgets only growing 2 to 3% budgets and compliance budgets expanding rapidly in the last couple of years, funding for innovation has to come from squeezing utility spend (KTLO - keep the lights on)on incumbent outsourcing, software maintenance, hardware leases, telecom contracts etc.
So younger companies - do not just look at your peers as competition. Your biggest competition is the established vendors and their baked in budgets. IBM, HP, Verizon, ATT, Microsoft, EDS, Accenture, Oracle - just those 8 vendors soak up over $ 400 billion in annual technology spend And other younger players from other categories are your competitors too - both for the dollars, and in this day and age, attention....
Food foght time. Not in fun - but to feed the ever growing table.
