IT does not matter - honestly

Nick Carr has a series of posts - he is up to part 7 rehashing his 2003 best seller HBS article "IT Doesn't matter."

Let me say it in one simple blog: IT does not matter. But not using Nick's logic.

Give or take a little, if you analyze IT line items (including IT spend in business user budgets) of any western company and total the spend on software, services, hardware and telecomm, and internal IT staff costs, the last item only makes up 10 to 20 % of the total.

So, yes IT does not matter. Quit beating on the 15% tail and focus on the 85% that is spent on vendors.

I mentioned this to a sourcing exec recently - and she lit up. So the biggest single skillset IT really needs is vendor management, not architects, not DBAs - she asked.

Bingo.