* Observations from VORTEX 2004
With less than two weeks to go until Election Day, there’s little doubt that President Bush has won few fans in the IT industry during his term in office – if the comments made by industry executives at the recent VORTEX 2004 event are anything to go by.
My colleague, Network World Associate News Editor Paul McNamara attended the Network World event, which attracts the IT industry’s elite every year for high-level discussions about the state of the industry. He reports that the energy level among the audience soared when the discussions turned to whether the current government has helped the IT industry – and whether a Kerry administration would be any better.
McNamara reports that among the president’s more passionate critic was Mitchell Kertzman, a partner at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. “What matters to the technology industry is macroeconomic policy because we’re all sensitive to macroeconomic policy … and that’s where I think Bush is a disaster,” Kertzman told the audience. “He’s a disaster on the deficit, and I think the deficit is really dangerous, and he’s a disaster on global policy.”
However, Bush did find a supporter in J. Roger Moody, a former executive at AT&T and CBS, and now chairman and CEO of Sandpiper Synergies. He believes the industry has been well served by the Bush team. “A lot of people rail against [FCC Chairman Michael] Powell, but at least he’s trying to keep things less regulated … [A Kerry administration] might be bad because he’s certainly the liberal type.”
For more on this debate, read McNamara’s full report at: https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/101104vortex.html
Outside of politics, the conference also debated the future of the IT industry, which led John Gallant, the show’s executive producer and Network World’s president and editorial director, to make the following observations:
* The restructuring of the enterprise is happening at three levels – application and application development, infrastructure, and services.
* The enterprise IT market is on the threshold of profound change that’s driven by both major vendors and innovators. The vendors spoke about attempting to create the next “platform” for enterprise IT but customers won’t – and can’t – support a wide variety of platforms.
Gallant says it was clear from the conference that we are moving to an era of software-as-a-service, with applications delivered over the Web. On the application development front, CIOs clearly see the value of services-oriented applications and they are eager for guidance and direction from key vendors on how to build them.
Customers are interested in discovering how to streamline, centralize and automate IT and the major enterprise vendors will do battle to deliver the best architecture and the best management tools. Although the vendors promise to play well together, users will still have to choose which strategic vision to adopt, Gallant notes.
At the services level, customers will have many decisions to make. Should they outsource or do it themselves? How should they move to visualization and how much outside help would they need? Which strategic players will still be interested in services down the line?
All these issues will be discussed in more detail in future issues of Gallant’s VORTEX Digest newsletter. Check out the archived copies at https://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/vortex/index.html
