Acronym fever hits the latest technologies - Editorial

Rethink IT, Nov, 2003

If last month's issue was focused on the long established, rather mundane but essential technologies that underly the data center, this one is looking ahead to a range of newly emerging techniques. Many of them are currently overhyped and may sound like the latest acronyms being thrown at us by vendors desperate for new markets and new sales. But recession and increasing wisdom among IT decision makers mean it is far harder for suppliers to rely just on buzzwords these days--there has to be some substance to the claims, some measurable benefits and most of all, the promise of deriving greater value from the IT investment.

This is the key to the appeal of grid computing, where all processing and storage resources can be pooled across a network and used by any application as required. We look at some early deployments of grid in financial services, always a leading edge sector in terms of IT developments, and particularly under pressure to analyze their data more rapidly and deeply without buying large amounts of new equipment.

Over in the retail sector, the technology du jour is RFID--wireless data tags that replace barcodes, providing far more information and tracking goods throughout the manufacturing, delivery and sales process. These can be used to address three key challenges facing large retailers--tightening up the supply chain, reducing inventory while ensuring stock availability, and improving security. We look at some early experiments and the impact for producers of Wal-Mart's decision to make RFID mandatory.

Foundry Networks aims to defend its corner against the far bigger Cisco by staying ahead of the field in terms of implementing the latest technologies for backbone networking. This puts them firmly in high data markets such as academia, film production and any market using videoconferencing extensively. We examine how realistic it is for a smaller company to compete with Cisco.

Also gaining ground as a way to derive greater value from IT systems is so-called Business Technology Optimization, which under various acronyms is being pushed by the giants of system management such as CA and IBM/Tivoli, and also by the specialists. Mercury Interactive is one smaller company aiming to jump on this bandwaggon. We ask whether BTO represents just another three-letter marketing label or can offer real benefits for the CIO.

We expect 2004 to be a turnaround year for IT spending, and some of the slightly relaxed budgets will be going, for the first time in several years, on brand new approaches. Not just on fads though--these new technologies will have to convince their potential buyers that they will increase efficiency, business benefit and shareholder value before they are implemented in earnest.