The 'new normal' is here

WE RECENTLY started a new budget year at InfoWorld, and I couldn't be happier to put the past year behind us and start with a clean slate. I'm optimistic, perhaps foolishly, that the tech economy will improve at least somewhat during the next twelve months, and that technology spending will also improve, making the job easier for all CTOs.

But whether or not a recovery happens, the face of IT seems to have changed forever: We've reached the "new normal" state for IT. In a nutshell, the new normal is all about doing more with less, working smarter, and tying every expenditure back to saving bottom-line expenses or driving top-line revenue.

The typical CTO running IT used to be like a U.S. senator with a six-year term. You got the job and assessed the situation, but you had time to feel things out, make mistakes, and generally think for the long term before the next election. Now, CTOs are running for office every quarter. You have to deliver ROI within a much shorter time frame to rally the votes for the next IT initiative.

One key thing I have learned during the past year is simple and should be incorporated into thinking on all levels of IT: no more big projects -- period. The days where large budgets were approved with project completion several months or years away are permanently gone. Large revolutionary projects can still be attempted, but they have to be broken down into several mini-projects, with proofs-of-concept and ROI delivered throughout the process. Each mini-project must deliver substantial incremental benefit in and of itself, just in case the larger project must be delayed or killed. It's not good enough to promise a long-term benefit -- the benefits must be almost immediate, usually within six months.

The new normal is also about trying to make do with what you have, and two relatively ho-hum technologies can help you do that: Linux and Web services. Despite the fact that new servers' processor speeds are much faster than 2GHz, the bulk of our services at InfoWorld are still running on Linux using half that processor power or less. We're happily using older Intel-based machines for a variety of services that would strain under the weight of a Windows 2000 install. My thinking on Web services is similar to my thinking on Linux. Web services is a hot topic in the vendor community, but like Linux, you don't necessarily have to spend a lot of money to leverage Web services in your organization. This isn't good news for the enterprise hardware and software vendor community, but for a CTO who needs to work within a tight budget, technologies such as Apache's Axis SOAP engine running with an application server such as Resin can take you pretty far if your team is not afraid of a command line and config files.

Despite my comments above, the new normal does not exclude software vendors, but it certainly should change the way software vendors approach the selling process. Although I've pointed out the cost savings inherent in using Linux and open-source Web services tools, the greater appeal lies in the ability to fully install and test open-source software before making the commitment to use it.

In the new environment, commercial software vendors need to mitigate the risk of software purchases by allowing complete evaluations or they risk continuing to lose business to open-source alternatives.

If the future is one of incremental IT successes, the IT ecosystem of CTOs and vendors must change its thinking to the new reality.

It's not a harsh reality unless you fail to adjust.