Customer-Driven IT: How Users Are Shaping Technology Industry Growth

Rating:
Summary: Shaking off paralysis
Review: As a 22 year IT veteran, I've never before seen anything like the paralysis that now grips the industry. Buyers are awash in technology and afraid to take another step forward for fear that it will simply add to their problems instead of help solve them. Suppliers are out of sorts because the old spaghetti rules don't work any more ... throw a bunch of tech at the wall and see what, if anything, sticks. And everyone is spinning around in circles looking for the answer.

The author might not have all of the answers, but he points the industry in a direction that it needs to go, which is a dang good starting point. His answer: recognize that customers are now an integral part of the IT value chain. His words: �� with the arrival of the Internet, for the first time in this business�s history, IT customers were intentionally and systematically creating value for other IT customers.�

Amazon.com and others, he argues, were driving other organizations to reach for new technology goals. The customer was driving the industry, not the suppliers, as has been the case traditionally. Interesting insight. And the author goes on to say what this means to the long term growth and viability of the industry.

A good read, particularly as we as an industry try to sort out the lessons of the recent past and plan where we go from here.

Rating:
Summary: Shaking off paralysis
Review: As a 22 year IT veteran, I've never before seen anything like the paralysis that now grips the industry. Buyers are awash in technology and afraid to take another step forward for fear that it will simply add to their problems instead of help solve them. Suppliers are out of sorts because the old spaghetti rules don't work any more ... throw a bunch of tech at the wall and see what, if anything, sticks. And everyone is spinning around in circles looking for the answer.

The author might not have all of the answers, but he points the industry in a direction that it needs to go, which is a dang good starting point. His answer: recognize that customers are now an integral part of the IT value chain. His words: '' with the arrival of the Internet, for the first time in this business's history, IT customers were intentionally and systematically creating value for other IT customers.'

Amazon.com and others, he argues, were driving other organizations to reach for new technology goals. The customer was driving the industry, not the suppliers, as has been the case traditionally. Interesting insight. And the author goes on to say what this means to the long term growth and viability of the industry.

A good read, particularly as we as an industry try to sort out the lessons of the recent past and plan where we go from here.

Rating:
Summary: Finally something new...
Review: As a CEO in the IT industry I'm always interested in what's next. This book makes the best case I've seen for customer innovation driving future growth (versus vendor invention). Short on hype, long on fact-based vision. Alot of relevant historical parallels between the Internet and other big time industries like autos, telephone, radio, etc.

This is one of those "read this and let's talk about what it means to our business" books.

Rating:
Summary: Customers rule OK?
Review: I liked this book a lot.

As an IT manager, sometimes you need to sympathise with your users when things go wrong (as well as solving the problem, of course) and this book does it for me by opening with a chapter called "Computers Have Always Been Difficult"!

However, this is not a quick and dirty "IT Infrastructure Planning for Dummies". At times, it's really big picture stuff. Moschella's background in economic history allows him to make an astute comparison with a former explosive period of technological innovation, the late 1920s, when, rather tellingly, progress was hampered by the prospect of war - a worrying parallel.

We are walked through just about every public and industry sector - health care, government, education, banking, music, advertising, retail, airlines - with examples of where customers, not suppliers, have taken the lead in IT, adding value to a product or service for other customers. This 'seizing the power' approach may sound a little odd to you as an 'IT consumer', but the Internet and inter-networking (through our everyday hardware and software applications) has thrown up many challenges and opportunities - ones the IT supplier industry is no longer in a position to progress adequately, Moschella argues.

At every stage, incisive arguments are backed by industry evidence, as you would expect from an author with top-level experience at leading researchers International Data Corporation (IDC) and now also at Merrill Lynch.
Along the way, there is also some heartening praise for all those committed IT innovators and developers who make genuine progress on a daily basis; a change from so much analysis that relies on throwing rocks in all directions.

The outlook - which may come as a pleasant surprise, given the economic and political disasters of the last 18 months - is optimistic. Computers and content can only get better.

Does it tell you what to do next ?

The conclusion marks out 10 IT themes and shows which key industries are leading the field - just so that you know where to look. The work finishes with a kind of game plan on "How to take the IT lead as a customer", identifying four key areas you need to tackle with their respective goals mapped out. Easy as falling off a web log.

This book won't transform your operations overnight, but it will help you understand and secure a long-term future for your organisation.
And by the way, it's very well written. In plain English.
Even dummies can manage this.

Rating:
Summary: The Future of IT - And Hold the Rose-Colored Glasses
Review: Let's face it, there are way too many prognostications about technology, business and the consumer. The Internet Bubble generated a mountain of exuberant "vision" books, many that their authors now have good cause to be embarrassed about.

In contrast, this book strips away "irrational exuberance", and gives a sober and well-grounded perspective of how technology has really changed the world thus far, and what likely lies ahead - leaving the rose-colored glasses behind.

The driving premise is a simple, but profound one: the pervasive success of the PC and the Internet have created a population of customers that are finally educated enough about IT possibilities, that they are actively driving the future of the market. While this is given for most mature markets, remarkably it's a relatively new development in IT.

The implication for business executives: if you're passive in your vision and use of technology, your doomed to be regularly surprised by your competitors' IT-based business breakthroughs.

The implication for IT suppliers: the reality of other major markets like CPG, Auto and Retail is now upon you; get to know your customers' worlds VERY well, for that - not the technical agenda of your development labs - is defining your future.

Moschella is not a showman, but a serious and experienced analyst of the technology industry. As a result, the book dives deeper on occasion than the casual reader may like. But for the business executive whose biggest decisions must now anticipate IT's future, it's a very worthwhile read.

Rating:
Summary: The Future of IT - And Hold the Rose-Colored Glasses
Review: Let's face it, there are way too many prognostications about technology, business and the consumer. The Internet Bubble generated a mountain of exuberant "vision" books, many that their authors now have good cause to be embarrassed about.

In contrast, this book strips away "irrational exuberance", and gives a sober and well-grounded perspective of how technology has really changed the world thus far, and what likely lies ahead - leaving the rose-colored glasses behind.

The driving premise is a simple, but profound one: the pervasive success of the PC and the Internet have created a population of customers that are finally educated enough about IT possibilities, that they are actively driving the future of the market. While this is given for most mature markets, remarkably it's a relatively new development in IT.

The implication for business executives: if you're passive in your vision and use of technology, your doomed to be regularly surprised by your competitors' IT-based business breakthroughs.

The implication for IT suppliers: the reality of other major markets like CPG, Auto and Retail is now upon you; get to know your customers' worlds VERY well, for that - not the technical agenda of your development labs - is defining your future.

Moschella is not a showman, but a serious and experienced analyst of the technology industry. As a result, the book dives deeper on occasion than the casual reader may like. But for the business executive whose biggest decisions must now anticipate IT's future, it's a very worthwhile read.

Rating:
Summary: The Future of IT - And Hold the Rose-Colored Glasses
Review: Let's face it, there are way too many prognostications about technology, business and the consumer. The Internet Bubble generated a mountain of exuberant "vision" books, many that their authors now have good cause to be embarrassed about.

In contrast, this book strips away "irrational exuberance", and gives a sober and well-grounded perspective of how technology has really changed the world thus far, and what likely lies ahead - leaving the rose-colored glasses behind.

The driving premise is a simple, but profound one: the pervasive success of the PC and the Internet have created a population of customers that are finally educated enough about IT possibilities, that they are actively driving the future of the market. While this is given for most mature markets, remarkably it's a relatively new development in IT.

The implication for business executives: if you're passive in your vision and use of technology, your doomed to be regularly surprised by your competitors' IT-based business breakthroughs.

The implication for IT suppliers: the reality of other major markets like CPG, Auto and Retail is now upon you; get to know your customers' worlds VERY well, for that - not the technical agenda of your development labs - is defining your future.

Moschella is not a showman, but a serious and experienced analyst of the technology industry. As a result, the book dives deeper on occasion than the casual reader may like. But for the business executive whose biggest decisions must now anticipate IT's future, it's a very worthwhile read.

Rating:
Summary: Worthy to read...
Review: This book does a good job to summarize the past and current IT industry trends. The author high-level summarizes what he saw in the past and what he forsees in the future. This is a book for you to read and then think about what it means to your business.

However, there are some chapters not easy for everyone to read. Recommend to read ch1 and ch2 - if you are interested in the past IT trend; ch3 - the main concept of the book and the last chapter - conclusion. If you don't understand web services, then you can read other chapters.

Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended
Review: This is an excellent book on the near term future of IT. It says that the next IT growth is based on customer innovation. No incremental improvements to existing or leadership in emerging markets are is likely to be sufficient to drive a major industry expansion (page xiv). The shift from supplier to customer dominated industry represents a huge cultural and business change and challenge.

The emerging customer-centric era requires customer leadership, including vision, motivation, skills, and decision making capabilities. Customers must show the same level of faith and commitment than IT suppliers have provided in the past. The customer motivation is the single most important risk of the future success of IT (page 230). This is closely tied to executive attitudes towards technology (234).

This also means that traditional venture capital backed start-ups will play a diminishing role in the industry.
The responsibility is on the leadership of existing industries, with a relative absence of start-ups and therefore a relatively reduced role of entrepreneurs (143).

"The sad thing is that so much of (this) energy flowed into a flawed industry vision ...unless the IT industry embraces some sort of shared long-term vision and direction, the use of technology could either drift aimlessly or continue to squeeze diminishing returns out of proven areas of investments" (40).

Many of the key customer-centric applications have already been identified. These include music, advertisement, payments, health care, e-learning, government services, and community interaction (26).

Web Services and Semantic Applications are marketed as the next big thing concepts. Web Services implement process nets with modular components. Many viable Web Services already exist, such as e-mail, credit card processing, and news feed. Web Services may lead to the emergence of new kind and more specialized service companies that provide better economies scale, or skills, or more flexibility, and may create shareholder value. This dis-integration differs from the dot-com vision - processes instead of businesses are horizontalized. On the other hand, the dot-com collapse has shown the risks of outsourcing.

Semantic Applications are capable of understanding other applications. They require industry standardization, which is seen everywhere; in the joint initiatives in electronics, automotive, manufacturing, medical, chemical, and travel industries (115).

The book considers e-learning as a major opportunity, and LMS (Learning Management Systems) as the last great enterprise horizontal software market, in the lucrative tradition of ERP, CRM and so on (156).

Communities are still at the heart of the Internet activities. They rival and exceed those of e-business and e-learning realms (166-167).

Government's role in information society is thoroughly described and evaluated (185-206). Public policy is increasingly important IT industry factor (43). Example are e-learning, online gaming, voting, identification, security, spectrum allocation, public information services, integrated government databases, antirust, regulation and tax policies, copyright and patent law (42).

The best part of the book is a critical approach to the so-called horizontal business model. On a company level this model is associated with a highly focused business strategy. The belief was that there will be dominant market leaders, "gorillas", and that these leaders are start-ups that are able to replace much of the established economic order (34). The belief on this mental model and the overreliance on the PC industry mind-set was one of the main causes of the Internet bubble (28-29). History does not repeat itself. Many Internet-related businesses have no clear market leaders and have remained very competitive.

A major weakness of the book is that it leaves C out of IT. It fails to recognize the importance of telecommunications or mobile industry and the convergence as the basis for the next technology-based ICT growth. On page 56, the book says "mobile systems are not going to be the dominant computing platform any time soon, and they are unlikely to fundamentally later the way businesses and other organizations are run". This becomes again evident on page 169 where the writer hints that the high international usage of mobile phones is due to the lack of voice mail or bad service and high prices by foreign telecom monopolies. This blind spot also means the lack of global perspective, because in large parts of Asia and Europe the integrated multi-media consumer electronics offerings (instead of "computers" and "software" still sold by the IT industry) of the mobile industry have already dwarfed "old" IT as the consumer supplier.

I still give this book five stars. Highly recommended, but read with caution.