Investment in Linux Should Remain Strong
While predictions for growth in overall IT spending have have ranged from flat to modestly up this year, according to a review of seven market research studies conducted by Bitpipe, an information aggregator, Linux was tapped as one area that would continue to experience strong investment. Forecasts for IT growth ranged from zero on the low end to six to eight percent on the high end. In a typical example, Merrill Lynch surveyed 100 CIOs, who estimated their IT budgets would climb one percent, down from the three percent they were predicting several months earlier.
..... Outsourcing was the spending area that received the most attention. Five of the seven market research firms surveyed cited outsourcing as a hot area for investment. Three of the companies believed that Linux would receive sustained investment in 2004, putting Linux on par with business intelligence applications. No other IT sector was identified by more than two firms as representing an area of greater than average growth.
Companies Anticipate Specific Benefits from Linux Implementations
Companies anticipate realizing very specific benefits by moving to the Linux platform, according to a recent study by Forrester Research. In a survey of 85 companies in the U.S., 86 percent of the respondents indicated that they anticipated a lower cost of acquisition of technology by moving to Linux. Lower total cost of owner was the second most widely expected benefit, named by 77 percent of the companies. A range of hardware and software choices were mentioned by just under half of the respondents as a likely benefit.
..... The largest cost savings, the study found, were realized by companies moving from a Unix to a Linux environment. Generally speaking, Linux runs on lower cost hardware. According to the study, companies realized a 45 percent savings in hardware and hardware maintenance costs for comparable workloads running Linux versus Unix. Companies building new IT systems with no legacy installations also were in position to realize significant savings. One CIO of a technology company estimated that establishing the IT infrastructure from scratch using Linux was 20 percent less expensive than it would have been to get the same functionality in a Windows environment.
Despite political hype, the threat is real
By Karen Guglielmo, Editor
Offshore outsourcing is a real issue. It's not just a political debate. Thousands of people are being affected both positively and negatively by this megatrend. On one hand, many IT workers are losing their jobs as a result of offshore outsourcing -- 123,282 jobs since March 2000, according to an offshore job tracker on TechsUnite.com. On the other hand, companies, including IBM, EDS, Accenture and HP are saving millions of dollars by farming out IT work to cheaper labor pools in countries like India, China and the Philippines. When you have an issue like this -- that brings such failure to some and success to others -- it creates a major controversy.
So we need to look beyond the politics and negative press surrounding offshore outsourcing and consider the growth predictions for this market. We can't overlook the fact that Forrester is estimating 830,000 U.S. jobs will move offshore by 2005, and Gartner is predicting 25% of IT jobs will be sent overseas by 2007. Growth like this will change the way we do business. This is the real root of the offshore outsourcing debate.
The best thing the political debate has done for the offshore outsourcing issue is to shed some light on an already highly controversial issue. Politicians have tapped into a serious concern among today's IT workforce. Whether they're bringing attention to it to obtain votes or to protect U.S. jobs, politicians can't ignore that the offshore outsourcing trend isn't going away any time soon.
Whatever their intentions are, politicians have helped and hurt the cause. Some politicians are trying to help the cause by passing laws to protect workers affected by offshore outsourcing. The offshore outsourcing debate is also pushing politicians to take a closer look at our education system and set up programs or invest more money in the math, sciences and engineering fields (all IT related).
On the flip side, the political involvement in offshore outsourcing is hurting the process. Because of all the negative publicity surrounding this trend, CIOs and executives have become very silent about their offshore plans. This is resulting in a huge backlash among IT workers who get blindsided when they are suddenly out of work or lose their job to an offshore move.
So is the political debate over offshore outsourcing justified? No, it's not. The current political debate is only addressing the loss of IT jobs in the U.S. This is only a very small part of the offshore puzzle. Politicians should look more closely at the real cause of job loss in the U.S. and address how we can better prepare our IT workers to succeed in today's economy. Offshore outsourcing is about more than just IT job loss. It's about globalization. We are shifting to a truly global economy and nothing, not even the political attention this issue is receiving, will stop this process.
What is a Service-Oriented Architecture?
it is a way of designing a software system to provide services to either end-user applications or other services through published and discoverable interfaces. In many cases, services provides a better way to expose discrete business functions and therefore an excellent way to develop applications that support business processes.
Service-oriented Solutions.. Application must be developed as independent sets of interacting services offering well-defined interfaces to their potential users. Similarly, supporting technology must be available to allow application developers to browse collection of services, select those of interest, and assemble them to create the desired functionality.
