Leader: IT is tougher than it's ever been

Listening to leading CIOs yesterday, it would be easy to question whether a recovery in IT spending is really happening. The surveys and research reports tell us it is. Also, on Tuesday Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik spoke about desktop replacements ramping up in the second half of this year. So why is it everyone always seems to be doing more with less?

Margaret Smith, IT director at insurer Legal & General, talks about a budget that has gone down every year for the past four years - even though her business demands more from IT.

The IT function at mobile operator Vodafone is "lowering its spend every week, every day".

In some organisations experiencing consistently strong growth - yes, there are some - it is common to hear orders that capex be reduced every year as a percentage of revenues. Dell is a great example but that can quite often mean the actual pound or dollar value of IT spend still increases.

No, as one UK-based CIO told silicon.com, only so many companies can grow robustly every year. If the economy is growing at 3 per cent per annum, we can't have most businesses all growing at 5 per cent.

So how does the IT function survive against this backdrop?

The first point is that the last three or so years have shown such a frugal approach is tough but workable. Hard times have led to many in IT growing up. There are now more business people in IT departments than ever before - putting in a request for confusing technology should never have been enough but nowadays jargon and unproven cases should be banished.

While this publication doesn't agree with the thesis that IT can no longer add value, that it's always better to wait and see, there is a case to be made for proven approaches.

It was also significant that CIOs are talking about consolidating their suppliers. They don't want complexity. They also don't want lock in or domination by a few large players.

Could it be that as IT chiefs become more business managers, their answers increasingly lie with that most geeky of approaches - open source?

Such irony.