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Editor's Blog: Only IT salesmen can save us now
And why this is no time for software engineers

By Steve Ranger

Published: Friday 28 November 2008

Few vendors - or indeed CIOs - would claim to know how the next year is going to shape up.

For many, the instinct is that next year will be a time to batten down the hatches and cut back on non-essential spending - which tends to suppress any urge to get involved with new, untested development. That doesn't mean innovation is dead, however - what has changed is where that new thinking will be needed.

The vendors who will be successful in the next 12 to 18 months are not necessarily the ones with the most sophisticated and flexible technology.

No, the vendors who will be successful are the ones with the most flexibility around the way they structure deals with their customers.

I met last week with Peter Bauer, CEO of SaaS company Mimecast, who argued there are factors that might help swing the market further towards software as a service. Capex is in short supply, he pointed out, so anything that can be supplied as a service should be easier for the finance director to swallow.

Equally, a service that doesn't need much in the way of installation and ongoing maintenance (compared to buying it and integrating it in-house) is likely to find favour with CIOs working out how to cope with a dwindling team.

It's an interesting argument but I don't think it is only the SaaS (or cloud, or grid) vendors that can still benefit in this unsettled market.

Few CIOs will have much in the way of budget at their disposal and so will welcome approaches from vendors with clever ways of funding new projects. That might mean new ways of spending their limited budget - leasing or less up-front cost, perhaps.

For years there has been plenty of smug talk from vendors about risk and reward deals and too often this means the CIO's risk and the vendor's reward. Now is the time for vendors to really rethink their pricing models and be much more flexible than they have been in the past.

IT suppliers always pride themselves on coming up with clever product ideas to keep them ahead of the competition but no CIO I talk to is crying out for that kind of innovation anymore. Now is the time for the unlikeliest of superheroes to step forward - the IT salesman.

Now it is time for the management and sales teams at IT suppliers to come up with some cutting edge thinking of their own - at least if they expect CIOs to keep spending. The only question is, can they be as flexible as the software they sell?

Editor's choice - things you should check out on silicon.com this week:
Fancy your chance to win a third-generation iPod nano? Then enter our competition here. You'll find all the answers around silicon.com.

Panicking about what to get your favourite CIO for Christmas? Well silicon.com has done the hard work for you, check out our round-up of the top 10 Christmas presents to buy a CIO.

And it turns out CIOs are still not sold on Vista going by the results of the latest CIO Jury. See what they have to say on Microsoft's OS here.