As IDC Sees It, Tech's 'Third Platform' Disrupts Everyone

According to IDC, the 5 percent IT growth it sees for 2014 is comprised of two elements: Stagnant legacy infrastructure growth (0.7 percent) and a high third-platform infrastructure growth (15 percent). Just to bring the point home, IDC asserts that a full 29 percent of 2014 IT spending and 89 percent of all IT growth spending will be in the third platform; of the latter, a full 50 percent represents cannibalization of traditional markets.

[ More: Global IT Spending Predictions from Forrester and Gartner ][ Commentary: 3 Ways Enterprise IT Will Change in 2014 ]

This means that legacy IT is going forward largely unchanged and will experience little additional investment. IT investment is skewed toward third-platform initiatives, even to the extent that some of the investment toward third platform is being funded by ripping out existing legacy environments - presumably by on-premises legacy systems being replaced by software as a service.

If you're a legacy vendor, your financial prospects are bleak. Look at this week's announcement from Oracle that its quarterly results fell short. (At least this time the company blamed currency issues and not, as it did a couple of quarters ago, on an incompetent sales staff.)

If you're an IT user, your strategic issue is how quickly you can reorient your spend. I've spoken recently about how legacy systems are the biggest issue enterprise IT faces, since they're such a budget sinkhole. If 80 percent of your IT budget is spoken for before the year starts, how can you aggressively pursue third platform initiatives