Get a Jump on the Competition

Despite the mixed signs of a recovery, this could be the best time toconvince senior management to increase IT spending, especially if yourIT budget has been heading south instead of north. That advice maysound counterintuitive to some, but if your competitors are lying low,waiting for a turnaround, jump-starting your technology investmentscan put you in the passing lane while the competition continues toramble along at 55 mph. "If your competition is risk-averse, if youdare to innovate, the risk is higher but the payoff can be fantastic,"exudes Howard A. Rubin, executive vice president at Stamford,Conn.-based technology consultancy Meta Group. At the heart of hislogic lies a trend he's seen in IT management for the past two years:Technology is being managed more like an investment portfolio - sure,you need conservative investments, but the only way to generate bigpayoffs down the road is to take a few risks.

Rubin cites Blockbuster, which - instead of pulling in the reins whilein the face of the online digital entertainment onslaught - isinvesting in new technologies, such as self-service checkout (akin toMobil's Speedpass). He also points out that British Airways, which isbuilding a new, innovative facility at London's Heathrow Airport, isplanning to use technology (for example, radio frequency tags to trackbaggage and self-service check-in areas) to make the flying experiencemore efficient and pleasurable. "The winners in IT will be determinedby managing risks and not following the pack," Rubin says.

At Boston-based MFS Investment Management, home of America's firstmutual fund, CIO Peter Noll enthusiastically agrees with that line ofthinking. In fact, he sounds downright cheery when discussing theeffects of the recession. "We see it as an opportunity to leapfrogcompetitors in areas that we think are going to be high growth whenthe market turns around," he says, mentioning its institutionalmarketplace and global investing unit as high-value opportunities.Technologies that will help support those initiatives include ahigh-capacity 100MB network across the enterprise, and a new real-timemessaging infrastructure (IBMIBM's MQ series) to support the company'sglobal operating model, and it will implement a storage area network."We're hunters, not farmers," he says. "During a down time, we keephunting." Alles zu IBM auf CIO.de

Riding Out the Storm