Sure most people feel that new technology adoption is too slow, but on the other side there is buy-in. Why is it then that introducing innovative software solutions into an organization is so difficult? Development costs, change risk to untested processes, new skill learning curves, scraping existing equipment and investments, all make for valid reasons that innovative developments get bogged down. Investment risk felt by top management to unwanted change of routine from the lower levels keep current, or even old, technologies in place and safe. Smaller companies may be able to overcome these factors, but larger companies steaming on a heading find it hard to turn the boat. Adoption must occur organically after proven in the market place. A segmented adoption strategy may very well turn that boat, but it will still take time.

So who is going to manage, validate and audit these disparate systems that appeal to one group and are rejected by the other? Oh yes, the consultants and experts advocating this massive, almost anarchist approach. Most of these "wiz kids" don't know what they don't know. Hence, the ever present divide/0 errors in the spread sheets passed out at every meeting. Being enamoured with their favorite new "cloud app" doesn't excuse the failure of the numbers to pass the stink test. IT is then challenged to find out why the revolutionary new app found by super user doesn't produce the same answers. No, I was wrong. The Gartner Wizards will go on to some new topic and traditional IT approaches will return the sanity. This is one industry (IT) where the pendulum swings wide every few years, but always passes center. Terminal services on a PC that was yesterday a client/server model? It's great to predict the future that you have no part of.

I find it so funny that Gartner is so constantly out of sync with what they try to do and don’t really say anything. So they are blaming IT for being too slow but then say IT wants faster implementation of these technologies, nice contradiction.

I guess further they don’t use any technology and probably resort to carrier pigeon for building to building interoffice mail and hamsters running messages between floors as 'best of breed' in their environment as a means of using a wide variety of solutions. /End Gartner Rant

For the first issue, generally, the issue is that the IT guys at the bottom want to use the latest and greatest emerging technologies or ones they personally like (and everyone likes something else and next month is always some new, hot technology), Executive management (CEO's and accountants) generally don't like spending money unless it returns money (instantly) and IT is largely viewed as an expense to the company versus viewed as cost avoidance or valuable innovators. Yes, a custom tool/interface etc will cost some money up front, but long term has the potential to save lots of time and money if done right and married with other technologies and a solid strategy.

This brings us to the second issue which has to do with all these so called 'specialist' products in nitch areas. Conceptually, you want the 'best of breed' however the problem is whether those solutions work for your business and then all of them together are affordable versus one tool that is half the price and gets you 90% of where you want to go. I've had the opportunity to work with that type of 'best of breed' implementations and they don’t often work as there is often times no strategy involved in their actual implementation just buying the 'best of breed' products and then not realizing the over complexity of the environment created as a result, increasing support and IT costs and actually decreasing effectiveness/efficiencies.

In order to marry what the accountants want (save money/make money) along with trying to provide innovation, IT has come to expect that a product be more comprehensive and complete and actually aggressively compete with their counterparts to make better tools that will cost less to support (as a measure of proof look at HP, Microsoft and others gobbling up the smaller companies and incorporating their tools into their own, albeit that takes time).

I don't see the benefit in piecing solutions together just because they are 'best of breed' its a matter of adopting and adapting the IT environemt so its dynamic. Most of the time these tools won't play friendly or lack easy to integrate support tools so you have all these disparate solutions that maintain their separation. Then, when your groups have issues it over taxes IT departments because you’re chasing down 10 vendors who all point finger at someone else (or worse recommend you buy additional products to further complicate the infrastructure). At the end I can't recall how many times business ends up with their staff being masters of nothing frustrated with everything.

I find it so funny that Gartner is so constantly out of sync with what they try to do and don’t really say anything. So they are blaming IT for being too slow but then say IT wants faster implementation of these technologies, nice contradiction.

I guess further they don’t use any technology and probably resort to carrier pigeon for building to building interoffice mail and hamsters running messages between floors as 'best of breed' in their environment as a means of using a wide variety of solutions. /End Gartner Rant

For the first issue, generally, the issue is that the IT guys at the bottom want to use the latest and greatest emerging technologies or ones they personally like (and everyone likes something else and next month is always some new, hot technology), Executive management (CEO's and accountants) generally don't like spending money unless it returns money (instantly) and IT is largely viewed as an expense to the company versus viewed as cost avoidance or valuable innovators. Yes, a custom tool/interface etc will cost some money up front, but long term has the potential to save lots of time and money if done right and married with other technologies and a solid strategy.

This brings us to the second issue which has to do with all these so called 'specialist' products in nitch areas. Conceptually, you want the 'best of breed' however the problem is whether those solutions work for your business and then all of them together are affordable versus one tool that is half the price and gets you 90% of where you want to go. I've had the opportunity to work with that type of 'best of breed' implementations and they don’t often work as there is often times no strategy involved in their actual implementation just buying the 'best of breed' products and then not realizing the over complexity of the environment created as a result, increasing support and IT costs and actually decreasing effectiveness/efficiencies.

In order to marry what the accountants want (save money/make money) along with trying to provide innovation, IT has come to expect that a product be more comprehensive and complete and actually aggressively compete with their counterparts to make better tools that will cost less to support (as a measure of proof look at HP, Microsoft and others gobbling up the smaller companies and incorporating their tools into their own, albeit that takes time).

I don't see the benefit in piecing solutions together just because they are 'best of breed' its a matter of adopting and adapting the IT environemt so its dynamic. Most of the time these tools won't play friendly or lack easy to integrate support tools so you have all these disparate solutions that maintain their separation. Then, when your groups have issues it over taxes IT departments because you’re chasing down 10 vendors who all point finger at someone else (or worse recommend you buy additional products to further complicate the infrastructure). At the end I can't recall how many times business ends up with their staff being masters of nothing frustrated with everything.

I have to agree that IT shops are too slow to embrace new technologies but might be best to go ahead and ask the next question "why".

Anyone that has been in IT for more than 5 years has seen enough to know jumping onboard to early can bite you and jumping onboard to late is a waste of time because the next version is right around the corner.

Software companies are becoming aggressive in versioning and stability comes as an after thought. Driver and vendor support comes months down the road but of course that only happens when more and more brave folks make the move.

I proudly say I am a member of generation y, and I understand all the obstacles are from experience and vendor not generation gaps.

Five years ago, Gartner was advocating AGAINST Open Source Software, stating that it "was not enterprise ready." Now, all of these new applications that have been built on FOSS are being widely adopted because of their ease of use and ability to be rapidly deployed. So now, Gartner is chastising IT for its willingness to follow their previous advice.

In any event, it's good to see that the strict, vertically integrated, single source model is losing some of its luster. There are just too many opportunities to innovate and evolve, and tight, monolithic uniformity is simply unable to evolve rapidly because it sinks into the rut of backward compatibility.

Software vendors which recognize that innovation comes when working parts that fit together well in well-defined ways so that companies can solve their business problems will be the big winners.