Re: What Determines IT Spending Priorities?

Thankyou Hoon S. Cha, David E. Pingry and Matt E. Thatcher for a truly riveting article.

When managers commit less money to Security, they are basically gambling. They are probably aware what the consequences are if security fail, so are playing the odds the way a gambler or someone who chooses to drive their car uninsured does. We are all aware that IT is a cost no matter how many savings you make. As long as you, as a IT professional, are aware of the risks, and take steps to inform the big decision makers in your enterprise of the risks, you can't be held accountable for security disasters.

For other IT spending areas it depends on where your priorities lie. Most firms would agree that money spent on services that the administration staff use are unavoidable. The business can't run without them. For the rest of the IT services it really depends on what your busines does and what size it is.

Re: Six Decisions Your IT People Shouldn't Make by J.W. Ross & Peter Weill

IT Managers make poor decisions on IT projects because they fail to realise the project is a business decision, as well as a technical challenge. This does not surprise me. IT graduates tend to be less business savvy as they should be. To be fair to IT educators, degrees are changing to include business papers in ithe curriculum, but there are significant numbers of IT graduates that have been in the workplace for years with no idea of business. These people are not to be trusted make a potentially business destroying decision. In my experience in a IT degree, I was one of two people taking a business paper and I don't expect a rush of IT students enrolling in business papers next year. IT students are generally not interested in IT.

I've made clear who I think should be making IT decisions. A few things should be considered when making a decision on IT: How much to spend, on what, and to what quality. As long as the money is set aside for it is reasonable, all that has be considered is the value it brings to the business and the appropriateness to the business strategies.

In the future, the IT professional graduating from good institutes today, will be trusted to make the big IT decisions. Until then IT professionals should work hard to earn that trust.

Re: IT Doesn't Matter by Nicholas.G. Carr

The power and influence of IT has grown considerably, in the last few decades where half of a businesses' budget is spent on it. It can be given too much strategic value in a business though, and given that all competing businesses use IT, it can be easily replicated by a competitor. When a company has a competitive advantage in their IT systems it won't be long before your rivals copy it, diminishing your advantage.

IT is nothing more than a commodity. Making it valuable in the long term is a challenge. Advantages disappear quickly, one minute you are making money from proprietary software that cost a fortune to develop, next minute the technology is available to all for buttons. A business should aware of the pitfalls of over-capitalisation and the temporary nature of IT advantage, and strategies can be made to innovate before the advantage disappears.

With the knowledge that competitive advantage is fleeting, so businesses take heed of the following advice:

• don't waste money trying to get competitive advantage over a rival. You might only have it for a short time 
• wait for technology to get cheaper, this will also  give you time to assess what flaws the product has
• do not look for opportunities, rather optimise what you have and protect from risk

Software and hardware vendors want you to continually upgrade. It is their strategy to squeeze more money out of customers. A manager should not be afeard to resist wasteful upgrades. The top performing companies in the USA were very frugal with their IT spend.