This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz
by James Robertson.
Original Post: So dumb they must be popular
Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants
Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml
Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general.
Does Gartner do anything valuable? I suppose there's the chuckle we get from reading their "analysis" - on the other hand, corporate management listens to them (which raises interesting questions all by itself, but never mind...). So what set me off this morning? Have a look at their latest predictions in ComputerWorld:
LAS VEGAS -- In an eyebrow-raising forecast, Gartner Inc. researchers said they believe that as many as 50% of the IT operational jobs in the U.S. could disappear over the next two decades because of improvements in data center technologies.
Donna Scott, a Gartner analyst, said IT workers face a situation similar to that in the manufacturing field, which has lost jobs over the past several decades as automation has improved. Similarly, standardization of IT infrastructure, applications and processes will lead to productivity improvements and a major shift in skill needs, she said.
"There will be more room to automate, and that means there will be reduced labor cost," said Scott. "This is a long-term change."
Hey Donna - care to pull up some analyst predictions from 1984 and see how prescient they really were? Do you realize that you're trying to make predictions about 2024 here? I have another question as well - Who the heck cares? Are there really any corporate IT managers who are planning 20 years out? Heck, take a look at Frank Hayes dissecting this
According to analyst Donna Scott, speaking at Gartner's annual data center conference in Las Vegas, up to half of all IT operational jobs could disappear over the next 20 years because of improved data center automation.
Got that? Gartner's telling us what we can expect for data center staffing circa 2024. That'll come in very handy for the next quarterly IT budget adjustment, won't it?
It's easy to make fun of a prediction like this. We know the numbers aren't meaningful, because no one can gin up useful numbers two decades in advance. Just looking a few years out, predictions get shaky.
For example, only three years ago, Gartner Chairman Michael Fleisher predicted that half of the household-name IT vendors wouldn't exist in three years. That pronouncement made for some big headlines in 2001, just as Hewlett-Packard was swallowing Compaq. But it's not a prediction you'll see Gartner bragging about these days.
You want more money for critical projects? Take whatever you pay Gartner, and apply it to something useful. Heck, just take those bills out to the parking lot and burn them. You'll still lose the money, but at least you won't be making stupid decisions based on the loss...
Previous Topic
