The proliferation of the Internet, and the dramatic decline in its hype have created yet another problem for the taxonomists and marketers of this world!

The first movers in taking a position to ’segment’ technologies into semi-comprehensive jargon, such as the Gartner Group and IDC, set the stage for IT directors all over the world to start talking the “business IT language” (packaging IT themes into a sense that business people could start to dream about how to focus business around the technology – rather than the other way around!). Suddenly IT was at the centre stage, and any technology newcomer to the game needed to be validated by the guru companies to be qualified to play.

Terms such as e-Marketplaces took the headlines, grabbing mind-share, and cash on its way. Thousands of companies appeared, only to change their appellation to ‘suppliers of technology’ after reality sunk home (I did a survey at the start of this year on e-Marketplaces – within 2 months of completing the interviews with many of the top players over 60% had changed their positioning!).

In reality any realistic tech savvy person knew all along that the segmentation was a little bit too simplistic – giving the impression that IT is easy, and can be packaged into discrete parcels, to be ‘plugged and played’. This does not mean that we now need to relegate IT to the basement. On the contrary, we need more IT savvy people at the director level of companies (still sorely underrepresented today) for there are clear strategic advantages that can be integrated into the fabric of companies in a sustainable manner through understanding how the myriad of solutions possible can be aptly used.

The trend for simplifying IT into user friendly terminology will not go away. The big question that I am leading up to, that I would gladly like your comments on is “What is the next trendy terminology that will be used to promote IT”?

Many thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Sven

Sven,

Could be you will find interesting the article appeared at http://www.forrester.com/ER/Press/Release/0,1769,567,00.html, where the end of the net as we know it is discussed. You have a very nice article appeared a year ago from Deustche Bank talking about the net under a finantial point of view. You will find it at http://www.netmarketmakers.com/documents/DBNewEconomy_report.pdf.

In both articles different approach is used but a goog understanding of what is going on and how will the future probably be.

The underlying message is distribution through the net and process oriented business, all through the use of standarts.

Would like to hear your comments about.

Eduardo