There's probably a grain of truth to the article.

Primarily because I think we're close to a "technology plateau" in this country. Without changes in business models, most technology is wasted. There is a lot of good technology out there.

For example, our company spent millions a few years back to acquire/create Web technology for our ordering systems. The sales pitch was that the new technology would save us lots of money. The results?

1. Our Web Ordering system crashes twice a week, in primetime. New customers have been halted due to capacity concerns. After 5 years, it still does less that 10% of the company's revenues (and the client/server/handheld/modem tech still does the bulk).

2. Our hot technology to process EDI orders over the Internet has less than 100 participating customers, 30 of which use the technology to the fullest extent possible (the others are in a "minimum" configuration). It was installed in 2000/2001. The only benefit to this tech has been that the private line/VAN vendors dropped their price after the "threat" of us starting to use it.

The reason these technologies haven't worked isn't because the technology wasn't good. We bought the absolute best of breed in the arena. It's that we're using exactly the same business processes in a "distributed processing" model, when we're attempting to collapse it into a "centralized model". The new technology doesn't provide the same value in the customer's mind as the "older technology", and the application instability further drives the nails in.

Ben Tilly's article below describes a lot of what we saw.

Our management wanted the "best new technology", but our customers wanted us to "keep doing what you're doing", but at a lower cost.

We're a sustaining company, not a disruptive one. And it's hard to find new customers in our market. But, only a few of our customers gave a rip about the latest technology. What they had worked fine.

Glen Austin