Sad to say, but companies do not hire people because they like a full building and paying money for nothing. Perhaps I should say that companies do not hire people because they like ... anymore. I can remember the empire-building shenanigans that went on in some state-owned assets in the past where your seniority and pay was associated with how many people worked for you. Of course that does not happen anymore..

After a year of promises about growth in the industry and increased IT spend to make the whole sales channel happy, we are about to end a year that has not seen a decline, which is good, but which also has not seen the growth many companies were expecting. Now that the year is almost over, the hype machines are being hauled out of storage and we are told next year will be the 'big one'.

Whether it will remains to be seen. However, what we know is that business does not buy the 'must have the latest and greatest technology if you want to survive' hype anymore. They want stuff that helps them do business.

IBM's Global CEO study of 2004 shows that CEOs' priorities are to grow revenues, be able to recognise and react to changing market conditions as well as focus on attracting and retaining (and re-educating where necessary) the appropriately skilled people. Nothing about buying the latest PC there.

With those goals in mind, technology companies have to reorganise themselves to address those business requirements. Why does a secretary need a faster PC? Will it make her type faster? Will it make her create better presentations for the boss? Will she manage diaries any better? Assuming she is not using a 286, the answer is no.

Our feature in this issue focuses on desktop PCs. Old, unfashionable and rather dreary, they still form the basis for IT work in corporations today. Gartner started the whole cost of ownership saga a few years ago, and we look at how the TCO of PCs has changed given current circumstances. We also look at a couple of ways to control costs as well as a few new PCs on the market.

The PCs businesses will buy in future need more than hardware, they need to include ways and means to ease the administration burdens of managing them - and hence the costs. Management, back up and restore functionality as part of the whole package is not even negotiable anymore - and we need as much of it as possible without intervention.

People have ditched the hype and are planning on keeping their PCs for longer than ever before, making the market tougher than ever. Which brings us back to the beginning, when a CEO spends money, he/she wants a return directly impacting the business. The latest and greatest is nice, but not always necessary. The ability to keep the balance between technology and business is going to be the test of IT vendors' longevity.



Andrew Seldon

Editor