IT industry must put needs of customers first
8 October 2003
News
Speaking at Techxny 2003, AMD chief executive officer, Hector Ruiz, challenged the technology industry to take immediate steps to address the growing level of enterprise customer frustration with expensive, proprietary technologies that do not effectively address their business needs.
"Businesses are devoting more and more of their IT budget to integration issues - simply making things work together. That should say to all of us that something is seriously wrong with the current vendor-customer relationship," stated Ruiz. "The IT industry is in the middle of a rather profound sea change. A sea change that should have each and every one of us re-evaluating who we are buying from, who we are partnering with - indeed - who is going to lead us in another round of innovation."
Ruiz said the IT industry can no longer produce new technologies that ignore the current IT landscape and fail to take advantage of the current technologies. He called on the industry to focus on customer needs when developing new technologies that provide graceful transition paths to next-generation performance.
He went on to discuss how disruptive computing costs have had an increasingly negative impact on return-on-investment. He argued that disruption costs, hidden costs that are often unnecessary penalties that come with making a transition from one technology to the next, have become increasingly apparent.
"Disruption itself is not a bad thing, the pace of technology change introduces lots of transitions and, therefore, lots of disruption," said Ruiz. "But, all disruptions carry with them a collection of costs that have rapidly become an important part of the ROI equation. Some of these costs are necessary - some of them are completely unnecessary. It is those unnecessary costs that we consider 'disruption costs' - and should be eliminated."
Ruiz added that 'innovating within standards' brings predictability and consistency back into the pricing structure. Standards lower total cost of ownership by preserving and leveraging installed bases. It also enhances return on investment because standards-based technologies are simpler and faster to install, operate, manage, and train the overall workforce to use.
www.amd.com
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