Proposed ISP Tax Shows Canadian Content Producers Do Not Understand the Internet

Decades ago in Canada, funds were created to encourage television production of Canadian Content. These programs were funded by the cable companies and regulated by the CRTC. These funds were created to share "Canadian Stories" in a sea of American television content that because of their inherent scale could be produced easier and cheaper.

The CRTC is now entertaining a proposal to create a similar fund through taxation of ISPs (and therefore all Internet subscribers) to fund Canadian television producers so they can continue to produce "Canadian Stories" created by Professional Content Creators. This proposal is supported by industry lobby groups such as ACTRA, Society of Composers, SOCAN, etc.

These folks want to tax every Internet subscriber (e.g. practically everyone in Canada) 3% of revenue (which of course means the price will go up by 3% to compensate) from the ISPs that provide us Internet Access.
This proposal shows a complete misunderstanding of the difference between a regulated, limited, and centralized Television Industrial Complex model and the Internet - a fundamentally distributed, decentralized and long tail model of content distribution.

Here are some fundamental differences that these lobbyists fail to acknowledge in their proposal:

• In the television age, the definition of "Content" was professional created, broadcast content. The assumption in this proposal is that Colin Mochrie, the CBC, and other CanCon stars own the culture and the MILLIONS of content creators on Facebook, YouTube, etc. in Canada are not qualified to tell their own stories.
• In the television age, the definition of "Content" is VIDEO content. On the Internet, there is no limitation and content can be everything from maps, images, videos, flash, applications, etc. Content can also be a mix from a wide variety of sources - how do you regulate content creation when it is mashed up collections from all over the world?
• In the television age, there were major barriers to content creators because of the limited shelf space. Canadians need a way to get on the air simply because they couldn't compete with American content producers. But on the Internet, this model makes no sense because anyone can put up a web site, the costs are cheap and the number of channels are unlimited. What is the barrier to making money on the Internet other that POPULARITY? There is a simple way for Canadians to support their own culture - visit the web site and support it through ad revenue like everyone else does on the Internet.
• In the television age, exporting content to other countries was extremely limited because the distribution channels were controlled by cable channels in the country. The Internet has no such barriers - if Canadians want to share their stories they can gain an audience world wide without any restriction.- In the television age, there is no integration of "Application" and "Content". Monetization of content was through a single model - distribution broadcast supported through advertising. In the Internet, the two are mixed together and there are many monetization models available. The monetization mechanisms are also distributed, e.g. I can be creating "Canadian" content that is monetized through Google AdSense in the United States. The selling, re-packaging and syndication of content through dozens of channels is both an opportunity and a challenge for Canadian content producers to claim for themselves. But the solution isn't to bypass these channels and simply tax the consumer - this is just a return to the simplified television monetization model.
• In the television age, the justification for this fund was that in order to compete with American content producers there needed to be funds to create a level playing field and encourage the telling of "Canadian Stories" because the distribution channel for content was limited both in capacity (number of channels) and revenue potential (only the top 10-20 television shows make the money). However, the Internet market is completely the opposite - the market is a long-tail, unlimited distribution channel and there are lots of examples where relatively small content distributors are making money by targeting micro-niche audiences by keeping their costs relatively low and providing a highly valuable target audience for advertisers or by providing content through subscription that funds the cost.

The CRTC is in the business of regulating traditional centralized content broadcasting and is therefore bought into the fundamental model assumptions of the television age. Canadian Television Producers who are in favour of this model seem to be wanting to keep their existing model and apply it to the Internet, because if they simply wanted to make money from content there are easier more direct Internet models available that do not require a tax on consumers. The Canadian Producers advocating for this proposal and the CRTC if it accepts it simply are trying to implement the old television age model and apply to the new Internet content model so that these folks do not have to migrate to a new way of creating, distributing, monetizing content. In addition, the entire proposal continues to question the fundamental value of funding "Professional Content Producers" as the bastion of Canadian culture when there are potentially millions of Canadians who are creating "Canadian Stories" themselves on a daily basis through blogs, Facebook, etc. Do we really need Gordon Lightfood, Colin Mochrie, the CBC, etc. to have a monopoly on culture creation when anyone in Canada can easily tell their own stories?

Kincardine Cable TV Community Channel

I was up in Kincardine and had a major nostalgia moment. They still had the low resolution cable access announcements feed going - I haven't seen one of these in about 20 years!

I particularly love the last picture - low resolution announcement board has links to web sites in it....

For those who are young enough never to have seen one of these, here are some details:

• The reason for the garish colours is back in the mid 80's, these systems were limited to about 4-16 colours depending on the system used. There are only so many look and feel options when your choice of colours is BRIGHT BLUE, BRIGHT RED, OBNOXIOUS GREEN, BLACK AND WHITE.
• You'll notice that all the letters are capitalized. This was pretty common in early computer systems - the resolution was so low that trying to display lower case letters made them hard to read.
• There was only one choice of font and it was always that big blocky font that you see here.

Maybe we should along with the rural broadband fund establish a government program to upgrade small towns cable access feeds so they can have access to those fancy TV guide scrolling ad versions we have in the big cities?

Using Technology to Avoid Stealing Songs By Mistake

In 1960, The Chiffons published He's So Fine:



In 1970, George Harrison published the song My Sweet Lord:



In 1976, a lawsuit ended with Harrison having to pay over $500K in damages to the original song's publisher for subconsciously plagiarizing (ultimately, Harrison got the last laugh by ultimately buying the publisher).

Just recently, Joe Satriani has taken Coldplay to court for the same infringement for allegedly copying his original song If I could Fly.



So my question is, could there not be a technology solution to this problem? With online radio sites having matching algorithms based on wave analysis, chord progressions, etc. could there not be similar analysis done to create a checksum hash for every published song that if matched against a new song would be deemed too similar?

It would be a lot easier than relying on someone's subconscious, just purely random coincidence or some judge's interpretation of what music is to award royalties.

Or even better yet, we would go back to the days of Mozart, Bach and Vivaldi when musicians copied each other liberally and were able to advance their art without fear of reprisals from copyright lawyers.

Applying the Software Development Life Cycle in a Web 2.0 Context

For the past 20 years or so, the "Software Development Life Cycle" has been the process for defining, designing, constructing, and deploying applications. Various methodologies for building software have evolved over time, e.g. Waterfall methods, spiral method, rational unified process, extreme programming, etc. that prescribe different processes for development of software. However, all of them regardless of methodology have some common basic assumptions that I believe have now changed in a Web 2.0 world. These basic assumptions are as follows:

• Software development involves engineering code artifacts that implement some sort of requirements specification. In waterfall methods, the requirements are defined up front. In more iterative or agile methods the requirements are iterated through cycles. But in all these methodologies, the primary purpose of developing software is custom developing software based on these requirements.
• The "Application" is a deployable, atomic set of artifacts that can be deployed through a series of steps to a particular environment. The "Application" is used by a client that engages with the application. Traditionally, the user of the application does not get to change or redefine the application except through very rigidly defined configuration mechanisms.
• Software development historically has required a large amount of testing in order to ensure that a) there are no bugs in the software and b) the software complies with requirements. Software is tested before it is released to users.
• Software development is done by a team of experts that understand how the software works, how it can be modified and how to manage the overall development cycle. Software developers and end-users of the software do not really collaborate on building the software - end-users consume the software as it is released.

In the media, the old traditional form of Push media is being replaced by user generated content, collaboration, and Pull from users. The distinction between producers and consumers has been blurred so that online news hubs become more like information radiators than centralized distribution points.

Software development, in my opinion, is going through a similar revolution to the mainstream media. It is happening in a slower fashion because the software "industrial complex" is still highly engaged in generating software through the traditional means and because it generally works especially for large enterprise applications. However, in certain spaces and where consumers of software are engaged, the traditional model of a software development team pushing out software that is consumed by a user is starting to break down.

In order to make my point, let me give you a few examples:

• Software applications can be created via "Mash-ups" that allow end-users to combine existing application components into new applications.
• Portal applications such as Microsoft SharePoint are blurring the distinction between application components and user modifiable objects. For example, a Document Library in SharePoint part of an application or is it a user object?
• Cloud based services are now being released and combined in a variety of different methods.
• Clients such as Microsoft Office 2007 are now sophisticated enough to serve as application development platforms in themselves. For example, a traditional "reporting application" can now be built quite easily using Excel 2007 pointing at a data warehouse.

In addition, users expectations have changed dramatically has Web 2.0 has encouraged them to collaborate, blog, share information and build their own customized spaces. When a 12 year old can over night create their own blog, organize a protest online, share pictures, integrate Google Maps, and add dozens of widgets to their personalized home page, the idea of waiting 3 months for the next software "release" by an ivory tower software team quaint at best and non-responsive at worst.

In the corporate world, IT departments are struggling with this challenge in application spaces that encourage collaboration and customization with end-users. Business users do not want to wait 3 months for a static report - they want a drill down BI tool that allows them to build their own "application" (whatever that now means). In the portal world, IT departments are struggling with how much control they provide their end-users to redefine the underlying structure of meta-data, document types, user profiles, etc. In the SharePoint world for example, its difficult to tell where the "application" stops and user generated content begins because the platform is designed to encourage modification and collaboration by office workers.

On the other hand, the risks and challenges that the software development life cycle has helped solve over the past 20 years have not disappeared because we have moved from a code centric, monolithic, and IT controlled software development cycle to a collaborative, distributed and user centric model:

• How are changes "deployed" when an office user can simply make a change in production to a content type, a work flow, a user profile definition?
• How are the impacts of changes "tested"? For example, I can change the layout of my blog, add widgets to it, etc. but can I really test those changes before they become visible to the world (in my blog software, I have the ability to "preview" which is sort of a test but not quite the same as a proper QA environment)?
• How are application componentized when changes are done by potentially hundreds of users working collaboratively? What constitutes a "release"? For example, on Facebook, I create a Facebook Page that has a set of content, some groups, some events, etc. but there is no way to package these changes up into a deployable unit.
• How are changes versioned and backed-up? I have this problem with my blog for example. If I make changes to my blog "application" through changing the layout, modifying the HTML, etc. there is no easy way for me to preserve these changes as a version. I cannot roll-back to a previous version either.

Software development methodologies have good answers to these challenges and over the past 20 years have matured to address these issues through test driven development, source code control, build management, project management, quality assurance, etc.

As an industry, we have a similar challenge to the mainstream media - how do we adapt these worth while processes so that we can continue to deliver high quality software to our customers while adapting to an environment where our users are going to be creating software with us in a highly collaborative manner? How do we recreate the software development life cycle for a Web 2.0 world?

Key IT Challenges for 2009

Here are some of the key IT challenges I see for 2009 based on feedback from our customers, the media, and my own understanding of key technologies coming on the scene. In addition, these challenges reflect the broader economy which is going to go through a global recession in 2009, impacting IT budgets in a number of different ways (see my previous post on this issue).


Challenge #1: Maximizing Existing IT Investments

In the past 2 years, there have been a significant amount of investments made in new technology platforms that were supposed to empower office workers to higher productivity and less dependance on IT. Products like content management systems, portals, data warehouses, analytics, CRM, ERP, etc. all have become increasingly mainstream over the past couple years as the economy boomed and CIOs were looking to make long term investments.

This year, in this time of restraint, I see a key challenge for all IT departments in maximizing existing investments that were made over the past two years. For example, how many companies have invested in SharePoint and are only using it to power their intranet? I have many customers who are looking to see how can they can justify their SharePoint platform investment through more advanced applications. For consultants, this is an opportunity to sell more vertically integrated, business centric solutions and move away from selling the latest technology and this will continue for at least another year.

Challenge #2: The Proliferation of Virtual Machines

The virtual machine as a server platform has really hit the IT mainstream. Virtualization has been around for years but thanks to a very mature platform with VMWare ESX and an upcoming push from Microsoft Hyper-V, the use of virtual machines is expanding rapidly.

Virtual servers have started replacing physical ones, first with non-core systems such as development servers to now in some cases full production environments.

One of the key challenges with Virtualization is that because it becomes so easy to spin up a new server, the number of servers proliferates, leading to VM sprawl. Management of virtual servers doesn't easily map from the physical world especially when doing tasks such as asset management (how do you manage a virtual asset). IT managers will spend a lot of time in 2009 coming to terms with these challenges.

Challenge #3: Web 2.0 Goes Mainstream

As technologies go mainstream, the language, terms and concepts that were reserved for leading edge technologists land in the hands of business managers, stakeholders and consumers. Unfortunately, they get them typically without the deep technical or even conceptual understanding.

This happened a couple years ago with the concept of "Portals". Everyone wanted a portal. Portals went from being these esoteric technologies to jargon words in marketing magazines. The same is happening now with concepts like "Blogs", "Wikis", "Web 2.0", etc.

I'm now receiving RFPs from government agencies with requests to "use Web 2.0 technologies" with no rationale, purpose or objectives. Some manager has now heard of Facebook and so now wants it on their web site. As technology consultants, the challenge will be seperating the myth from the fact, selling the real effort it takes to use these technologies effectively and trying to guide stakeholders to realize relevance from what has now become a Fad.

Challenge #4: Storage

Even a few years ago, it was a big deal to have a Storage Area Network (SAN). SANs were reserved for large organizations with lots of data. With the proliferation of media files, volumes of emails and documents, and no discipline when it comes to archiving in most organizations, managing the ever increasing demand for more storage is becoming a major headache. With hard drives getting increasingly cheaper the perception that storage is nearly free is pervasive (I can go buy a terrabyte backup drive now at BestBuy for about $100). Unfortunately, corporate storage is nowhere near as cheap when the requirement includes high performance, highly redundant and low power consuming. For example, at my last organization we spent almost $50,000 implementing a SAN in order to gain faster I/O access for our core databases. The SAN has 28 drives in it, is highly redundant, etc. but even with its several terrabytes of storage it will fill up rather quickly if not managed well.

Challenge #5: Search and Document Management

I mean search here in the broadest sense - finding stuff. Go try and find a document on your corporate intranet. Try and locate a file on your file server. Try and understand the taxonomy or meta-data structure for your document repository (assuming your organization has even defined one).

Creating documents is now so easy that they have proliferated. In addition, there is typically in most organizations very poor meta-data strategies for indexing data and immature archiving strategies to remove old documents. For example, at my last position we had a file server with about 4 terrabytes of documents. We did a scan of the thousands of documents on that server and found that over 80% had not been touched in the past 2 years. Even if they are not being accessed they act as an information clog when trying to find important documents.

Document management used to require very expensive and proprietary software such as OpenText, Documentum, HummingBird, etc. and was reserved for companies such as law firms who had very regulated and structured document repository. But with lower cost tools such as SharePoint you can quite easily now implement some decent meta-data taxonomies and start to catalogue, version control and archive documents in a methodical way.

The biggest challenge isn't the technology - its getting commitment from the business to organize the thousands of old documents and migrate them into the new structure. This is a massive effort and requires significant involvement from the business. While there are some tools to help with this effort, the clean-up effort of document migration is still a continuing challenge.

Online Trends for 2009

Here are some online trends to look out for in 2009.

Advertising Takes a Beating

With the sluggishness of the US economy, advertising will decline significantly and online advertising in particular will be hit hard. Online advertising will still continue to grow but at a much slower pace.

This slowdown in growth will put pressure on web 2.0 applications with lots of content but lower conversion rates. Applications such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc. will need to focus more heavily on monetizing all those collaboration interactions that millions of people now do for free every day.

There will also be a continued emphasis on Cost Per Action instead of Cost Per Click to link advertised costs to conversion. As the cost of online advertising increases (for example the cost of buying keywords) there will be increased pressure on Google and other advertising platforms to show direct linkage between advertising and conversion to revenue. This is where online advertising as a channel has had an advantage over traditional media channels.

Internet TV is Finally a Reality

The "watch video on your computer" revolution started about 10 years ago, but until this year watching the equivalent of television via the Internet really wasn't possible. Instead, users have sacrificed the video quality that even low definition television provides for increased collaboration, crowd created content, etc. In addition, the selection for mainstream content has been limited online until the last year or so.

In 2009, the compromise on quality and selection will fade away. Video sites such as YouTube, Facebook, etc. are all upgrading their video streaming so that the videos uploaded by users are streamed at much higher resolution. In addition, sites such as Hulu now stream hundreds of mainstream television programs in almost broadcast quality. While not able to yet compete with HDTV, video on the Internet will now be viable as a full-screen, sit in the living room type experience.

Part of the challenge has been the source video - consumer digital cameras tended to be lower resolution video than television. However, the latest digital cameras produce very good video quality including my Panasonic camera that can shoot HD video in wide screen format.

Web 2.0 will Become Mainstream

Don Tapscott's new book on the Net Generation points out that when technology becomes boring and we stop talking about it then the next level of innovation is possible. Web 2.0 will simply become The Internet as usual and we'll stop talking about it as this new found technology revolution (until we think of the next one of course).

Applications like YouTube, Facebook, etc. are now so mainstream that your mother uses them. Applications such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc. have all already demographically shifted to the mainstream from being in the hands of the power users, the young and the affluent.

Mobile Applications Will See Massive Growth

With the launch of the IPhone and its inevitable competitors, the phone now becomes a viable application platform. IPhone is as significant for mobile applications as IPod was for downloadable music.

Another mobile device seeing large sales is the Amazon Kindle. It allows users to purchase books and view them in a mobile device. The idea of e-books has been around for over 10 years but it takes a device like the Kindle with its complete vertical integration to drive the adoption.

Geotagging and Live/Google Earth

As the amount of content increases, one of the simplest ways to filter content is through geography. In addition, with the maturity and increased use of mapping interfaces such as Live Earth, Google Earth, Google Maps, etc. both as destination sites and as mash-ups, geotagging of content, pictures, videos, and people will be a vital way of filtering content in 2009.

One of the simplest examples is the integration of Panaramio with Google Maps. In Google Maps if you look up any address it will show you related photos from Panaramio, all geotagged on upload by location.

Change of Strategy From The RIAA/MPAA

For the past several years, the global culture industry has been taking people to court over copyright infringement. Approximately 30,000 people have been sued in the US for copyright infringement over the past 5 years. The impact on file sharing has been no real impact on file sharing but has made the RIAA one of the most hated organizations worldwide.

It appears that after 5 years of harassment law suits, the RIAA has decided to change its strategy and use a softer approach. In addition, new technology and business partnerships will allow the media conglomerates to start making money off their content no matter who uploads it. For example, Universal now stands to make over $100 million in ad revenue through a deal inked with YouTube that uses search terms to identify user contributed music videos that map to Universal's artists.

Casual Entertainment Over Hard Core Gaming

The success of the Nintendo Wii (sold out again this Christmas!) as well as other casual games such as the Sims and Spore will continue to provide online entertainment for the masses. Collaboration, casual games and customization will continue to push the mainstream entertainment market. Games like RockStar, Wii Fit, etc. will continue to provide mainstream entertainment while leaving more hard core games to cater to the hard core 18-30 male demographic.

See the above note as well on platforms like IPhone and Facebook - these are perfect jumping points for casual gaming as they cater to an audience that might play a game of solitaire but isn't going to be spending hours with Call of Duty.

The casual gaming market is still in massive growth mode and this will continue in 2009.

Difference, Story Telling and Community

This isn't a trend, but it will continue to be true in 2009 as it always has been: story telling, difference and community building continue to drive the content creation process.

The revolutionary part of the Internet is the ease at which these tools can be employed for someone to tell a story, create some innovative content and enable a community. The growth of blogs shows that everyone has something to say and the size of the audience it generates is how well it connects to its community of interest. Determining "success" depends on the objective - it may simply be distributing family pictures or it may be making your opinion heard by millions as Barak Obama did in 2008.

The Key Challenge in 2009: Conversion

I have a friend who is very passionate about informing parents about Toy Recalls. She has an active blog, she uses Twitter and Facebook and she is able to get her message out to several hundred viewers a day. When we discussed her "success criteria", she seemed pleased that she had grown this community from zero but her next question was, "ok so now what?". This is I think the key question for all this collaboration activity going on - how do we convert the energy of all this discussion, file sharing, photo sharing, tagging, blogging, etc. into some sort of concrete action so that its simply not just hanging out (although that is not a bad goal in itself).

It's as if we have got people off the couch and started them talking again. So now the community is sharing, talking, collaborating. So now what happens? How do the tools available provide methods to convert this community to action?

This is the future growth opportunity for application platforms like Facebook and you can see the evolution of these tools going in this direction already - applications like the Causes application for example are a first attempt to translate a community of action into a concrete action (in this case donating money to charity).

Corporate IT Departments Trends for 2009

Corporate IT departments are, at the best of times, the internal consulting organization for their organizations and provide strategic technology services to help propel the overall success of the business. The role and objectives of the corporate IT department will change in 2009 as the economy continues to lag, technologies mature and organizations that saw "Web 2.0" as bleeding edge now start to adopt some of more mainstream applications of online technologies.

Here are some of the key trends I see in 2009 for the corporate IT department. For consultants such as myself, this will have a major influence on how we can continue to provide high value to our internal IT partners by providing services and solutions that contribute to the value proposition for the corporate IT department in 2009.

Corporate IT Departments Will Lag Behind in Upgrades

With budgets tightening, corporate IT departments will take the hit in upgrades for both hardware and software. IT departments will be asked to do more with less and those departments who may have planned on an Office 2007 upgrade, a SharePoint 2003 to 2007 conversion project, a .NET framework 1.1 to 2.0/3.0/3.5 upgrade project, server refreshes, etc. will be asked to defer them to save costs.

Scrutiny on Capital and Cash Flow

Typically, large scale expenditures can be amortized over a 3-5 year period. For example, if a Director IT needs to purchase $500K in new servers, they can typically budget these over a 3-5 year amortization period so they don't get hit with the entire cost in year one. However, from a cash flow perspective, the money still gets spent and in cases where cash is tight (e.g. credit crunches) these types of cash outlays will be dramatically curtailed.

As a result, this will lead to arrangements with providers where costs can be paid on a monthly basis, e.g. leases, software as a service, outsourcing, financing, fee for service, etc. where cash flows out of the organization in a more even way than a large capital expenditure.

Long Term Consulting Under Attack, Short Term Consulting Will Increase

As budgets tighten, the following tends to happen during the budget planning cycle:

1. Full time hires are deferred
2. High cost consultants are targeted
3. Projects have to show very quick ROI

If you are a $200 / hr consultant that has been working on a project for 2 years and the project will continue for another 2 years, then expect that cost to be reviewed and for department managers to try and squeeze out consultants and replace them with cheaper internal resources.

However, because full-time hires become blocked, the only way to get new work done in the short term tends to be through direct consulting costs. In addition, because the business does not have long term visibility they will be hesitant to take on a full-time resource as a long term commitment. If the business stakeholder can justify the ROI in the short term, they will tend to outsource the work simply because the Corporate IT department cannot hire any full time resources to do the work. In addition, outsourcing the work as a fixed cost to a consulting firm is less risk and the cost is directly attached to the cost of the project, making it more tangible for a business stakeholder than a resource hire.

Incremental Optimization

For both revenue and profit, the goal for 2009 will be to optimize as much as possible. For example, technologies such as SEO, analytics, data mining, reporting, CRM (especially for those who already have an existing platform), channel management, marketing optimization, etc. will sell very well to organizations who have over the past 2-3 years have been growing their customer base but now need to focus on retention, optimization of marketing dollars and efficiency. Technologies that can help do this will continue to get the green light as they produce ROI faster than brand new initiatives and they are less risk for a CIO who is under budget pressure.

Layoffs for Many, Indispensable Positions for a Few

In tough times, there are typically layoffs. Depending on the speed of action required, layoffs are many times done without proper planning and project/application coverage (the worst case is where you see companies having to hire back the people they just laid off on contract!). For those who are laid off, it means that they are now looking for a job. But for those who are left standing, they can find themselves now indespensable where there used to be three people who knew how to fix an application and now there is only one. In some cases, the one left is a consultant!

For those who are in this position, it provides leverage to those left behind. If you are the only developer who now has access to source code and can run a build, you were kept because they couldn't afford to dump you. If you can stretch to grab the work that was being done by other developers and demonstrate the flexibility and tenacity to help clean up the mess inevitably left behind by these changes then this will be looked at favourably by the company.

For consultants, there are opportunities to fill the gaps left behind in the rush to lay off staff through short term and long term consulting arrangements, especially if the consultant has had previous experience with the applications in the organization. There are also opportunities to pitch alternatives to lay-offs without adequate transition through outsourcing arrangements. A service company can provide flexibility in resource ramp-up or ramp down that is difficult for an internal department to manage especially in a time of crisis. In addition, a consulting company has the advantage of being able to work in stealth, allowing for a Corporate IT Director for example to quietly outsource key functions to an outsource provider while planning a lay off so as to avoid disruption and continue service levels.

Opportunity for Entrepreneurialism

There is an opportunity for IT departments to re-invigorate through a focus on entrepreneurialism. For those IT leaders who can show the business a clear plan to short term revenue, increased profit, etc. this will tend to get more attention than more themes such as scalability, efficiency, etc. Entrepreneurs focus on delivering high value services on a shoe-string budget - this is what is required in an economic down turn.

Business stakeholders will also be more apt to listen when they are also hungrier for more revenue. For example, many sales businesses will find their traditional sources of revenue tapped out and will be looking around for new revenue sources. If the Corporate IT Department has some creativity and can partner effectively, they can help provide some great new ideas for using Web 2.0 technologies, creating online campaigns, optimizing CRM data, using data mining techniques, etc. to squeeze more revenue out of existing channels or to open up new ones.

For consultants, this is the ONLY way to sell business in 2009 - either demonstrate how to squeeze more revenue/profit out of existing channels or show how a very small investment in a new channel can lead to large growth potential. Be prepared to take risks and be entrepreneurial with your customers in how they pay for your services, how much risk you take on, etc. and this will also be attractive to customers who are hesitant to spend money.

Focus on Business Solutions that Make Revenue or Profit, Not Technology

This is always the case with business stakeholders, but in times of restraint this will be even more pronounced: Corporate IT Departments who are focused on generating concrete business centric solutions that create revenue or profit opportunities will be prioritized.

If you are a Corporate IT Department or one of its service providers and your focus is heavy technology buzzword projects like: SOA, Cloud Computing, Web 2.0, Architecture, Software Development Life Cycle, Enterprise Data Warehouse, ERP, etc. then you will be in trouble in 2009. For example, at one of the banks here in Canada for example, I know that their list of thirty major IT has been cut to less than ten for 2009.

Projects where existing horizontal technologies in place are now leveraged to create additional value will have significantly more priority. For example, we have many customers who have previously bought Microsoft SharePoint 2007 but aren't leveraging it effectively or maximizing its use. Incremental investments in adding verticalized and targeted applications on top of this already existing investment will show quicker pay off than investments in additional infrastructure technologies.