Customer-Driven IT: How Users Are Shaping Technology Industry Growth (Hardcover)

~ David Moschella (Author) "SINCE THIS IS a book about customers and computing, I thought I would start off with perspective on how customers have historically viewed the idea..." (more)
Key Phrases: vertically integrated model, customer leadership, industry value chain, Web Services, United States, Semantic Applications (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Predicting the future of information technology isn't easy-even the mighty Bill Gates long underestimated the influence of the Web-but Moschella is confident enough to do some prognosticating in this innovative book. The Computerworld columnist suggests a major power shift is underway, away from suppliers and toward customers. Through a kind of democratization of IT uses-for popular sites like Amazon.com, eBay and E*TRADE, among others-what customers need and demand will be what drives the future of the industry. Moschella runs readers through a history of the field and looks particularly at past introductions of technologies like radio and TV to see what lessons readers can learn about how the Web is being accepted economy-wide. This is more a book for hardcore industry wonks than it is for average lay readers, but it neatly distills the major technological advances of this century and peers into the future, to tell readers what other changes are in store for the world of IT.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description

Will e-commerce ever really take off? What will it take to make online advertising work? Will we ever be able to vote online? Questions about the Internet's true potential have been echoing across the IT landscape since the dot-com bubble burst. Will the Internet's full promise ever be realized?

Noted industry forecaster David Moschella says it will- because the main source of IT innovation and progress has fundamentally changed. In this visionary book, Moschella predicts that it will be the effectiveness of IT customer leadership that will determine the future prospects for the information technology industry.

Customer-Driven IT describes the shift from a supplier- to a customer-led IT industry. It explains why even the most powerful IT vendors simply can't address most of the key opportunities and challenges the industry now faces-but how IT customers and their industries increasingly can.

Moschella explores the concept of a customer-driven IT industry value chain, in which the value that IT customers create for each other is the most important source of IT market demand. By applying this model to a wide range of business, educational, government, and consumer IT applications, Moschella shows why IT customers must take the lead in developing many of the new systems, platforms, and standards the IT industry needs to move ahead.

This change in industry leadership has many implications for customers and suppliers alike. The book describes the adjustments each group will have to make in terms of its strategies, tactics, and mind-sets in order to leverage new opportunities and realize future profits, particularly in emerging areas such as Web Services and Semantic Applications.

The fate of the IT industry now rests much more with those who use technology than with those who sell it. If customers successfully embrace this important new role, the growth of the Internet might ultimately surprise us all.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Business Press (February 18, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1578518652
• ISBN-13: 978-1578518654
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,208,867 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended, May 25, 2003

By	"matti_m" (Espoo, Finland) - See all my reviews

This is an excellent book on the near term future of IT. It says that the next IT growth is based on customer innovation. No incremental improvements to existing or leadership in emerging markets are is likely to be sufficient to drive a major industry expansion (page xiv). The shift from supplier to customer dominated industry represents a huge cultural and business change and challenge.

The emerging customer-centric era requires customer leadership, including vision, motivation, skills, and decision making capabilities. Customers must show the same level of faith and commitment than IT suppliers have provided in the past. The customer motivation is the single most important risk of the future success of IT (page 230). This is closely tied to executive attitudes towards technology (234).

This also means that traditional venture capital backed start-ups will play a diminishing role in the industry.
The responsibility is on the leadership of existing industries, with a relative absence of start-ups and therefore a relatively reduced role of entrepreneurs (143).

"The sad thing is that so much of (this) energy flowed into a flawed industry vision ...unless the IT industry embraces some sort of shared long-term vision and direction, the use of technology could either drift aimlessly or continue to squeeze diminishing returns out of proven areas of investments" (40).

Many of the key customer-centric applications have already been identified. These include music, advertisement, payments, health care, e-learning, government services, and community interaction (26).

Web Services and Semantic Applications are marketed as the next big thing concepts. Web Services implement process nets with modular components. Many viable Web Services already exist, such as e-mail, credit card processing, and news feed. Web Services may lead to the emergence of new kind and more specialized service companies that provide better economies scale, or skills, or more flexibility, and may create shareholder value. This dis-integration differs from the dot-com vision - processes instead of businesses are horizontalized. On the other hand, the dot-com collapse has shown the risks of outsourcing.

Semantic Applications are capable of understanding other applications. They require industry standardization, which is seen everywhere; in the joint initiatives in electronics, automotive, manufacturing, medical, chemical, and travel industries (115).

The book considers e-learning as a major opportunity, and LMS (Learning Management Systems) as the last great enterprise horizontal software market, in the lucrative tradition of ERP, CRM and so on (156).

Communities are still at the heart of the Internet activities. They rival and exceed those of e-business and e-learning realms (166-167).

Government's role in information society is thoroughly described and evaluated (185-206). Public policy is increasingly important IT industry factor (43). Example are e-learning, online gaming, voting, identification, security, spectrum allocation, public information services, integrated government databases, antirust, regulation and tax policies, copyright and patent law (42).

The best part of the book is a critical approach to the so-called horizontal business model. On a company level this model is associated with a highly focused business strategy. The belief was that there will be dominant market leaders, "gorillas", and that these leaders are start-ups that are able to replace much of the established economic order (34). The belief on this mental model and the overreliance on the PC industry mind-set was one of the main causes of the Internet bubble (28-29). History does not repeat itself. Many Internet-related businesses have no clear market leaders and have remained very competitive.

A major weakness of the book is that it leaves C out of IT. It fails to recognize the importance of telecommunications or mobile industry and the convergence as the basis for the next technology-based ICT growth. On page 56, the book says "mobile systems are not going to be the dominant computing platform any time soon, and they are unlikely to fundamentally later the way businesses and other organizations are run". This becomes again evident on page 169 where the writer hints that the high international usage of mobile phones is due to the lack of voice mail or bad service and high prices by foreign telecom monopolies. This blind spot also means the lack of global perspective, because in large parts of Asia and Europe the integrated multi-media consumer electronics offerings (instead of "computers" and "software" still sold by the IT industry) of the mobile industry have already dwarfed "old" IT as the consumer supplier.

I still give this book five stars. Highly recommended, but read with caution.

4.0 out of 5 stars Worthy to read..., March 11, 2003

By	K. Wu - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book does a good job to summarize the past and current IT industry trends. The author high-level summarizes what he saw in the past and what he forsees in the future. This is a book for you to read and then think about what it means to your business.

However, there are some chapters not easy for everyone to read. Recommend to read ch1 and ch2 - if you are interested in the past IT trend; ch3 - the main concept of the book and the last chapter - conclusion. If you don't understand web services, then you can read other chapters.

5.0 out of 5 stars Shaking off paralysis, January 22, 2003

By	John A. Dix "[e-mail]" (Newton, MA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As a 22 year IT veteran, I've never before seen anything like the paralysis that now grips the industry. Buyers are awash in technology and afraid to take another step forward for fear that it will simply add to their problems instead of help solve them. Suppliers are out of sorts because the old spaghetti rules don't work any more ... throw a bunch of tech at the wall and see what, if anything, sticks. And everyone is spinning around in circles looking for the answer.

The author might not have all of the answers, but he points the industry in a direction that it needs to go, which is a dang good starting point. His answer: recognize that customers are now an integral part of the IT value chain. His words: "... with the arrival of the Internet, for the first time in this business's history, IT customers were intentionally and systematically creating value for other IT customers."

[Amazon.com] and others, he argues, were driving other organizations to reach for new technology goals. The customer was driving the industry, not the suppliers, as has been the case traditionally. Interesting insight. And the author goes on to say what this means to the long term growth and viability of the industry.

A good read, particularly as we as an industry try to sort out the lessons of the recent past and plan where we go from here.