Ok, so this Friday is Halloween, which means putting on costumes and pretending to be something or someone different, scary or nice, what ever you want to be. How ironic, here we are also in the closing days of the U.S. 2008 election season as well as in the middle of the fall 2008 IT conference and show season which also means lots of announcements and new products and promises.
In the case of Halloween, there’s the scary themes including “Zombies” (or here) as well as the fictional or fun theme topics, kind of like with IT, there are the “Zombie” technologies like tape, mainframes, disk drives, Fibre Channel and others data infrastructure items that have been declared dead for sometime, yet, continue to be used and relied upon meaning customers buy them so vendors sell them and make money on them.
The money in some cases is used to buy the costumes (e.g. marketing) to dress up the new and important technologies of which the ones that catch-on, will be the next generation of “Zombies” down the road, with the others simply languishing or ending up in a discarded IT technology cemetery somewhere.
So what do all of these have in common and with IT?
Simple, figuring out what’s real and what’s not, what’s a trick and what’s a treat, not to mention all of the billions of dollars that are being spent on or in support of them all. So for example, a “Zombie” technology may in fact be a treat, while some other technology may be a trick, or, vise versa.
Oh, and don?t forget, we are just around the corner from the fall holiday shopping season, that looking at economic forecasts, should hold great bargains for consumers, IT as well as those who want to get a good deal on next years costumes, not to mention where the next comparison is who’s been naughty and who’s been nice.
Have fun with both old and “Zombie” technologies while being careful with the new and emerging technologies some of which will become the next generation of “Zombies” and enjoy the trick or teat fun of the holiday seasons.
Cheers
gs