Frank Hayes

If you've been trying to figure out what this new Data Center Markup Language is all about, you're not alone. And there's a lot to figure out, if DCML's backers at EDS, Opsware, Computer Associates and BEA are to be believed.

Can you compete against outsourcing? Sure you can. Are you competing against outsourcing? Probably not. Why not? Probably because you think the decision to outsource or not to outsource is one that's outside your control. You figure no one will ask you whether your IT shop's work should be shipped to India or Canada or Ireland or China or even just to some army of cube slaves on the other side of town.

Say you're an IT manager with a project that's doomed. You know it's doomed. Everyone on the project team knows it's doomed. Maybe it's underfunded, or the technology turned out to be half-baked, or it's beyond the skills of your team, or it's just hopelessly off the tracks. Maybe you argued against it, but it has powerful sponsorship and there's no way you can talk the powers that be into shutting it down.

At a breakfast meeting at last week's Cutter Consortium Summit 2003 conference, one deep thinker pointed to FedEx's Fred Smith as a CEO who really understands the value of IT.

How bad is the IT burnout problem? Pretty bad, it seems.

How bad is the IT burnout problem? Pretty bad. Next week, Meta Group Inc. will issue a report that says 71 percent of IT managers surveyed believe employee burnout is a serious issue in their organizations. Burnout means reduced productivity, higher turnover and generally lousy performance -- which is exactly what corporate IT shops can't afford as budgets keep getting tighter and demands from the business side keep getting louder.

Vivek Paul is worried, and he has reason to be. He figures the clock is ticking on the software engineers who work for him today. Paul told a reporter last week that in as little as two years, it may be possible for much of that programming to be done in another country for a lot less money. In other words, Paul is facing the same offshore outsourcing threat as many U.S. programmers.

Dave Stutz likes Microsoft Corp. Windows - he thinks it "makes a hell of a ngood client." But Stutz also believes that if Windows, Office and other nMicrosoft products remain PC-centric, they're in trouble.