The existing relationship between the IT and telecommunications
business is the norm and businesses have to accept it and develop
strategies to deal with it, BT chief executive officer Ben
Verwaayen, told the European Technology Roundtable Exhibition (ETRE
2002) in Seville.
"We need discipline in management, we need good business models and
we need to address the balance sheet," said Tim Donahue, president
and chief executive officer of Nextel Communications. "The new
economy fantasy was just a field of dreams, 'build it and they will
come.' The models just weren't realistic."
Tim Draper, chief executive officer of venture capital firm Draper
Fisher Jurvetson, was upbeat. "We need to get rid of a few myths.
One of those is that this is the worst possible time to be an
entrepreneur. No it's not. Right now, everyone has a lot of time,
if not a lot of money. The talent and the rent are cheap out there
right now. There are wide-open spaces for new technology and little
competition. OK, money is harder to raise and customers are slower
to buy, but the opportunities are there."
In his opening keynote address, Intel chief executive officer Craig
Barrett said he had "never been more optimistic". The computer
industry would start to see improvements by the beginning of next
year, and the telecommunications industry would pick up later that
year. "But the key is that we're moving away from selling the
technology for its own sake, and toward solving the customers'
problems."
And that's the key to where the industry stands now, getting back
to the customer, according to Jocelyne Attal, vice-president of
WebSphere within IBM's Software Group.
"We need to go back to the basics of marketing," she said. "In this
industry, someone has a great idea and they think that marketing
involves some nice charts in a presentation. Marketing is not about
a nice display. Marketing is about the customer's requirements and
finding a mixture of the right technology and the market
needs."
Attal said companies have to stop releasing technology to the
market before the market is ready. "We need to get back to basics,
back to Darwinism - the company with the strongest business, with
the cash, is king. Back to sales people going out there selling,
showing chief executive officers the competitive advantage that
products will bring. We need to get back to reality."
This year's conference had been better than last, "because people
are not nostalgic any more," Attal said. "They've stopped
complaining and accepted that now we just have to go on and do it."