If anyone presumed that the talent of modern government economists would shield us from a recession, last week was a sobering experience. The question now is not whether there’s going to be a recession, but how deep and how long. In the corporate IT world this means that, if it wasn’t already the priority, corporate IT cost cutting is going to dominate IT initiatives.

So the question that naturally follows is: What technologies are going to be in demand in a recession? Here’s the list I’ve been keeping for the rainy days ahead:

• Server Virtualization. This is last year’s story even for those who are behind the curve. Nevertheless the truth is that there’s still more than 80 percent of the server population that hasn’t been virtualized – and while there’s a percentage of that population that are not candidates, at least half of it still is. We can expect virtualization investment to continue to flow. Not only does it save money – it’s green.
• Client Virtualization and/or Remote Computing. It might seem that the natural complement, to client virtualization is server virtualization. It ain’t so, but pushing the desktop into the data center in some way (think Citrix, VMware, PC blades, etc.) will usually cut costs. The problem is that it is more arduous and more disruptive than server virtualization. Nevertheless, for most organizations 60 to 80% of the desktop can be virtualized and it will reduce costs. (I’ve written about this extensively – if you want to know more follow this link.)
• The Office Apps. I think the time has come for the companies to stop paying such an unnecessary premium for office apps. Sorry Microsoft, but it’s just not necessary. If it’s just the apps you want then Open Office has been an acceptable substitute for MS Office for quite a long time. True a number of organizations locked themselves in by making extensive and sophisticated use of VBA (or just of Excel) but most organizations can get away with a swap. And if you’re worried that Microsoft might sue Open Office users (in the way that SCO so unsuccessfully sued Linux users, then you can always buy Star Office from Sun. (Microsoft indemnified Sun against all possible legal action).
• eMail. I was surprised to discover that Google was selling hosted Gmail (without adverts) at a seriously low price. The rough estimate seems to be that an MS Exchange implementation costing about $500,000 will come in at $40,000 with Google. (That’s the magic of hosting – especially if you’re a large company where the email system is actually a server farm). There are still some rough edges to gmail, but the truth is that if you have an email client you hardly know you’ve got Gmail anyway.
  
• SOA. Sorry to bore you with SOA, but the truth is that SOA can be implemented in a manner that emphasizes cost reduction rather than the implementation of a world-changing end-to-end architecture. A nicely sober SOA strategy will help to hold down development costs and generate efficiencies. The key to this is to emphasize reuse.
• Open Source. Lets broach the subject of Open Source in general. Corporate IT Departments stopped being allergic to Open Source a few years ago, when they discovered that they were using much more of it than they ever expected. Now there are opportunities in many places to cut license costs with Open Source products used sensibly. Also a great deal of time can be saved. This is particularly the case on the web where Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress have very impressive capabilities (if you want to build a web site or a blog). Do they really cost nothing? Yes they do. Are they really good? Yes they are.
• SaaS. Software as a Service gets more mature every year. It’s inexpensive to implement and easy to trial. The portfolio of Salesforce.com, the leader in the field, is increasing and it is now surrounded by a partner ecosystem. Other SaaS startup companies, such as LucidEra (for BI), Varonis (for data governance) and Workday (for some ERP functions) seem to be making an impression. The impulse for some companies to stick their toes in the water will be hard to resist.
• SaaFS. Software as a Free Service could be even more compelling than SaaS. Now is definitely the time to examine the feasibility of web “office applications”, either from Google or Zoho. They are not exactly free of course, corporate users are charged a fee, but it’s peppercorn. The apps are increasing in sophistication by the month and for some users they are already “good enough”. Actually there are also advantages to them because the data is held on the server and files are subject to version control
• Cloud Computing. The gradual drift towards cloud computing (or utility computing) will become a stronger drift in recessionary times. You can already get many services “from the cloud” like, for example, EMC’s Mozy or LiveVault for back-up. I have a fairly extensive list of the possibilities here.
• Mashups. The joy of mashups comes from opening up your APIs to a developer community and having them develop complementary capability that enhances your own systems/web sites. The neat thing about mashups is that they don’t cost you anything other than the effort to provide a little support to the developer community and enable them to profit in some way if their mashups get used. It’s a kind of free market in software components which can serve a company well if it knows how to manage it cheaply. (See the examples of Ribbit, Facebook, Google etc. if you need a model).
• Unified Communications. This is also something I’ve written about extensively. It is not unconnected with other technologies here and it will, imho, become part and parcel of client virtualization in time – communications is just another app. Until now, the emphasis has been on communications capability but I think this will change until it’s all about communications efficiency. In the end the PBX and all its capabilities are destined to live in software and run across the network.

In a conversation I had with the esteemed Simon Phipps of Sun Microsystems, he proposed the argument that the software industry is gradually moving from a model where prospects become customers, to the Open Source model where interested parties first become customers and then become fee-paying customers. The problem with the old model is that the software adoption process is expensive both in time and money. You have to pay for the software before discovering whether it’s fit for purpose. The Open Source movement introduced the model where you pay once you become a serious user that needs support. A fair number of software suppliers have now proved that this model works. It’s a model that is likely to become very popular in the coming recession.