Information Technology in Italy: Don’t Fight a Losing Battle

One of our best journalists (Indro Montanelli) wrote some years ago “Italians (are) capable of building a battle tank starting from boxes of sardines. However, they will be crushed by true tanks, when other nations start to produce them”. The aphorism applies also to the way we managed our Information Technology (IT) in the past.

Small Companies, Insignificant IT

More than 90% of our companies has less than 10 employee. This means that many companies have no IT staff at all or that they have few people with horizontal expertise.

Usually the aforementioned person wears (too) many “hats”, jumping from first level help-desk to network routing, from e-mail management to database administration and so on. The company pays no training so their knowledge comes mainly from self-study. Some of them use their free time to study and to keep their skills up-to-date. It is all about self-motivation, companies give no enticement to encourage their employees. A person with a marketable skill has an higher probability to change company or may ask for more money, so probably investing in training seems also like a bad idea to this kind of business. This kind of businesses has no budget for IT, so they always want to get blood out of a stone. If they buy an hardware or a software, it will be used as long as possible, also when it is so obsolete that it makes no sense to stay with the existing solution (do you remember the “boxes of sardines” we started from?).

To summarize: many small companies with small, obsolete IT and demotivated staff.

What about the Remaining Companies?

We are talking about something like 3,000 companies that have a workforce over 250. Some

of them had a “state-of-the-art” IT, many had “tools and talents” to do a great work. Anyway, we are talking about the past. Big, international groups have acquired a large number of the aforementioned companies. The local IT staff is no longer important, budget decisions are taken abroad and IT services are granted from datacenters that are not in Italy. The remaining companies struggle with economic problems and low budgets. The aforementioned problems plague also telecom providers, which have no money to invest in a better infrastructure. Medium / large business have the better IT staff and organization, but they were few in the past and they are going to decrease in a short time. There are some happy island with a very interesting IT infrastructure and with funds allocated to innovation but, as I said, they are few exceptions.

To summarize: few medium/big companies and only a small part of them is able to invest in IT.

What about IT in the Government?

Italy has a big, elephantine bureaucracy. For too many years, government was a way to create work places and (as you can easily imagine) IT and automation would have a negative impact on the number of employees required. There is a lot of “passive” resistance to any innovation in the public administration. There is no meritocracy, so the people involved in IT keep their skills aligned with the real world only on a voluntary base, with few or no money invested in training and incentives. Corruption and nepotism have an heavy impact on this kind of IT, so many good ideas that could grant a better service to citizens and that receive funds, often are never realized or are realized so full of flaws to be useless.

To summarize: demotivated IT staff and no investment from government for efficient IT solutions.

What about IT Focused Companies?

We have two kind of IT companies. The first kind is a local (and often insignificant) branch of international giants. No important decision is taken in Italy, it is just an outpost to stay in touch with a not-so-important market. The second category is made up from small companies that fight with many problems, including the fact that payments in Italy are always not guaranteed. Customers pay works and materials after many months (and this is the better scenario). When the payment is not made at all, sue a customer requires years and a large amount of money for lawyers, with uncertain results. Government is one of the worst customers you could have, with payments that could require years. Taxes, on the other side, are high and applied with a precision that you would expect in Switzerland. This type of IT company tries to get ANY work available, and you will see the same person covering a ridiculous high number of topics. Some of them are great at their work, but you will find easily a lot of mediocre "jack of all trades".

To summarize: few players and a lot of them delivering low or no quality at all.

But there are good IT experts in Italy…

Yes, there are. Some of them come from the few “happy islands” I described a few lines ago, and some of them, simply, live in Italy but do a lot of their business abroad. Some of them do works and create contents in Italian, but it is always something that comes paired with a lot of books and contents in English.

What will happen?

In the next years, the scenario will be grim and grimmer. The Italian way to do IT makes no sense in an increasingly global market and the policies that keep flowing from our government are of no help. People in IT that could help in a change are demotivated and frustrated by the scenario and I am willing to bet that many of them will relocate in the future. A motivation to move away from Italy comes also from their families. With an unemployment level like 50% for young people, if you have a son or a daughter, you know that there is no future for them in Italy. Maybe that after another decade or two of crisis we will recover our will to innovate, but it will be a work for our children or nephews (probably, many of them will come back from other nations). As I said, hoping to create a better IT market and infrastructure in Italy is a losing battle.

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are my own and do not reflect those of my employer or its clients.

Alessio Giombini

Senior Architect, EMEA CSAE Team (Central Solutioning & Estimation), WW Delivery Excellence | Mentor | BeConnected Community Leader & Speaker

9y

You're not wrong, your description neatly matched me until I worked in Italy and I get grimy feedback from ex-workmates. Flexibility is the key. I am (too ambitiously?) trying to build wings for my kids so they're able to fly away if they want to.

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Fabrizio Volpe

Senior Solutions Consultant M365 - Exponential-e - Author, Speaker, Blogger

9y

Mauro Rita , situation is not good in many other countries but the lack of hope in our nations worries me very much. I keep seeing old solutions applied by old people to new problems. There is no way this kind of mindset can be a winning one.

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Fabrizio Volpe

Senior Solutions Consultant M365 - Exponential-e - Author, Speaker, Blogger

9y

Alessio Giombini , l hope someone will answer, showing data that say that I am totally wrong ;-)

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One could easily replace Italy with Portugal and the conclusion would be the same. I still hope for a better future for my children but it is getting harder every day that passes.

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Alessio Giombini

Senior Architect, EMEA CSAE Team (Central Solutioning & Estimation), WW Delivery Excellence | Mentor | BeConnected Community Leader & Speaker

9y

Sadly true

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