Strassmann said that "unless the authors disclose the origins of the critical IT numbers, the entire paper must be considered speculation and not verifiable analytic proof."

Mithas said the paper went through "a blind peer-review process by top academic scholars familiar with this domain of enquiry and such relevant data related details were shared with them."

The reviewers "appeared satisfied with the data quality and procedures we used for analyses."

Mithas said the findings are strong and said a characterization of the study's findings as speculation "is a little extreme."

Patrick Thibodeau covers SaaS and enterprise applications, outsourcing, government IT policies, data centers and IT workforce issues for Computerworld. Follow Patrick on Twitter at , or subscribe to . His e-mail address is .