No, because these things are not "solutions." They are technologies. You apply the right technology to the right situation. It is true that there are technology

No, because these things are not "solutions." They are technologies. You apply the right technology to the right situation. It is true that there are technology fads, but the fad technologies are often linked to growing awareness within the industry about the concepts they employ. For example: C++ -> Class-based object orientation Java -> Virtual machines Rails -> Web frameworks NoSQL -> Scalability strategies Erlang, Haskell -> Concurrency strategies So really, the appropriate way to ask this question is, "are these concepts enough to solve 80% of IT problems?" Once the concepts are available to the mainstream, switching the specific technology is not a huge problem. It's true that in the process of taking on fads, people tend to lose their way and become zealots, getting stuck on one concept as the end-all be-all, but that's true of most human topics. I would venture to guess that at this point in time we're actually seeing a whole explosion of concepts thrust into the mainstream from many directions - some aged and well-known to academia, and others the result of front-line efforts.