Frank Kenney

Twas about nine days before Xmas

And in my Google browser

I was ordering from eBay

Because I am to busy to go to a real mall (Hey I never said this would rhyme!)

After using PayPal to send money to 5 different sellers in a 24hr chain, the governance mechanisms of PayPal kicked off processes that sent emails to the seller that said…

Ahhh wherever eBay and the PayPal guys learned it they learned well! Looking at my virtually inactive PayPal account that was over foyur years old but seldom used, PayPal’s monitoring systems showed some strange transactions all within the same 24 hour period. I mean could it really be Frank Kenney that bought:

• A new bass guitar,
• Refills for Propellerhead’s Reason,
• A Gwen Stefani L.A.M.B. watch and bracelet,
• A limited addition DVD of Duran Duran’s Rio (Ohhh don’t start! YOU KNOW YOU WANT A COPY),
• And some perfume???

I mean no interactions for the better part of 2 years then a flurry of activity. So here I am getting emails from sellers telling me that they were not going to send my presents out until PayPal said it was ok. All in all the process worked very well. In fact it worked too well.

But I did authorize the purchases and they were paid from my checking accounts. Hmmm so much like air travel and the dreaded “SSSS” (The airlines way of flagging you to the TSA) I was on a list that I didn’t deserve to be on. Worse yet with eight days until Christmas there was a real chance that I would not have the gifts in time. Oh what to do?

Oh, I called the 800 number, authenticated my self and a very nice man, very quickly executed a process that removed me from the bad guys list and sent out emails to the sellers. Problem solved.

Moral of the story? Automated governance processes are way cool! In fact if it wasn’t me buying all that merchandise, then I would be ecstatic that PayPal stopped the entire process and more importantly protected my money. The best policies and processes are those that have very clearly defined exceptions.

I would like to thank all of Gartner’s clients and associates who helped us stay successful and I look forward to another 400K of travel. Seriously, lets do it again.

Oh by the way… Cloud Governance…. Hehehe you know you want to know more… Stay tuned!

-f