by Jack Santos | September 30, 2010 | Comments Off
At Gartner we take confidentiality and independence EXTREMELY seriously. Playground taunts from competitors and vendors notwithstanding, now that I am on the inside I see how serious it is. But that doesn’t avoid some pretty heady internal discussions on what to say and when. Like for instance, take this <hypothetical> scenario: A vendor briefs us [...]
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by Jack Santos | September 24, 2010 | Comments Off
“He who controls vocabulary controls thought.” Ludwig Wittgenstein As a CIO, often times a final decision for a product or service gets framed in these terms: “What value are we getting?”; or “Is it worth the value?”. Vendors will often flip this around and base their sell on their “value” , as in “we give [...]
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Category: CIO issues Cloud Tags: CIO, Cloud, management, Strategy, vendor, words
by Jack Santos | September 21, 2010 | Comments Off
A long time ago when I was a programmer trainee, my friend Ken <last name to remain anonymous> and I were in a company meeting. We sat together listening to a diatribe of “here’s what’s happening” from company management, which ended with “that’s how we see it”. Ken got up in from the crowd and [...]
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Category: career CIO issues Strategic Planning Uncategorized Tags: career, CIO, culture, gearheads, IT relevance, management, Strategy
by Jack Santos | September 21, 2010 | Comments Off
Urban legend has it that for a period of transition, the first automobiles came equipped with buggy whips. Not only did this provide some sort of psychological support during a period of technological change, but it sometimes proved useful for the times a horse had to bail you out when a motor failed. I [...]
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Category: Future Predictions Strategic Planning Tags: Predictions, Strategy
by Jack Santos | September 17, 2010 | 1 Comment
Panglossian “marked by the view that all is for the best in this best of possible worlds : excessively optimistic” (Merriam Webster) or, according to Etymology Online: “optimistic” (usually ironic or disparaging), 1831, from Fr. Panglosse, name of the philosopher and tutor in Voltaire’s “Candide” (1758), from pan- + Gk. glossa, lit. “tongue” so it’s [...]
by Jack Santos | September 16, 2010 | Comments Off
A friend of a friend of a friend passed along a 500 Mb thumb drive the other day. It came through a series of hands (starting with a cleaning lady), and was looking for someone that might understand the implications of this find. As it turns out, it’s a data breach. Or what we in [...]
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Category: Information Management security Tags: data management, privacy, security
by Jack Santos | September 15, 2010 | Comments Off
Even though I am an American of Portuguese descent, this week’s Economist cover was jarring. In one simple graphic, they captured what is happening in our world, or at least in this hemisphere. I have relatives in Brazil, and my heritage passed through there on the way to the USA over a hundred years ago. [...]
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by Jack Santos | September 14, 2010 | 2 Comments
Like many of my Gartner colleagues, I get inundated daily with requests from publicists. They want to get on my radar, help me see the “Next Big Thing” before anyone else, get me introduced to the “In Crowd”. I used to feel guilty about not replying to publicists, or public relation folks, or analyst relations [...]
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by Jack Santos | September 10, 2010 | Comments Off
From a recent BBC article on Apple, and a quote: Jamie Lemon, a developer for Precedent, said that Apple may have relaxed the rules because of increased competition in the Smartphone market. “Apple has realised it is in competition with [Google's] Android,” he told BBC News. He said it would now be easier to develop [...]
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by Jack Santos | September 9, 2010 | Comments Off
I try to keep my blog posts topical (technology and management implications) and by choice rarely go into the realms of politics, religion, or other intensely controversial areas. Mark Hurd’s recent trials and tribulations, though, warrant a few comments… HP has sued Mr. Hurd, and is trying to block his move to Oracle. I can’t [...]
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Category: career CIO issues Tags: career, management
