Offering regional and national programs, CIO (and CSO) events bring together some of the most respected names and thought leaders in information technology and security. Presented by CIOs and other senior level executives, these invitation-only programs offer timely topics and strong networking. Learn More »
June 17, 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM U.S./ET (GMT-4)
Larry Bonfante, CIO of the U.S. Tennis Association, will discuss the skills and approaches that your rising IT leaders must learn to be effective in an executive capacity.
How to Handle Your New CEO: Managing Turnover at the Top
June 18, 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM U.S./Eastern (GMT-4)
Turbulent times have increased turnover at the top. Find out what Council CIOs have done to "break in" new CEOs—build relationships, set expectations, educate on the role of IT.
Mid-Market CIO Panel: Tips and Techniques for Improving Vendor Relationships
July 15, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM U.S./Eastern (GMT-4)
We'll highlight relationship priorities and best practices identified in a Council study, and we'll interact with a CIO panel on the approaches they've used to improve strategic vendor partnerships.
Executive Competencies Assessment Tool
Assess Your Business Leadership Skills with the Council's new benchmarking tool. Rate yourself in change leadership, strategy, customer focus and more.
Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »Apply today for a FREE subscription to CIO Magazine!
November 01, 2005 — CIO —
Wilt Chamberlain, the late, great basketballer, was a voluble, quotable guy. Regrettably, his best remembered boast may well be from his 1991 autobiography, A View from Above, in which he claimed to have bedded more than 20,000 women. But the Stilt’s most piquant quote, the one that struck at the heart of his particular predicament as a man and a performer, was "Nobody roots for Goliath."
During his prime years, Wilt, tall, almost supernaturally strong and agile, dominated the hardcourt to an extent that’s unimaginable today. He once scored 100 points in a game. In the 1961-62 season, he averaged more than 50 points a game.
And people hated him for it.
That, as he knew all too well, is human nature. Tear down the big guy, and maybe you won’t feel so small yourself.
On the technology stage, Microsoft has long played the role of Goliath. And for just as long, people have relished its struggles, its missteps, its embarrassments, ascribing all sorts of nefarious motives to its every move. This is not to say that the Redmond giant hasn’t made mistakes, or even that its motives have been above reproach. But inarguably Microsoft has been a convenient target, a symbol for all the vendors with whom CIOs have struggled, a convenient whipping boy for many of IT’s ills.
This may be changing. In ".Net, Web Services and the End of the Vendor Era" (Page 40), Senior Editor Scott Berinato notes that CIOs who once feared that .Net was part of an evil strategy designed to eternally lock them in to Microsoft products are now applauding it as a nice, robust development framework upon which they can hang their Web services. Far from being a way to lock them in, it turns out that .Net "fosters the technology neutrality they’re learning to expect."
How did this happen? After all, Windows applications never played well with other vendor apps. But as is so often the case in business, the market drove the change. And in this case, CIOs led the market. As H&R Block CIO Marc West says simply, "We’re not going to use anything that’s hard to run in other environments."
So what happens now? From now on, CIOs will have to focus on creating services the business can use, not architectures the business can’t understand. As Berinato writes, "If CIOs don’t provide value, it won’t be the vendors’ fault. It will be theirs."
Because, to paraphrase Dick Nixon, another complex and iconic figure from the ’60s, they won’t have Goliath to kick around anymore.