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 »

CIO Executive Council

A Peer-Advisory Service and Professional Association for CIOs

Turn Geeks into Leaders

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.

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Feature

What It's Like To...Take Your Application Source Code Out of Escrow

As a leading entertainment retailer with more than 800 stores, we're always looking for a competitive edge. And in the fall of 2000, we found one...

By Roy Simmons

December 15, 2004 — CIO —

As a leading entertainment retailer with more than 800 stores, we're always looking for a competitive edge. And in the fall of 2000, we found one. Working with an outside software developer, we created our own "Listening-Viewing" system that lets customers see and hear clips from products in our stores just by scanning their bar codes.

Like many companies, we arranged to have the source code from the project put in escrow (in this case, with Iron Mountain) as a hedge against our vendor going out of business or failing to support a product we relied on. But our reason for pulling the code out of escrow was rather unique: We removed it not because we needed it, but because we acquired it; once you own the code, you don't need escrow anymore.

What happened was that our vendor was trying to market the system to our competitors. After the ensuing lawsuit (in which TWE prevailed), we took over the software company and the source code.

If you look at our investment in the system, the cost of putting the code in escrow was insignificant. I would definitely do it again.

—As told to Christopher Lindquist