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 »
Public Council Teleconference: Application Rationalization — Hidden Costs and Smart Decisions
November 17 at 11:00 am US/Eastern (GMT-5)
Join Honorio Padrón, of The Hackett Group, who will share the drivers for companies to tackle application rationalization and the results of research that define the hidden cost of complexity. Additionally, we will discuss key decision milestones—to start or not, holding the course steady and fulfilling expectations.
Virtual Desktop Cost-Benefit Analysis — Michael Jacobs, Catlin Group
The analysis contained in this presentation measures the cost of everything from the machines and licenses to the infrastructure for virtual vs. traditional desktop environments.
Honor your best senior team members - Apply for the CIO Ones to Watch Award
Get well-earned public recognition for your top up-and-coming team members, your IT organization and your enterprise. Award winners will be announced, publicized and feted in May 2010, great timing to help attract new IT recruits to your company.
Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »November 15, 2001 — CIO —
Gartner, one of the world’s most influential information technology research and consulting companies, makes its living dispensing advice on technology, strategy and business-IT alignment. So it is profoundly ironic that the company recently faced its own misalignment woes. During the late 1990s, the Stamford, Conn.-based consultancy suffered from a chronic lack of communication between its IT department and its far-flung business units. That disconnect cost the company millions of dollars every year, in the estimation of its own CIO and other observers.
These troubles were exacerbated by a no-holds-barred acquisition strategy that went awry in the dust of the dotcom bust last spring. Like some of its clients, Gartner saw its market valuation and share price drop, and it had to sell off and take a loss on some of what it swallowed during the boom-time feeding frenzy. The company is now applying its own advice internally and using the lessons it learned in restoring alignment between its own IT department and its business side to meet the recession-time challenges of restoring investor confidence and bolstering its bread-andbutter research revenue.
Here is the story of how Gartner dug itself into a hole and how it is digging out.
Gartner CIO Bart Stanco took the job in the spring of 1999 at the height of the dotcom boom. At that point, the IT department had no system to determine which projects would best support the company’s strategy. "There were multiple projects for the same function, projects at cross-purposes," Stanco says. "We found that we were working on too many of the wrong things."
For example, when Stanco took the reins, Gartner had two teams working on two projects, both intended to support pricing structures for research services. One group was developing a software tool to customize research and prices for individual clients’ needs. The other group was working on systems to streamline pricing by offering the entire array of research on a per-user basis.
Stanco worked with Gartner executives to pull the plug on the project to tailor individual offerings and adopt a new community-based pricing scheme. This method took the latter approach?providing a client with the complete menu of Gartner research services. However, those changes were made only after Gartner had wasted months working on both projects with approximately 50 staff members and consultants, Stanco says. With costs of around $1,500 per day for each outside IT consultant, that kind of effort easily added up to $1 million a month.