CIO of Lockheed Martin, Joe Cleveland was one of the earliest enterprise adopters of the RIM Blackberry. The RIM BlackBerry may be everywhere now, but in June 2001 it was still a novelty. At the time, RIM hadn’t worked out all the security routines necessary for scaling the BlackBerry to an enterprise such as Lockheed Martin, but we’d been looking for a means to help our senior executives utilize technology in a meaningful way. A lot of them were using e-mail successfully, but they had jobs that took them out on the road—with customers, on airplanes—and away from their PCs. Joe Cleveland with a bushel of BlackBerrys. We were torn. My information security team had always tried to make sure that if we handed something to an executive, it would be bulletproof. But back then, the BlackBerry wasn’t, and using it would practically run counter to our security policy. Furthermore, RIM didn’t have a customer support structure sized for our needs; we would have to build one. Finally, the technology’s reviews in the press were mixed. In short, there was a whole lot of cause for concern. RELATED LINKS See more “What It’s Like To…” storiesThe executives were clamoring for them, however, so we went ahead. And it worked. We actually had one say, “This is the best technology that I’ve seen, so I’ll tolerate the problems until you get them solved.” Coming from one of our demanding execs, that was a shocking comment. Do I have one? Yes. My CEO at the time was one of my best troubleshooters. He knew to the minute when service was out and when it resumed.I had to get one in self-defense. —As told to Christopher Lindquist PHOTO OF JOE CLEVELAND BY PRESTON MACK Related content brandpost The steep cost of a poor data management strategy Without a data management strategy, organizations stall digital progress, often putting their business trajectory at risk. Here’s how to move forward. By Jay Limbasiya, Global AI, Analytics, & Data Management Business Development, Unstructured Data Solutions, Dell Technologies Jun 09, 2023 6 mins Data Management feature How Capital One delivers data governance at scale With hundreds of petabytes of data in operation, the bank has adopted a hybrid model and a ‘sloped governance’ framework to ensure its lines of business get the data they need in real-time. By Thor Olavsrud Jun 09, 2023 6 mins Data Governance Data Management feature Assessing the business risk of AI bias The lengths to which AI can be biased are still being understood. The potential damage is, therefore, a big priority as companies increasingly use various AI tools for decision-making. By Karin Lindstrom Jun 09, 2023 4 mins CIO Artificial Intelligence IT Leadership brandpost Rebalancing through Recalibration: CIOs Operationalizing Pandemic-era Innovation By Kamal Nath, CEO, Sify Technologies Jun 08, 2023 6 mins CIO Digital Transformation Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe