IT Passion = IT Power

Computerworld - Passion can produce amazing results." That's Shelley McIntyre of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America speaking last week at Computerworld's Premier 100 IT Leaders Conference in Palm Desert, Calif. She was one of more than 700 IT and business executives attending the event. (See QuickLink a4100 for the full conference coverage.)
Although McIntyre, a VP of business technology services at the New York-based insurer, was referring specifically to Guardian's award-winning project involving an online annuity system, her comment could just as easily sum up the impact of two powerful days of peer connection and conversation.
I don't use the word powerful lightly here. The collective will of IT leaders can -- and should -- directly influence technology products and the vendors that sell them.
The most striking endorsement of that idea came in a talk by Alan Paller, executive director of research at the SANS Institute [Quick Link 45335]. After demonstrating how easily hackers can break into ostensibly secure corporate networks, Paller urged IT leaders to use their collective power to force vendors to deliver safer software by requiring certain security settings. He noted how Oracle has already complied with such a demand by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Will Paller's call to action have a result? It certainly should. At least 75% of the audience members -- surveyed after his talk -- declared their intent to start requiring minimum security settings in all future systems purchases, as well as in the external systems connecting to their networks.
In other audience survey questions at the conference [available in a registered part of our Web site at QuickLink 45115], we asked the assembled executives to identify their most pressing IT leadership issues and most critical projects. Topping the leadership issue list were implementing business process re-engineering, streamlining operations and planning the future of the IT infrastructure. Singled out as the most important IT projects were those involving business intelligence/data management, enterprise integration and Web services.
Collecting useful, actionable ideas about all of those topics and having the time to talk them over with peers are the greatest benefits of a conference like the Premier 100. We also staged the first-ever debate between Nicholas Carr, author of the infamous Harvard Business Review article "IT Doesn't Matter," and Bob Metcalfe, Ethernet inventor and now venture capitalist. That exchange stirred up its share of passions, as well [see QuickLink 45332 for a transcript of the debate].
Our theme this year was "Mapping the Future of IT," which may sound rather grandiose but is,