Mike Gotta Responds

Posted on February 28, 2007
Filed Under Uncategorized |

Mike Gotta posted a response to my enterprise IT post a couple of days ago. All things considered, Gotta’s post is reasoned and well argued, I appreciate him taking the time to post a detailed piece and that actually serves one goal I had with the post, to spark debate.

Prior to being an industry analyst, I was in enterprise IT for 15 years holding a variety of positions. I’ve hung tapes on mainframes, punched JCL decks, developed transactional systems, worked on IVR systems, played the role of lead architect for client-server systems, been a project leader, application architect, emerging technologist and product manager for content and collaboration-related technologies.

In reading the intro I couldn’t help but think that with so much of Gotta’s resume tied up in enterprise IT, it does not surprise me that he comes to the defense of IT. While I appreciate his post I find nothing in it to suggest anything other than a defense of the status quo. This really doesn’t surprise me, it would be like me walking into a crowd of Oracle DBAs and telling them that we’re gonna switch to MySQL because it’s a less costly solution and it will accommodate our needs… none of them are going to be happy about it and each one will offer an impassioned response on why Oracle is a superior product when in fact they are offering little more than an impassioned response for why I should not devalue their hard earned skillset.

However, it’s a little hard to argue that I’m wrong for suggesting that enterprise IT should get smaller when your consulting organization’s primarily serves enterprise IT. You are about big IT, I am about small IT… we can agree to disagree.

BTW, I know IT does a hell of a lot more than select, implement, and maintain business applications, but that’s really all I care about. The other things just don’t interest me so I don’t write about it, and from the perspective of a (former) user in big company with a direct line of sight to a large cross section of IT organizations, I offer my own experiences in dealing with IT as my prima facie case. I’ve lived the flip side of shared services, IT lockdown, inflexible approaches to business needs, and budgeting that values the “use-it-or-lose-it” model that ends up wasting shareholder resources. I’ve also witnessed incredibly frustrated IT professionals who were unable to deliver the best and most cost effective solution because of tangental requirements and management more concerned with process than results.

UPDATE: Courtesy of Chris Anderson comes this quote: (via Susan Scrupski)

“CIOs don’t seem to care all that much about the needs and desires of the next wave of workers, who come from Gen Y and are also referred to as Millenials. The gestalt of the Millenials (a.k.a., the “I’m special” generation) is that they grew up with a boundless sense of self-importance, always have had the Internet, love to share digital content, need to be constantly challenged, want high-level responsibilities immediately, expect a work-life balance with telecommuting options, and will go around IT practices and policies without hesitation. The old-school CIOs I spoke with seemed both annoyed with their audacity and mildly interested in what this new wave of employees could deliver in the IT department.”

The source of the quote was in CIO Magazine’s blog coverage of CIO ‘07 conference. So much for the close working relationship and the “sharing and caring” attitude.

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