InformationWeek

Secret CIO: Days Of Auld Lang Hype

With Java, Netscape, and Microsoft dominating the headlines in the IT industry, who could ask for anything more?

By Herbert W. Lovelace
Issue column appeared: Dec. 23, 1996

As December wanes, it's journalistic tradition to evaluate the past 12 months and to look cautiously or optimistically (depending on your personality) at the coming year. When Walter Cronkite and Eric Sevareid would do so, in those beautiful voices that you absolutely knew contained wisdom and truth, everyone stopped and listened. I miss Walter and Eric.

Not onl y is there no replacement for these guys, now we don't even wait for December to analyze the past and predict the future. Of course, if people accepted rear-view vision and carefully hedged guesses only during the season of good will, consultants would starve. But the commentary of IT consulting firm Gartner Group Inc., which predicts a 0.8 probability of this or that, is no match for the pundits of old. Besides, at year-end they never go back and own up to their mistakes. Neither will I.

At the beginning of this year, I wrote a column titled " What's Hot Versus What's Not " (Jan. 1, p. 69). I could relate here how well I did, but that would only expose my fallibilities. Instead, you can look up the article on InformationWeek Online. But I will point out that in it, Windows 95 won the Lovelace Verbiage Ratio Award. The LVRA, as you might remember, goes to that product with the highest ratio of printed words to actual corporate use. Indeed, my colleagues have spent most of 1996 talking about Windows 95 as a stepping stone to the vapors of desktop NT, rather than as the system they intend to deploy globally. If it were not for the copies of Windows 95 sold with new machines, I suspect Bill Gates might be one very unhappy camper.

This year, the vaunted Lovelace Verbiage Ratio Award goes to Java. No surprise there. Java, which has wonderful possibilities, is something that everyone is talking about, but very few people are using. It really does, however, have great potential--enough so that Chairman Bill is bringing out his own version. This will help Microsoft retain its lock on the desktop market by destroying Java's portability.

Elsewhere this year, Microsoft, despite the howls of users, fooled with NT and Office pricing, two areas with weak competition. But in all fairness, Microsoft did not raise prices everywhere. Netscape, which burned bright in everyone's eyes at the beginning of the year, is being assaulted by Microsoft in the browser wars. As Netscape leader Jim Barksdale points out in his antitrust comments, it's tough to make a living when your main rival gives away the product that competes with yours. Let all of us wish Janet Reno a Happy New Year, now that the other Bill has reappointed her attorney general.

The year 2000 issue continued to garner attention. Not a day went by that I did not receive a mailing from someone who is willing to help me solve my problems. Cobol programmers are actually getting premium dollars to do what they know best.

Outsourcing got a lot of play during 1996, culminating in the $4 billion DuPont deal that InformationWeek's 1995 CIO of the Year--Cinda Hallman--has structured with Computer Science Corp. and Andersen Consulting. Early in 1997, I'll relate my latest saga with my company buddies Gornish and Kratmeyer, and their ideas to outsource our IS functions.

As you read all the wonderful predictions over the next couple of weeks, keep in mind what science-fiction author Ursula LeGuin said on the subject: "Leg ends of prediction are common throughout the whole Household of Man. God speaks, spirits speak, computers speak."

If what she says is true, then from my CPU to yours, have a great holiday season.

Herbert W. Lovelace is CIO at a multibillion-dollar international company. He can be contacted by E-mail at secret@cmp.com. He'll provide real answers (and whimsical comments) to your questions on his Web page, http://techweb.cmp.com/iw/current/secret.htm .

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