THE BUSINESS VALUE OF TECHNOLOGY IT Meets Marketing

THE BUSINESS VALUE OF TECHNOLOGY

CIO opportunity of a lifetime 10 | SSL security failure 18 | Ranking collaboration apps 20 | IE9 does HTML5 right 40 | Need an Oracle exit strategy? 46

APRIL 11, 2011

[PLUS]GOVERNMENT CIO 50

They’re closing the public sector ‘tech gap’ p.31

In new media and old, companies are under pressure to measure results. Will business technology teams answer the call? p.23

By Doug Henschen

IT MeetsMarketing

informationweek.com

Copyright 2011 United Business Media LLC. Important Note: This PDF is provided solely as a reader service. It is not intended for reproduction or public distribution. For article reprints, e-prints and permissions please contact: Wright’s Reprints, 1-877-652-5295 / [email protected]

COVER STORYIT Meets MarketingCompanies are under pressure tomeasure results. Will businesstechnology teams answer the call?

14 Integration CloudWorkday tackles SaaS integrationproblem with cloud-based platform

Salesforce’s New MarketIt’s moving into marketing appswith a deal for Radian6

16 Fed IT Budget CrunchCongress risks squanderingbillions in potential savings if itkills funding for two IT programs

18 Hack Highlights VulnerabilitiesThere’s a problem if nine phonysites can get SSL certificates

Tibco Speeds MessagingIts new middleware is fast, but canit keep its advantage?

20 New Ways To WorkOur IT Pro Ranking showscollaboration and social softwaremomentum at most companies

[QUICKTAKES]

CONTENTSTHE BUSINESS VALUE OF TECHNOLOGY April 11, 2011 Issue 1,297

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informationweek.com April 11, 2011 3

4 April 11, 2011 informationweek.com

31 Government CIO 50Government agencies may be a stepbehind the private sector when it comes to technology adoption, but these leaders are changing that

40 Dr. Dobb’s M-DevInternet Explorer 9unlocks HTML5’s benefits

Government Technology Expo + Conference willlet you learn from peers and experts focused ondriving government efficiency through technology. gtecevent.com/dc

June 1-3 in Washington, D.C.

upcoming events: GTEC

6 Research And ConnectReports from InformationWeekAnalytics, events, and more

8 FeedbackReaders sound off

10 Global CIOThe mobile and social Web willchange companies’ relationshipswith customers

12 CIO ProfilesWhen the phone isn’t ringing,things must be going well

46 Practical AnalysisWhen it comes to Oracle vs. HP,which one really has your back?

48 Down To BusinessPublic-private partnerships are onething, and feeding at thegovernment trough is another

[CONTENTS]

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Maximize PerformanceNetworks are the lifeblood of any data center,but effective updates aren’t just about pushingmore bits around. Find out the latest tactics formaximizing I/O and taming port sprawl.

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Pitfalls Of Branch Office ConsolidationConsolidation can result in improved service reliability,data protection, and security. But centralization isn’t apanacea—it comes with its own set of challenges.

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Continuous Monitoring Action PlanFederal agencies must transition from static cybersecu-rity defenses to automated, real-time monitoring and response. Here’s how IT security teams can get started.

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IT Is Too Darn SlowIs your IT shop the place wheregreat business ideas grind to a halt?Here’s how to speed things up. —Chris Murphyinformationweek.com/1292/slow

Better training, bigger budgets, moreresources, etc., will certainly improveIT responsiveness, but companiesshould be looking to technology foracceleration as well. The fact that HPis automating more of its test processis a good example of the leverage thattechnology can provide.

As schedules continue to shrink,the time spent on bug identifica-tion, reproduction, root cause anal -y sis, and making fixes consumes abigger percentage of a new projectschedule. The more time that can be taken out of defect management,the faster new function al ity hitsproduction.

Also, an equally important by-product is that there doesn’t have tobe a trade-off between speed andquality. —LarryatReplay

On the business side, people must notjust know but also document theirown business processes, so that whena portion of a process needs to beauto mated, IT doesn’t have to guess at

the requirements or spend time ana-lyzing the business pro cesses fromscratch. IT ends up doing a lot ofheavy lifting for the business side thatbusiness managers and analysts fail toadminister adequately. It costs enor-mous amounts of time.

There’s great confusion aboutwhat IT’s role is. Are we engineers?Are we business and process ana-lysts? Should we be figuring outwhat a business workflow is in theabsence of that knowledge on thebusiness side?

I’d rename the article “WorkflowAutomation Development Is TooDarn Slow And The Business Isn’tHelping.” —Jon Alesch

My criticism of this article is that itdoesn’t address the fact that most ITbudgets were kept the same or re-duced during the past five years. Headcounts were often reduced by 5% to10%, hardware expenditures heldabout even, and development projectswere put on the back burner at mostmidsize companies. Training budgetswere reduced by as much as 50%.Given those circumstances, many ITdepartments did well just to maintainthe status quo.

I agree that the move to agile pro -cesses is the right one, but to do thatyou have to be able to spend themoney to retrain and reengineer. Ifyou can’t, you’re stuck. I think thevast majority of CIOs, CTOs, and di-rectors of IT would love to be able torespond faster to the needs and de-mands of their constituents. But inorder to do so, it takes either time ormoney. —Lux4

Software Licensing: There’sGotta Be A Better WayI’ve been in this industry for manyyears and understand that pricing

models must evolve with the times,but the current situation is utter non-sense. —John McGreavyinformationweek.com/1295/secret

Most of the best software solutionsavailable today are very scalable. It’snot a one-size-fits-all world out there,and customers shouldn’t be requiredto purchase $100,000 worth of soft-ware if all they need is $25,000worth.

If price is the only important thing,then go with open source—a verygood solution in some cases. Butdon’t expect “plug and play.” Expectto invest heavily in labor on the frontend. My advice would be to hire anIT pro with documented experiencein that particular part of the softwareworld. I’ve got an exceptionally tal-ented technical staff, and they wouldtell you the same thing. No one canbecome proficient in every supportneed. —pboucher

Software vendors have no interest indeveloping a relationship today.Their representatives are told thatthey do, but the visible evidenceruns counter to that. You need lookno further than your agreementsand the support you receive to real-ize that. Are you paying more forless-qualified support now than youwere five years ago?

The relationships need to be re -built, with a solid foundation in realvalue. I think that’s why many opensource projects are seeing increasedadoption. —w0rx

CorrectionIn “Go Rogue With EnterpriseSearch” (March 14, p. 33; informationweek.com/1294/rogue), the managingdirector of Flax should have beengiven as Charlie Hull.

Write to us at [email protected]


G

L O B A L C I OG

L O B A L C I ORobert Urwiler, CIO of Vail Resorts, the

company behind Vail and five other skiresorts, went into a meeting in mid-

March with his CEO, Rob Katz, that was sched-uled for an hour. It ran almost two. The topic:What to add for the next ski season to the re-sort’s breakthrough smartphone and Web app,EpicMix. Launched this ski season, the app letspeople do things like see how many vertical feetthey skied, brag about their feats with friendson Facebook, and even share their locations inreal time on the mountain.

Brainstorming sessions like the one betweenUrwiler and Katz point to a simple reality: Themobile and social Web will changehow companies interact with cus-tomers even more than the wiredWeb did. CIOs who aren’t havingthis kind of look-ahead conversa-tion with their CEOs and the restof their companies’ leadershipteams risk missing the business op-portunity of their lifetimes.

Many of us worked through the dot-comboom and bust. Do something on the Web—anything—just to make sure your companyisn’t the loser that doesn’t “get” the Web. Themobile and social Web present that samesense of urgency, bordering on hype-fueledpanic. The risk, though, is being too cautious.

Looking back, maybe your company didn’tneed to do a massive e-commerce project in1999. But as you sit here in 2011, can you saythe Web was overhyped in terms of long-termimpact? Do you really wish you’d waited until,say, 2004 to get rolling on a Web strategy?

The mobile Internet will be even more pow-erful. Businesses have a chance to reach cus-tomers at the ultimate decision point—whenthey’re shopping, buying, installing, using, fix-ing, criticizing, or bragging about your prod-uct—in a way that the wired Web doesn’t al-low. Mobile and social are no doubt a leap

into the unknown for many companies. Mis-takes will be made. Some ambitious and evenexpensive projects will look silly in hind-sight. Nonetheless, CIOs and their IT teamshave a chance to make a huge and lasting im-pact on how their companies do business.

Vail’s Urwiler knows the uncertainty well.The foundation of the EpicMix app was laidseveral years ago, when Vail implemented anRFID system on ski lift tickets so it couldrecord when a guest gets onto any lift. Thatsystem created the base data for optional so-cial features such as sharing activity and loca-tion data, and the resort’s awarding digital

“pins” that recognize feats like ridingevery Vail ski lift in one day.

But integrating with Facebook isn’t simple. Urwiler says a featuremay work one day and not thenext, for technical reasons or be-

cause of a change in Facebook poli-cies. “You have to go in with eyes wide

open that the rules are probably going tochange, they’re going to change rapidly, and it’sprobably going to affect you,” Urwiler says.

More critical, though, Urwiler believes ITneeds to think more than ever about how itcan be part of the experience at Vail Resorts.“We really do have to change our position fromthinking of ourselves being pure internal serv-ice providers and order takers to people whoare on the outside looking in like a customerand asking, ‘What would you want?’” he says.

CIOs and their IT teams won’t own mobileand social initiatives. Urwiler sits with a tech-savvy CEO and executive committee memberswho bombard one another with possibilities.CIOs must make themselves a vital part of suchconversations—or be the ones to light the sparkif those conversations aren’t happening.

Chris Murphy is editor of InformationWeek.Write to Chris at [email protected].

Will CIOs Miss The Opportunity Of A Lifetime?

Mobile and social look

bigger than the initial

Web surge when it

comes to changing

companies’

relationships with

customers

globalCIOCHRIS MURPHY


Career TrackHow long at current company:24 years

Career accomplishment I’m mostproud of: Back in 2008, LockheedMartin decided to merge threegroups under the office of the CIO.I’ve had the privilege of leadingthis team since that merger andhave watched three cultures cometogether to focus on four main cul-tural attributes: accountability,trust, partnership, and innovation.We now have a common visionand are working to realize cost savings and to increase service levels through transparency andaccountability.

Most important career influencer:My mom. She instilled in me thebelief that there wasn’t anything Icouldn’t do if I put my mind to it.That’s been a driving force through-out my career.

On The JobTop initiatives:>> Completing the consolidation of40 applications into a single corpo-rate-wide procure-to-pay system.

>> Consolidating our data centers.

>> Continuing the evolution of ourcybersecurity defenses.

How I measure IT effectiveness:When the phone isn’t ringing,things must be going well. In allserious ness, we use the standardlitany of IT metrics, but I personallytrack how often our company’sbusiness areas are calling on us tosupport efforts related to their exter-nal customers. This helps me un-derstand if we’re acting as an effec-tive resource account for them. I

SONDRA BARBOURCIO, Lockheed Martin

Colleges/degrees: Temple University,dual major in computer informationsciences and accounting

Leisure activities: Watching my kidsplay sports—that’s where you’ll find uson the weekends

Business pet peeve: I wish we couldget rid of the “reply all” button onemail or at least help people under-stand when it’s unnecessary to reply toeveryone

If I weren’t a CIO, I’d be ... a chef—I love to cook and entertain

also look at how effectively we’re re-ducing our operational and mainte-nance budgets while increasing ourinvestment budgets.

VisionAdvice for future CIOs: Your suc-cess depends on the strength ofyour relationships. You can have thegreatest ideas and technology, all theshiny toys, but if you don’t have thetrust of your business leaders youwon’t get very far.

The next big thing for my industry:A lot of CIOs need to look at whatservices their teams provide that are“core” and what services aren’t andcould be performed by someoneelse. This kind of evaluation allowsyou to increase your effectivenesswhile reducing cost. With the cur-rent rate and pace of change, it’s be-come critical to at least take a lookat these things and make sometough decisions.

Best way to cope with the eco-nomic downturn: Today’s econo-my requires CIOs to be realistic.You’ve must ask yourself, “Is thatreally necessary?” and “What can beput on the shelf or stopped?” Takeinventory and make the tough deci-sions. That said, we shouldn’tmortgage our future for a few dol-lars today. It’s critical to focus onreducing your operational andmaintenance costs in order to self-fund investments that will help youstay ahead of the curve.

The federal government’s toptech priority should be ... WhatI’m hearing from our federal gov-ernment customers is a need tofocus on affordability and cyberse-curity, and I agree they’re two ofthe biggest technology priorities.

CIOprofiles Read other CIO Profiles at informationweek.com/topexecs

Ranked No. 46 in the 2010


The hardest and costliestpart of getting started

with software as a service isoften the integration requiredto plug it into existing on-premises applications andthird-party services. Work-day, the SaaS-based HR, fi-nancial, and procurementapp provider, is tackling theproblem with a new cloud-based integration platform.Workday has created a

downloadable studio thatplugs into Eclipse-based de-velopment environments.Customers can, for instance,create one-way batch-datauploads to a data warehouseor a more complicated two-way exchange of orders andpayments. They can thenupload the integrations toWorkday’s cloud platform.The key point is that

Workday isn’t leaving inte-gration solely to third-partyproviders. That approach

gives Workday two big ad-vantages. One is that Work-day keeps all or some of therevenue for popular links,such as those to a payrollservice provider. (Workdaywouldn’t reveal its prices.)The other is that Workday isless dependent on outsidersto deliver key functionality. SaaS vendors often part-

ner with integration com-panies such as Informatica,but it’s risky for them torely exclusively on thirdparties. Integration vendorsCast Iron and Boomi wereacquired over the past yearby IBM and Dell, respec-tively, though each has saidit will keep the company’sintegration partnerships.Workday wants more con-trol over its destiny. Twoyears ago, it bought CapeClear, which specialized inservices-oriented applica-tion integration.

Workday already offers alist of prebuilt integrations,such as integrations to pay-roll and tax processors andother key apps and services. Workday’s new platform

shows the challenges anupstart SaaS vendor facesin having to build anecosystem of integrationlinks. Salesforce.com haslongstanding partnerships

with Informatica, CastIron, and others, but withmore than 90,000 businesscustomers, it can count onthe free market deliveringintegrations it doesn’t offer.Workday, with fewer than200 customers, needs away to provide critical con-nections itself.

—Doug Henschen([email protected])

[QUICKTAKES]SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE

Workday Builds Its Own Integration Cloud

Data: InformationWeek Analytics 2011 SaaS Survey of 165 businesstech pros at companies using SaaS, October 2010

56%

Moredifficult

comparedwith

traditionalsoftware

About thesame

SaaS waseasiercomparedwithtraditionalsoftware

11%

33%

56

11%

33%

SaaS Deployment Vs. Traditional Software

Salesforce.com’s CRMsoftware as a service is

built around two main areas:applications for sales-forceautomation, and those forcall-center and other cus-tomer services. With its re-cent $325 million deal to ac-quire Radian6, it gets socialmedia analysis tools andshows its ambition in a thirdbig area, marketing apps.That’s not just specula-

tion. CEO Marc Benioff hassaid marketing is Salesforce’snext big market. Radian6’s technology

monitors what people aresaying about brands andproducts on social networkssuch as Facebook, Twitter,and YouTube, as well asacross websites, blogs, anddiscussion forums. Com-pared with the simplisticSalesforce for Facebook and

Salesforce for Twitter apps,Radian6 gives marketing ex-ecutives much more sophis-ticated, cross-source analysis,sales and service responsemechanisms, and lead-han-dling capabilities. Salesforcehad previously partneredwith Radian6, and the twowere set to release an inte-grated application in thethird quarter. Given recent forays by

IBM, Oracle, SAS, and Tera-data into the marketingarena (see p. 23), it’s easy toimagine Salesforce’s nextstep will be to acquire apartner such as Marketo orEloqua. Both offer the kindof campaign managementcapabilities that would addto Salesforce’s cloud-basedmarketing tools.

—Doug Henschen([email protected])

SOCIAL MEDIA

Salesforce Plows Into Marketing Applications

Congress risks squander-ing billions of dollars in

potential taxpayer savings if,as proposed, it kills fundingfor two federal IT programsthat stand to increase gov-ernment efficiency.President Obama’s pro-

posed fiscal 2011 budget in-cludes $34 million for e-government initiatives and$50 million for the Inte-grated, Efficient, and Effec-tive Uses of IT (IEEUIT)fund. However, House andSenate resolutions wouldprovide only $2 million fore-government and zero outIEEUIT funding completely.Wielding the budget ax in

this way would mean thatimportant IT initiativeswould have to be shutteredor scaled back. At risk areprograms that supportcloud computing, data cen-ter consolidation, open gov-ernment, and IT projectmanagement.“We know we can deliver

results,” federal CIO VivekKundra told Congress re-cently, in an attempt to sal-vage his programs. “Wemust continue to scale prac-tices that we know work,and drive execution to makefederal IT perform at thelevel the American peopleexpect and deserve.”Consider the Office of

Management and Budget’sTechStat review sessions,which are being carried outacross federal governmentas a way of reining in techdeployments that are at riskof going over budget ormissing deadlines. TechStat

reviews are credited withsaving $3 billion by fixingor eliminating troubled ITprojects that threatened tobecome money sinkholes.Kundra initially used

TechStat to shed light on thestatus of the government’smultibillion-dollar IT proj-ects, and now he wants toapply the approach morebroadly. In his testimony be-fore Congress, Kundra madethe case for expanding theprogram by introducing it atthe bureau level. It’s a wayof identifying problems thatdon’t necessarily show up on

the federal IT Dashboard,which is based on self-ap-praisals rather than toughpeer reviews. Yet, if IEEUITfunding gets slashed, thoseTechStat sessions won’t hap-pen, and untold billionsmay be wasted.

Opposite EffectFunding cuts would also

hurt the Federal Data Cen-ter Consolidation Initiative,which seeks to reverse thegovernment’s decade-longtrend of adding data cen-ters. OMB has set a goal ofclosing 800 data centersover the next four years.Without funding, manage-ment of the initiative would

shift to the federal CIOCouncil, which is alreadyresource constrained.Open government sites

such as USAspending.gov,Data.gov, and Challenge.govare also at risk of losingfunding. While these plat-forms aren’t perfect (as theGovernment AccountabilityOffice has pointed out in itsreports), they’re fundamen-tal to increased transparencyand accountability in federalgovernment. If e-gov fundsget cut, the sites might getstagnant—with no new datafeeds, for example—before

they have a chance to makea big difference.“Underfunding an effort

like this could really havethe opposite effect of whatwe’re looking for,” says JohnWonderlich, policy directorof open government groupthe Sunlight Foundation.“Shedding light on govern-ment spending can savemoney and allows citizensto see how governmentmoney is being spent.”Cloud computing is an-

other effort that would suf-fer if Congress doesn’t re-consider e-governmentfunding. Agencies have cal-culated that they stand tosave $20 billion annually by

moving to the cloud, butthat requires leveraging thetechnology across multipleagencies. The program formaking that happen is Fed -RAMP, which aims to stan-dardize and simplify today’sinefficient security authori-zation processes.FedRAMP promises to

dramatically reduce the cer-tification and authorizationcosts associated with cloudproducts and services. “Youcan pay for the programmany times over on savingsalone,” says one govern-ment contractor. Without

budgeting, however, Fed -RAMP and other cloud pro-grams would have to bescaled back, delayed, orforced to find other sourcesof funding. Cut the federal deficit is

absolutely necessary, butlawmakers must go about itthe right way. The govern-ment’s newest IT initiativeshave the potential for re-turns that are multiples ofwhat they cost. TechStat,data center consolidation,open government platforms,and cloud computingshouldn’t be on the chop-ping block.

—J. Nicholas Hoover([email protected])

informationweek.com

[QUICKTAKES]

16 April 11, 2011

MILLIONS CUT, BILLIONS LOST?

Budget Ax Threatens Federal IT Initiatives

“We know we can deliverresults,” says federal CIOVivek Kundra. “We mustcontinue to scale practicesthat we know work.”

informationweek.com

[QUICKTAKES]

Comodo, a website certifi-cate authority, revealed

that nine SSL certificates wereissued for fraudulent websitesposing as domains for high-profile sites. Security re-searchers hope the incidentwill call attention to a certifi-cate process they say is rid-dled with holes.The certificates were is-

sued for mail.google.com,www.google.com, login.skype.com, addons.mozilla.org, login.live.com, andglobal trustee, and three dif-ferent ones for login.yahoo.com, according to Comodo.They can be used to imper-sonate Google, Yahoo,Skype, Microsoft, and Mo -zilla and to wage man-in-the-middle attacks, in whichan attacker listens in oncommunications, such asSkype calls. The Mozilla cer-tificate could let attackersestablish a phony Firefoxupdate that downloads ma-licious code to Firefoxbrowsers fooled by its “cer-tified” domain.The incident started with

the hack of one of Comodo’sEuropean resellers, whichvalidates and issues SSL cer-tificate requests. The attackersused stolen credentials fromthe reseller authority to issuethe rogue certificates, whichwere revoked by Comodoonce discovered. Comodosays there has been no sign ofthe certificates being used,and that its own root keys, in-termediate certificate author-ities, and hardware weren’tcompromised. Brow sers withthe Online Certificate Status

Protocol feature will automat-ically block the certificates.

WhodunnitThe situation took another

twist when someone claimingto be a 21-year-old Iranianhacker said he attacked theComodo reseller, which henamed as GlobalTrust. Whencritics questioned the abilityof a lone hacker to pull thisoff, he fired back by postingwhat appears to be the re-

seller’s database of 800 en-crypted passwords.Rambling manifestos by

the alleged hacker posted onPastebin, much of it in bro-ken English, raise more ques-tions and appear to shootdown Comodo’s claim thatthe attack might be nation-state sponsored, most likelyout of Iran, since the IP ad-dresses involved came fromthat country. “This could be a smoke-

screen trying to make it looklike a lone gunman,” saysMikko Hypponen, chief re-search officer of F-Secure.“Whoever posted it to Paste-bin did have access to thoseoriginal systems, so whoeveris behind the posts was alsobehind the actual attack.”Regardless of who did it,

security experts say the roguecertificates could still be inuse, possibly in stealthy, one-off attack scenarios. “Thescary thing is that it’s hard todetect if they are still outthere,” says Mike Zusman,managing principal consult-ant at Intrepidus Group, whodemonstrated similar attacksnearly two years ago at Def-Con. Attackers wouldn’t leavea certificate sitting on the In-ternet so that anyone could

locate it, but instead “woulduse it in very targeted, specificattacks against one user or asubset of users,” Zusman says.The attack has put the cer-

tificate authority registrationprocess under scrutiny again.“This is obviously a very seri-ous case,” says Hypponen,adding that he’d love to see itas a wake-up call for certifi-cate authorities to shore uptheir systems, and forbrowser vendors to carefullylook at their resellers.Comodo’s model of leav-

ing resellers free to issue cer-tificates without Comodo’svalidation left the door openfor abuse. The bad guys hadfree rein, Hypponen says.

—Kelly Jackson Higgins,DarkReading.com

([email protected])

WEBSITE SECURITY

Hack Highlights Vulnerability

Tibco Software claims itsnew FTL (Faster Than Light)messaging middleware ismore than 40% faster thanany competing product on the market, breaking the millisecond barrier for latency in interhostcommunications.

Applications calling forthese speeds include high-speed data handling for capi-tal markets, data distri butionto front-office and back- office operations, and tradeexecution, algorithmic trad-ing, and risk management.

But can the speed advan-tage last?

The technology gains itsspeed, in part, by taking ad-vantage of technologiessuch as Intel Westmere mul-ticore processors, in-mem-ory architectures, and net-working options such asInfiniBand and 10 GigabitEthernet. Any vendor canexploit these options, in-cluding rival IBM.

But Tibco says the otherpart of its speed advantageis tied to a new content-based addressing approach.In contrast to subject-basedaddressing, which requiresutility code at the front andback of each message in astream, the content ap-proach encodes destinationinformation in the datapayload itself, reducingdata volumes and, there-fore, platform latency.

—Doug Henschen ([email protected])

[QUICKTAKES]

Tibco SpeedsMessaging

18 April 11, 2011

How Certificate Process Works

Step 1: Buyer requests SSL certificate from Comodo’s reseller

Step 2: Reseller issues certificate without verification fromComodo

Step 3: Browsers see certificate on a website and automatically trust it as legit

informationweek.com

[QUICKTAKES][QUICKTAKES]

Business collaboration andsocial software—what we

call Enterprise 2.0 applica-tions—have moved from thehype phase into serious con-sideration and adoption atmost companies. Our InformationWeek Ana-

lytics Enterprise 2.0 VendorEvaluation Survey of 619

business technology profes-sionals shows that 68% oftheir companies have de-ployed at least one Enterprise2.0 application. While Mi-crosoft is the leader in termsof vendors in use now, thanksto SharePoint and Office,when it comes to overall

performance, IT pros rankedSocialtext and Jive Softwarethe top two providers, andIBM a close third. Microsoftchecked in near the bottom.Customers are clearly find-ing value from small andupstart vendors, not just thelargest players.Our IT Pro Rankings are

derived by surveying IT pro-fessionals who actually eval-uate and implement the rel-evant products. We use twosets of criteria to rank ven-dors. The first set rates therelative importance of 12standard benchmarks usedfor all product sets. The othermeasures vendors against cri-teria tailored to specific fea-tures and capabilities cus-tomers seek in the productcategory—for Enterprise 2.0applications, these includethe ability to integrate withinternal applications, qualityof the user interface, andcompleteness of the featureset. Notably, respondents to

this survey favored smallerplayers like Socialtext evenwhen we delved into veryspecific Enterprise 2.0 fea-tures (see chart, below).As for what IT is looking

for, Enterprise 2.0 applica-tions, which include every-thing from Jive Clearspaceto Oracle WebCenter, mustaddress business needs andkeep data secure, first andforemost. But we were sur-prised that product innova-tion ranked low. One expla-nation: It’s not automaticallyassumed that offerings fromcompanies like Microsoft aremore innovative than those

from, say, Drupal or Socialtext.IT’s keeping an open mind.So what else, besides secu-rity, do respondents want?“Features have been com-

moditized and are no longerthe differentiating point,”says one IT pro. “Enterprise2.0 represents a paradigmshift in how people work,not which features they use.Successful Enterprise 2.0vendors understand this andprovide assistance imple-menting adoption, drivingchange, and educating userson new ways to work.”

—Alexander Wolfe ([email protected])

ENTERPRISE 2.0 APPLICATIONS

IT Pro Ranking: It’s All About New Ways To Work

We’ve adopted one or more

We’re testing oneor more

68%68%We’re rolling out one or more

119%9%113%3%

Are You Using Enterprise 2.0 Apps?

4.5

4.5

4.4

4.4

4.3

1 Not important Very important 5

(Mean average)

How Important Are TheseEnterprise 2.0 App Features?

Ability to address business needs

Security of data and quality of authentication

Integration with existing internal enterprise software

Intuitive user interface

Completeness of feature set

20 April 11, 2011

77%

Overall Performance Enterprise 2.0 Features

77%

76%

76%

75%

75%

74%

73%

B

72%

71%

66%

IBM (LotusLive, Lotus Connections)

Salesforce.com (Chatter)

Jive Software (Clearspace)

Socialtext

SAP (StreamWork)

Novell

Cisco (Quad)

Drupal

Microsoft (SharePoint, Office 2010)

Oracle (WebCenter)

Yammer

IT Pro Vendor Ratings: Overall Performance Vs. Enterprise 2.0 FeaturesWeighted, aggregated score across all features evaluated; maximum score of 100%

77%

75%

74%

73%

72%

72%

72%

71%

69%

68%

68%

Socialtext

Jive Software (Clearspace)

IBM (LotusLive, Lotus Connections)

Novell

SAP (StreamWork)

Drupal

Salesforce.com (Chatter)

Cisco (Quad)

Microsoft (SharePoint, Office 2010)

Oracle (WebCenter)

Yammer

All data: InformationWeek Analytics Enterprise 2.0 Vendor Evaluation Survey of 619 business tech pros, November 2010

W

April 11, 2011 23informationweek.com

odern marketers don’t make emotional decisions in thekinds of boozy, smoke-filled rooms seen on Mad Men. They wantsome statistical assurances before they spend one red cent, for whichthey’re relying on technology tools and expertise.

Here’s the latest formula: Add social, mobile, Web, and email toconventional marketing channels, including print and broadcast ad-

vertising, billboards, telemarketing, and direct-mail campaigns. Target and test de-sired segments, like most-profitable customers. Measure results across all channels.Spend accordingly.

That’s a gross simplification, and the basic approach isn’t new. Marketers have beentargeting, testing, and measuring direct mail and telemarketing for decades, and onlineadvertising and email campaigns for a dozen years.

But there are new channels. Social networks, for example, have introduced directcustomer interaction, and they’re making it easier to measure broadcast campaigns.Agencies and advertisers, for example, now routinely monitor YouTube and Hulu ac-tivity to see which ads are most popular and which moments within those ads arebeing replayed. They also monitor Facebook and Twitter to get a sense of positive and

IT MeetsMarketing

The pressure is on toshow measurable

results from campaigns.That should make ITand marketing teamscloser partners than

they are.

By Doug Henschen

[COVER STORY]

M

negative sentiments. And the latestsmartphones add the dimension of location awareness to Web and emailadvertising.

The thing that has changed most inrecent years is that marketers want amore comprehensive, cross-channelexamination of campaign results, andthey expect more detailed analyses. It’snow all about the data, so there aregood employment prospects for ITpros who know how to manage andanalyze that data. Some of the biggestIT vendors see this opportunity, andare snapping up marketing softwarespecialists.

The bad news is that marketers arestill frustrated by gaps in measurabilityacross channels. And while they’re try-ing to fill those gaps by buying soft-ware to manage and analyze advertis-ing efforts, marketing execs don’tnecessarily trust their own IT depart-ments to implement it.

It’s high time for IT pros to be work-ing more closely with their marketingcolleagues to understand marketing’sneeds and goals. If IT can’t deliver therequisite data management and ana-lytic modeling, the work will end upmoving to the marketing team or to athird-party service provider.

Get IntegratedStatistical rigor has been applied to

marketing for years, but there are stillfar too many siloed applications—fortracking and executing direct-mailcampaigns, email campaigns, Webanalysis, lead nurturing, print andbroadcast ad buying, and more.

Marketers have yearned for a holis-tic, cross-channel view of campaignsand spending. A crop of vendors re-sponded in the 1990s with softwareknown variously as marketing automa-tion, marketing resource management,enterprise marketing management, andintegrated marketing management.These software products have recentlycome to the attention of mainstream ITvendors. Oracle acquired the technol-

ogy behind Market2Lead in May 2010,IBM acquired Unica in October 2010,Teradata bought Aprimo in December2010, and SAS acquired Assetlink inFebruary 2011.

These acquired companies have dif-ferent strengths: lead nurturing in thecase of Market2Lead, e-marketing atUnica, planning and financial manage-ment at Aprimo, and workflow anddigital asset management for Assetlink.What they all have in common is mar-keting-specific capabilities and a focuson cross-channel analysis.

IBM, Oracle, Teradata, and SAS arediving more deeply into marketing be-cause “they see it as a huge analyticalplay,” says David Raab of Raab Associ-ates, an analyst who specializes in mar-keting technology. “We’ve been talkingfor years about coordinating all thecustomer contacts, but now big IT ven-dors are starting to put some musclebehind the concept.” Marketing islooking like one of the next great op-portunities in analytics, following on

successes in areas such as fraud detec-tion, supply chain optimization, andrisk assessment.

Justify The BudgetA year after starting an enterprise-

wide initiative to let the data drive itsmarketing decisions, Kodak is startingto see the effects. The company’s ap-proach used to be top down: set upannual budgets for broadcast, print,direct mail, online, email, and othermarketing programs based on lastyear’s spending. It now tries to con-stantly forecast the lift expected fromeach marketing spending, with meas-urement guidelines for each channel.“We’re still going to give you a budget,but you have to show us directly howyou’re going to influence revenue,”says Dale Brosch, Kodak’s manager ofCRM for the Americas.

Measurement is a given with directmail, online, and email campaigns, andKodak does extensive A/B comparisonsthat isolate the effect of ad creatives,promotional offers, customer segmenta-tions, and messaging across all chan-nels. It measures print ads and retail cir-cular promotions, too, albeit moreslowly by matching product registra-tions, which ask when and where cus-tomers purchased, against records ofcampaigns. About three in 10 cus-tomers register their products, so Kodakextrapolates as scientifically as it can.

As for the newest channels, Kodakemploys a chief listener and a chiefblogger, both of whom monitor and re-spond to relevant social network com-ments and customer reviews. Theiroutbound efforts must dovetail withthe messaging and communicationsstrategies developed for all other chan-nels. And their success in influencingsocial channels is measured—withhelp from social network review plat-form BazaarVoice—and reported up tothe chief marketing officer.

For customer segments that usesmartphones heavily, Kodak trackswhat kinds of devices people use to ac-

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IT AND MARKETING[COVER STORY]



cess an email or website, and it cus-tomizes campaigns for the most popu-lar platforms, since the experience canvary device to device. ”If you don’t de-sign for mobile, you don’t know whatcustomers are seeing on the device,”Brosch says.

Better TargetingKodak’s customer segmentation is

much more fine-grained than it usedto be. The manufacturer formerly builtcampaigns around customer personasthat were “more aspirational than real,”Brosch says, citing the proverbial 25-to 34-year-old suburban soccer momwith two kids.

Kodak now leans more on its data-base, which has information on some50 million consumers, aggregated fromproduct registrations, customer-serviceinteractions, direct purchases on theKodak retail website, purchases andregistrations on its photo-sharing site,and interactions through social net-works. Kodak appends psychographicand demographic information to thisdata from third-party databases, acommon practice for marketers.

All this data has allowed Kodak toreplace those crude personas with in-depth profiles of customer groups andbuying patterns. For example, buyers

of the entry-level C310 multifunctionprinter have a very different profilefrom those who buy the more expen-sive ESP Office 6150. “We skew every-thing, including the retail packaging,the product descriptions, and the adcreative content for every channel, towhat we know about those con-sumers,” Brosch says.

Fine-grained segmentation is madepossible by analytics, and it drivesmore cost-effective purchasing of listsand media placements. Instead of ad-vertising the entire ink-jet printer linein a broad publication, for example,Kodak will target probable 6150 buy-ers though a lower-cost combination ofprint ads in niche magazines, Webbanner ads on selected sites, and emaillists known to reach small-office orhome-office buyers.

The basic outline is old hat, but Ko-dak and other marketers have had toexpand and improve their data aggre-gation and management capabilities tounite formerly separate silos of cus-tomer information. They’ve also had torefine their customer segmentation andthen test across more channels.

Manage The MarketingMaking the most of customer infor-

mation is more than half the battle, butmarketers are also starting to consoli-date all the data on their marketing ac-tivities. That’s where the aforemen-tioned marketing systems enter thepicture. In place of a hodgepodge ofspreadsheets, these systems track cam-paign plans, budgets, customer targets,lists used, and results, and in somecases even track performance of indi-vidual content components such as adcopy, images, video clips, and varia-tions by language.

Kodak uses software from Aprimo,the company acquired by Teradata, tomanage campaigns and customer seg-mentation on the business-to-businessside of the house, which includes itscommercial printing, document imag-ing, and TV and motion picture divi-

sions. The software taps into Kodak’scustomer database to pick B-to-B cus-tomer segments to target with ads viaWeb, email, and mobile devices. As forKodak’s business-to-consumer opera-tions, it’s evaluating whether to go withAprimo in-house or outsource to adata management company like Ep-silon or Acxiom, which have sophisti-cated tools for segmentation and datamining. They also have integratedemail and mobile support, so once theanalysis finds the right customers totarget, companies can turn that rightinto email campaigns and advertisingtailored to the iPhone, BlackBerry, andmost Android devices.

The Big Vendors Are InTeradata acquired Aprimo to extend

its reach into marketing departments.It already had integration partnershipswith Aprimo, whereby the marketingtools could tap Teradata data ware-houses and marts. Kodak’s customerdatabase is currently Oracle, and nodoubt Teradata hopes Aprimo’s rela-tionship with Kodak and other cus-tomers will open doors to future datawarehouse deployments.

If Kodak turns to a marketing serviceprovider like Epsilon or Acxiom formore of its data analysis, it likely wouldneed fewer staffers to do such work. Italso would introduce questions abouthow to integrate data between the on-premises data sources and those heldby the service providers, and responsi-bilities for maintaining and securingcustomer data.

It’s similar to the kinds of IT re-source decisions most companies willface in the years to come as cloud com-puting takes hold. Which data and ca-pabilities do you really want on prem-ises rather than in the cloud? Whatinfrastructure is too much bother orexpense to develop and maintain inter-nally? What level of sophistication canyou hope to achieve internally versuswhat’s available as a service?

Unica, Aprimo, and Assetlink sup-

[COVER STORY]IT AND MARKETING

Digital Marketing:CMOs Aren’t Ready

38% say company is prepared to exploit digital marketing

59% blame insufficient fundingfor not being ready

46% blame lack of senior management understanding

46% blame IT for insufficientsupport

Data: CMO Council/Accenture survey of CMOs and CIOs


port cloud-based as well as on-premises deployments, and there areplenty of signs that IBM, SAS, and Ter-adata are preparing for a hybrid world.IT pros need to do the same, but moreon that later.

Measure Online ImpactsRoyal Bank of Canada (RBC) is cap-

turing and managing customer data in-house, but in 2005 it added an on-demand marketing operations man-agement service from Assetlink, thevendor recently acquired by SAS, totrack its marketing efforts.

“We didn’t have good operationalmetrics about what campaigns weredone, when they were done, theircost, which strategy they supported,and whether they were integratedacross multiple channels,” says Lor-raine Hand, director of marketing op-erations at RBC.

Consolidating data that was previ-ously scattered across spreadsheets andexecutive PCs, the RBC Assetlink sys-tem now has more than five years of in-formation on strategic marketing plans,budgets, and campaigns across broad-cast, cable TV, direct mail, email, andtelemarketing. In the past year, RBCadded detailed data on ad placements,changes in brand metrics (tracked bysurveys), and campaign responses.

The Assetlink database has grownso large that Hand says it likely willbe integrated with RBC’s data ware-house. Companies are finding thattargeting and campaign result datahas to be accessible alongside cus-tomer information, but that doesn’tmean RBC has to move Assetlink toan on-premises deployment. The As-setlink data can be treated as just an-other data source—albeit a rich one—as far as integration is concerned, sothe usual batch or Web service dataintegration options should do. Aslong as the data’s accessible, market-ing can do its analysis.

RBC’s goal is to understand what’sworking and what isn’t, and the com-

pany goes to great lengths to trackvariations. For example, RBC mayemploy as many as 200 toll-free num-bers and URLs to test and track a largecredit card campaign across cable TV,online, email, direct mail, and evenprint and airport billboard advertis-ing. RBC can also measure the liftfrom broadcast ads—what Hand calls“air cover,” which the bank used ex-tensively during last year’s WinterOlympics in Vancouver.

“It’s about looking at the whole mar-keting mix, optimizing it, and makingsure that it’s worth putting the dollarsagainst more expensive TV cam-paigns,” Hand says.

Gaps In AnalysisThe one area where RBC isn’t satis-

fied is online advertising. That mightseem like the channel that’s mostmeasurable, but RBC can’t connectclicks to completed sales in mostcases, in part because of regulatoryhurdles that most American compa-nies don’t face.

The problem with online is thatthere’s almost too much data, Handsays. Yet because of Canada’s toughknow-the-customer restrictions re-lated to opening financial accountsonline, it’s hard to tie clicks to newbusiness. Financial services compa-nies can sell simple products onlinelike credit cards, but only to existingcustomers. New bank accounts andalmost any product sold to a new cus-tomer requires a phone call or branchvisit, Hand says. So did someone callto start an account because they sawan email ad, visited the website, oreven saw a poster?

“We may know that we drove some-body to click on a URL and five weekslater we may see an increase in ourportfolio,” she says, “but it’s hard toconnect that click to somebody pick-ing up a phone or walking into abranch to buy a product.” RBC is ex-perimenting with reporting and analyt-ics software to determine which online

campaigns were running, when theywere running, and how they influ-enced sales of financial products.

Scale Back Brand AdvertisingUnder pressure from the recession

and high unemployment, job listingssite Monster.com scaled back its broad-based, brand advertising in favor of amore cost-effective, multichannel ap-proach. After a bit of experimentation,it has settled on combining personal-ized email, direct mail, social engage-ment, and prioritized telemarketing.

Monster tracks all those efforts in acampaign management system fromUnica, the vendor IBM acquired lastyear. The on-premises system is sup-ported by the company’s applicationsteam, which meets with marketingweekly to review trouble and servicetickets, ongoing projects and changes,and the regular release schedule.

If IT wants to build trust with mar-keting, this kind of close interactioncan be critical. In a survey of market-ing and IT teams by the CMO Counciland Accenture, nearly two-thirds ofmarketers say they had problems im-plementing marketing software, andthe No. 1 reason cited was the low pri-ority IT puts on marketing.

At Monster, a typical campaign startswith email, but it has evolved fromsending generic messages to big groupsto sending personalized messages totargeted segments. Its best prospects

[COVER STORY] IT AND MARKETING

Marketing IT: Buyer’s Market

> Oracle AcquiredMarket2Lead’s IP (May 2010)

> IBM Acquired Unica (October 2010)

> Teradata Acquired Aprimo (December 2010)

> SAS Acquired Assetlink (February 2011)


are HR decision-makers at large com-panies in growth industries, such ashigh tech and healthcare.

Monster uses SAS statistical model-ing software to identify customers andprospects most likely to buy job list-ings and other services in a given quar-ter. These scores are applied to themarketing database under Unica,which also maintains details on whencampaigns ran, who received them,who opened them, and who clickedthrough. Unica’s campaign modulepulls mailing lists based on a range ofcriteria, including the opportunityscore and past response behavior.

Cream-of-the-crop HR execs mightreceive a high-touch—and expen-sive—direct mail promotion, so thestakes are high for getting the analyticsright. For example, Monster recentlysent top prospects GPS devices to pro-mote its new Power Resume Searchproduct, since the promotional copydescribed it as a GPS for finding jobcandidates. “We use analytics againstattributes like location, industry, andcompany size to score the data andhome in on a subset of maybe 1,000customers where we want to spend

that kind of money,” marketing VPMatthew Resteghini says.

Monster also has its social mediateam try to initiate interaction with se-lect prospects through LinkedIn andother business-oriented social net-works and groups. These prospects,too, are pulled from Unica. If the targetlist has 1,000 executives, Monsterstaffers might engage 50 to 100 ofthem through social media.

Behaviors tracked in Unica alsodrive prioritized telemarketing follow-up calls from Monster’s sales force. Forexample, any customer who hasopened and clicked through on morethan one email is likely to get a call.

Resteghini says Monster is gettingmuch better results now that it pres-ents a consistent, targeted messageacross its core direct-marketing chan-nels of email, direct mail, and telemar-keting. But he’s not entirely happy, par-ticularly with measuring the impact ofbroadcast advertising—something RBCseems more confident about.

Monster also wants to do a better jobof integrating banner ad campaignswith its email, direct mail, and telemar-keting efforts. Web ads are now

tracked through separate Web analyticstools, helping Monster determine howmuch revenue online campaigns aregenerating. The company’s consideringusing Unica’s NetInsights Web analyt-ics product. With better Web analyticsintegration, Resteghini says, Monstercould also use behavioral data—clicksand other actions tied to online ads—to drive direct-marketing efforts.

The Marketing Arms RaceMarketing technologies are essen-

tially following the same path as manyother enterprise technologies have fol-lowed: Point software tools are becom-ing modules in more comprehensivesuites, with the promise of easier andtighter integration and improved visi-bility across activities. That’s the themefrom big Web analytics vendors Adobeand WebTrends, which have an-nounced their intentions to span so-cial, mobile, and Web analytics.

It’s noteworthy that IBM, SAS, andTeradata say they will maintain thebrands and standalone business statusof their Unica, Assetlink, and Aprimoacquisitions. It’s an admission that mar-keters prefer to deal with specialized

[COVER STORY] IT AND MARKETING

If you’ve ever looked online for a new car or new shoes,only to notice ads for similar products soon thereafteron unrelated Web sites, you’re seeing behavioral trackingat work. It’s a widespread practice behind a lot of online

marketing, a means of delivering targeted offers at peoplewho have shown an interest in specific products. Privacy groups, and many consumers, find this sort of track-

ing a bit too creepy, so they’ve been calling for controls on be-havioral advertising. Enter the Federal Trade Commission, whichlate last year issued a report proposing “do not track” regula-tions that would let people choose whether to let Web sites andmarketers collect data on their online searching and browsing.The most likely means of implementing do-not-track would

be a setting on browsers. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 andMozilla’s upcoming Firefox 4 have features that let users indi-cate that they don’t want to be tracked. The catch is that it’s

only a request—indicated by an electronic flag that’s visibleto Web site operators. No advertising networks or marketingfirms have said they’ll abide by the request, and major ad tradegroups say their members aren’t sure how to comply. GoogleChrome and Apple Safari browsers don’t offer the option.Debate rages, even inside the FTC. J. Thomas Rosch, one of

five FTC commissioners, recently wrote in Advertising Age thathe has “serious questions” about do-not-track and believesthe technical feasibility has “yet to be demonstrated.”Legislation has been proposed by several members of Con-

gress to limit how much information Internet marketing firmscollect. For now, though, consumers might be surprised tolearn that the do-not-track feature in new browsers lacksteeth. Web sites aren’t obligated to honor such requests, sodeleting cookies and surf histories is the only sure-fire routeto online anonymity. —Doug Henschen

‘Do Not Track’ Would Change The RulesPUBLIC POLICY

marketing firms, not IT behemoths. IT services firms are targeting market-

ing analytics as well. IBM, for one, re-cently started an e-commerce practicethat leverages its Unica (integrated mar-keting), Coremetrics (Web analytics), andSterling Commerce (order managementand supply chain) acquisitions, with a fo-cus on mobile and social networks.

In this transition to digital marketing, ITorganizations need to step forward. Manya marketing department subscribed toSalesforce.com without involving IT. In theCMO Council/Accenture survey, only one-fourth of marketers said they consult en-terprise IT, contact center, and back officegroups when selecting and deploying mar-keting software. Almost half of the mar-keters surveyed (46%) don’t think theirCIO understands marketing objectives.

If IT is going to be relevant, it needs toshow it can help marketing teams with in-formation management (integrating,cleansing, and enriching data) and the an-alytics of modeling and testing results. Mar-keting has been a data-driven discipline fora long time, but the number of data sourceskeeps multiplying and the richness and vol-ume of data keeps growing. The IT jobstied to supporting those efforts will stay inhouse only if IT teams bring a unique un-derstanding of the company’s products andstrategy. If not, that work will swing to out-sourcers with specialized expertise.

As for the marketers, IT must rememberthat only one thing motivates their tech-nology choices. “Marketers don’t wake upin the morning and say, ‘I want to get in-tegrated,’ ” Raab says. “They wake up andsay, ‘I want to make money.’ They don’twant to run cross-channel campaigns be-cause they think they’re cool. They do itbecause [the campaigns] give them a lifton their results.”

If IT teams can deliver that l i f t ,through better targeting, more efficientcampaign execution, and more measur-able results, they’ll be invited to the dig-ital marketing table.

Write to Doug Henschen [email protected].


overnment agencies

are a step behind the

private sector in their

technology adoption—federal

CIO Vivek Kundra calls it the

“tech gap” in government—

and they have a habit of taking

on big, com-

plex IT proj-

ects that too often fail. But

that’s changing, as IT leaders in

federal, state, and local govern-

ment take advantage of new

technologies such as cloud

computing and seek efficien-

cies and improved performance

through more rigorous project

oversight.

InformationWeek’s Govern-

ment CIO 50 are leading this

trend. Some manage vast IT re-

sources, while others have far-

reaching policy influence or are

behind-the-scenes players. The

common thread is that they’re

driving innovation and giving

their agencies the tools they

need to better serve the public.

CIOFIFTYBy J . Nicholas Hoover and John Foley

ew York City’s CIO got a quick start when she came onboard in January 2010. Carole Post immediately con-ducted a review of the city’s IT operations, followed by

aggressive plans to consolidate its data centers, lower costs by$100 million over five years, reduce energy consumption, andimprove IT ser vice quality.By mid-2010, Post’s project list had grown to include upgrad-

ing the city’s network and establishing a mobile application plat-form. In October, Post and Mayor Michael Bloomberg laid outthe city’s IT strategy more broadly, giving the CIO increasedpower and signing a deal with Microsoft that will gradually moveNew York to cloud services. In support of open government, Posthas advocated for making city data sets public and for the NYCBig Apps 2.0 development competition, which encourages peopleto create Web and mobile apps using the city’s data.Before becoming CIO, Post was director of agency services in

the mayor’s office, where she oversaw the performance of cityagencies and led the development of a performance-reporting sys-tem and a stimulus-tracking tool.

Carole PostNew York City

N

G

Government

[GOVERNMENT CIO 50]


Full profiles at informationweek.com/analytics/gov50

Keith Alexander NSA/U.S. Cyber Command Director of NSA, also oversees cybersecurity at DODRosio Alvarez Lawrence Berkeley National Lab Early adopter of cloud computing, adviser to EnergyLonny Anderson National Security Agency Developing High Assurance Platform for secure computingFrank Baitman Social Security Driving Web services, data center modernizationRoger Baker Veterans Affairs Applies metrics, transparency toward IT performanceDave Bowen FAA Implementing Next Gen air traffic control systemRobert Carey Defense Ex-Navy CIO brings Pentagon experience to DOD CIO officeMichael Carleton HHS Key player in the White House’s healthcare IT strategyAneesh Chopra White House Leads federal IT R&D budget, national innovation strategyBrook Colangelo White House Oversees IT systems and tools at the White HouseCasey Coleman GSA Major IT initiatives include SaaS, VoIP, single sign-on, BIRegina Dugan DARPA Top exec at DOD’s leading-edge research organizationStephen Fletcher Utah Pursuing efficiency through consolidation, shared servicesChad Fulgham FBI Employing agile development to expedite Sentinel projectAdrian Gardner Goddard Space Center Projects include high-performance and cloud computingTerry Halvorsen Navy Manages IT strategy, policies, and architectureVance Hitch Justice Facilitates info sharing among law enforcement agenciesAndrew Hoppin New York State Senate Employed social media for public engagementJerry Johnson Pacific Northwest National Lab Provides computing, networking in support of R&DChris Kemp NASA (former) Developed NASA’s Nebula cloud platformJoe Klimavicz NOAA Driving cybersecurity and supercomputing advancesMichael Krieger Army Supports data consolidation, cloud computing strategyVivek Kundra OMB Leading IT reform across federal governmentSusan Lawrence Army New CIO makes network upgrade her top priorityWilliam Lord Air Force Seeking IT efficiencies while bolstering cybersecurityBernard Mazer Interior Five-year IT consolidation plan aims to save $500 millionBill Oates Boston Pursuing broadband availability, developed mobile appJohn Owens Patent and Trademark Office IT upgrade aims to hasten patent-application processTodd Park HHS A leading implementer of open governmentCarole Post New York City Spearheading IT consolidation, delivering new servicesNitin Pradhan Transportation Deploying a service catalog, GIS systems, cloud computingRon Ross NIST Project leader for FISMA security requirementsKristin Russell Colorado Oversees IT strategy, drives economic developmentHoward Schmidt White House Coordinates cybersecurity efforts across federal agenciesGrant Schneider Defense Intelligence Desktop virtualization project allows multinetwork accessHenry Sienkiewicz DISA Brings hands-on experience to cloud services strategyChris Smith Agriculture Implementing SaaS while consolidating data centersRichard Spires Homeland Security Lead exec for Federal Data Center Consolidation InitiativeBobbie Stempfley Homeland Security Manages key cybersecurity initiatives for civilian agenciesJeff Stovall Charlotte, N.C. Raising Charlotte’s profile as a “digital city”William Strecker In-Q-Tel Determines CIA investments in new technologiesJohn Streufert State A leading practitioner of continuous monitoringTeri Takai Defense Tackling organizational change as DOD’s new CIOAl Tarasiuk Intelligence Community Responsible for IT standards and architectureEd Trainor Amtrak Investing in reservation system upgrade, e-ticketingHarold Tuck San Diego County Consolidated 300 data centers to twoChris Vein White House Former CIO of San Francisco takes on innovation roleJerry Williams HUD Driving reform of IT governance, management in agencyJim Warren Recovery Accountability Board Moved website to Amazon EC2, a first for the fedsJeffrey Zients OMB Focused on IT execution as chief performance officer

Vivek KundraOffice Of Management

And Budget

Federal CIO Vivek Kundra’sfocus this year is on execu-tion. He’s eliminating hun-dreds of federal data cen-ters, taking major steps toincrease federal IT perform-ance and accountability, andhas launched a 25-pointplan to reform federal IT.

THE GOVERNMENT CIO 50

Aneesh ChopraThe White House

Federal CTO Aneesh Choprahas had a keen focus on theopen government initiative,federal healthcare IT efforts,and driving development ofExpertNet, a wiki that willlet private sector expertsweigh in on public policy.

Jeffrey ZientsOffice Of Management

And Budget

Jeffrey Zients, OMB’s dep -uty director for manage-ment,has brought in-creased focus to IT projectmanagement, urging agen-cies to “crowdsource” fornew ideas and pausing fi-nancial system moderniza-tions to review them.

drian Gardner has been thetop IT executive at NASA’sGoddard Space Flight Cen-

ter for about a year, but he’s nostranger to federal IT. Gardner wasformerly CIO at the NationalWeather Service, and served in sen-ior IT positions at the Department of Energy. That background helped Gardner

quickly get involved at Goddard,with initiatives in cloud computing,high-performance computing, andgovernment transparency. One ofGardner’s most visible projects is the

deployment of cloud computing in acontainer—an instance of NASA’sNebula cloud platform, originally de-veloped at Ames Research Center,that’s being rolled into Goddard in ashipping container.

Gardner hasbeen focused onmanaging the riskof the IT aspectsof the space shut-tle program, butthat role will di-minish as the

shuttle program winds down. He’salso working on cybersecurity proj-ects like single sign-on and develop-ing a 1,000-day IT strategic plan.

A

Adrian GardnerNASA Goddard Space Flight Center


s CIO and deputy director forinformation management atthe Defense Intelligence Agency,

Grant Schneider oversees operationalIT and IT policy for the military intel-ligence agency.DIA recently ordered 12,000 new

computers as part of a multiyear cli -ent virtualization effort that will letcomputers access multiple classifiednetworks, rather than requiring usersto have one computer per network.Along the way, Schneider has im -proved security and manageabilityand cut costs. The agency is movingforward with a Web-based workingenvironment that will let intelligenceanalysts choose which applicationsthey use, much like Apple’s AppStore. DIA also plays a role in theintelligence community’s identity andac cess management ef fort and in itsIn telligence Com munity Data Layer, aproject designed to make intelligencedatabases more interoperable.DIA’s IT organization, previously

decen tralized, has reorganized arounda global model in anticipation of offer-ing enterprise-wide services likeemail, virtualized cli ents, and search.Before becoming CIO, Schneider waschief of the agency’s enterprise IToperations group, where he helpedcentralize IT management.

AGrant Schneider

Defense Intelligence Agency

[GOVERNMENT CIO 50]

Get This And All Our Reports

Our full report on the Government CIO 50 is free for a limited time at informationweek.com/analytics/gov50This report includes profiles on all 50 of these public sector IT leaders, alongwith Q&As with some of them and stories on their IT initiatives.

tephen Fletcher has demon-strated a commitment to in -no va tion as CIO of Utah,

where he’s tapped into cloud com-puting, consolidated infrastructure,and pursued shared services evenacross state lines.Utah has virtualized more than

80% of its serv -ers and consoli-dated 35 datacenters into two,along the wayimproving theperformance ofmany regular IT

functions and saving the state mil-lions in operational and capital costs.Private cloud computing has been akey part of the consolidation strategy.Fletcher has been a proponent of

social media and open government,including a new public notice web-site. The state also deployed a VoIPupgrade and a redundant gigabit In-ternet connection. Plans for 2011 in-clude a new desktop strategy, deploy-ment of unified communications,and hosted email.In 2010, Fletcher completed his

terms as president of the National As-sociation of State CIOs and as a liaisonto the Federal CIO Council. Before be-coming Utah’s CIO, he was CIO of theU.S. Department of Education.

Stephen FletcherUtah

S

April 11, 2011 35

fter her nomination was heldup for months, Teri Takai wasthrust into a major IT reor-

ganization when she stepped in asthe new CIO at the Department ofDefense last November.Takai plays a lead role in the ongo-

ing effort to redefine the CIO posi-tion at DOD, which will includephasing out Defense’s previous CIOorganization and moving some ofthat office’s functions elsewhere inthe Pentagon. Some of the projectson her plate include data center con-solidation, the rollout of department-wide email services, new ERP sys-tems, and cybersecurity (she’ll needto work closely with the DOD’s newCyberCommand on that front). Withan annual IT budget of about $30 bil-lion, Takai also must find ways tocontribute to Defense SecretaryRobert Gates’ five-year, $100 billioncost-cutting plan. Takai came to Washington from

California, where as CIO of the stateshe led a multiyear IT transformation

effort. While there, Takai set aggres-sive data center consolidation andsustainability goals and brought morerigorous governance to all aspects ofCalifornia’s IT operations. Beforethat, Takai was CIO of the state ofMichigan and held IT managementroles at Ford and EDS.

Teri TakaiDepartment Of Defense

A

he Department of HomelandSecurity was built from twodozen “component” organiza-

tions—the Coast Guard, Secret Serv-ice, and others—and IT silos were aninevitable result. CIO Richard Spires is

looking to consolidate and simplify theIT infrastructure that serves them all. Job No. 1 is to consolidate 24 data

centers down to two, a project that’sunder way. This hands-on experiencemakes Spires somewhat of an expertat data center consolidation, whichexplains why he was selected to leadthe government-wide Federal DataCenter Consolidation Initiative,which aims to eliminate 800 datacenters by 2015. Spires also plans to build an enter-

prise operations center that will givenetwork administrators a more com-plete and real-time view of IT opera-tions across the agency. And he’slooking to provide enterprise-wideservices, such as email. Before join-ing DHS, Spires was CIO at the In-ternal Revenue Service.

Richard SpiresDepartment Of Homeland Security

T

hen the Deepwater Horizonoil rig exploded in the Gulfof Mexico a year ago, the

National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration came to the aid of sci-entists and the public with a new map-ping website that tracked the oil spill,fishery closings, and other data. NOAAhustled the underlying software froman academic computing environmentto the Web in just a few weeks, and thesite received millions of page views.One reason the agency was able to pullit off so quickly: CIO Joe Klimavicz hasan affinity for geospatial applications,having joined NOAA in 2007 from theNational Geospatial-IntelligenceAgency, where he was deputy CIO. The NOAA has increased its invest-

ment in supercomputers during Kli-mavicz’s tenure, with helpfrom $170 million inAmerican Recovery andReinvestment Act fund-ing. The agency replacedits operational supercom-puters in the fall of 2009,and this year signed Com-puter Sciences Corp. toupgrade to a 1.1-petaflop

machine. The new computers couldgreatly improve hurricane models andweather forecasts, and better analyzeclimate change. In addition to supercomputing, Kli-

mavicz is focused on cloud comput-ing. The agency is reviewing bids forcloud email and uses hosted VoIP andemergency notification. Klimavicz isalso working to get a handle on theNOAA’s data life-cycle managementstrategy, as the agency stores and man-ages all of its climate data; its Princetonoffice alone has 20 Pbytes of data. TheNOAA’s security monitoring capabili-ties have evolved greatly in the pastyear. And a new IT acquisition pro-gram, NOAALink, aims to save theagency money on what had been an adhoc contracting process.

Joe KlimaviczNational Oceanic and

Atmospheric Administration

W


Lonny AndersonNational Security Agency

odd Park has become thevoice of open government.Park not only drives the open

government strategy for the Depart-ment of Health and Human Services,

where he is CTO, but his enthusiasmfor the benefits of open govern-ment—and his advice on how to doit—are helping other agencies makeit happen. Park has been involved in the cre-

ation of the HealthCare.gov insur-ance comparison site, developmentof the “Blue Button” online tool fordownloading veterans’ healthrecords, and the release of APIs forapplication developers. Also underhis watch, an online communitydedicated to healthcare data was in-troduced on Data.gov, a Data Coun-cil was formed at HHS, and theagency made open data its “default”policy. Before joining HHS, Park was co-

founder, chief development officer,and executive VP at health IT com-pany Athenahealth, a managementconsultant for Booz Allen Hamilton,and a senior fellow at the Center forAmerican Progress.

Todd ParkDepartment Of Health And Human Services

T

[GOVERNMENT CIO 50]

onny Anderson, CTO and CIOof the secretive National Se curityAgency, supports the agency’s IT-

intensive Signals In tel li gence mission togather foreign intelligence from com-munications, weapons, and radar sys-tems, and he has a hand in NSA’s workon the front lines of cybersecurity.The agency is building cryptologic

centers in Georgia, Texas, and Hawaiithat will employ more than 1,000 em-ployees at each location. The centerswill be outfitted with new technology,including thin clients, wireless, and vir-tualized servers, and are part of anagency-wide initiative to leverageNSA’s internally developed High As-surance Platform, a secure client virtu-alization framework.NSA is heavily invested in cloud

computing. It operates a utility cloudanalogous to Amazon’s EC2, where itsapplications run; a data cloud poweredby MapReduce and Hadoop; and a dis-tributed storage cloud. Anderson ispushing for cloud adoption across theU.S. Intelligence Community.One of NSA’s biggest projects is a

$1.2 billion data center under construc-tion in Utah that will be operated byAnderson’s team and support federalcybersecurity efforts. NSA broke groundon the facility in Jan uary and plans tocomplete it in the next several years.

L

t’s been a busy spring for SusanLawrence. In early March, the 38-year veteran was named CIO of

the U.S. Army, filling the positionvacated by Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson,who retired in November. A fewweeks later, Lawr ence was promotedto three-star general, becoming onlythe fourth woman ever to achievethat rank in the Army and one ofonly two on active duty.Modernizing the military branch’s

enterprise network is a top priority.“We want a network that can pro-vide soldiers and civilians informa-tion of all categories and forms, aswell as a means to collaborate in realtime, at the exact moment required,in any environment, under all cir-cumstances,” she said on the occa-sion of her promotion. Other areasof focus include IT consolidationand standardization, data manage-

ment, and organizational culture.The Army is in the midst of a data

center consolidation strategy that’spart of a broader undertaking to re-align and close bases. As part of itsconsolidation effort, the Army lastyear issued a moratorium on serverpurchases and issued an RFP for pri-vate com pute clouds.Lawrence was formerly the com-

manding general for the U.S. ArmyNetwork Enterprise TechnologyCommand, which operates and de-fends the Army’s computer networks.She has served as director of com-mand, control, communications, andcomputer systems for U.S. CentralCommand and chief of staff for theJoint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon.

Susan LawrenceArmy

I

April 11, 2011 37

he CIO of the Department of theInterior traditionally hasn’t hadmuch clout, but new CIO Bernie

Mazer is exercising newfound authorityin the agency’s push to modernize andconsolidate its IT operations. Interior is taking a big step toward

centralizing IT operations by mandat-ing that there be only one CIO acrossthe department, abolishing many bu-reau CIO positions and giving Mazercontrol of all infrastructure spendingand IT procurement. In the process,the department is streamlining admin-istration and cutting back on officespace and IT staff. In December, Interior announced an

IT consolidation plan aimed at savingthe agency $500 million over the nextfive years. Mazer’s office is developingpolicies for capital planning, enterprisearchitecture, and more. The agencyplans to cut the number of data centersit operates almost in half and recentlycreated iStat, its version of the WhiteHouse’s IT review sessions. Mazer was formerly CIO at the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service, and an ITmanager at USAID and the Depart-ment of Defense.

he U.S. Patent and TrademarkOffice, long maligned for itsdependence on paper-based

processes, has finally launched an ITupgrade that will hasten the patentprocess. CIO John Owens’ strategy, called

Patents End-to-End, aims to cut thetime from patent application to finaldetermination by 42% by streamlin-ing the patent examination processand upgrading and consolidatingPTO systems, some of which aredecades old. The upgraded systemswill accept, search, and publish XML-based patent applications, employinganalytics and search in the process,but could take a few years to deploy.PTO has also entered into a

groundbreaking agreement withGoogle to put its collection of 7 mil-lion patent applications, grants, andrelated information on the Web at nocost; that information was previously

available only for a fee. The productof that collaboration, called GooglePatents, is in beta.Owens also has championed PTO’s

telework policy. Employees are en-

couraged to work from home usingtheir own computers, made possibleby a secure VPN connection and col-laboration tools. Owens estimatesthat can be done at a cost of $105 peremployee, compared with $2,800 perperson if PTO had to fully equip em-ployees with new gear. Before joiningthe Patent Office in 2008, Owens wasan IT manager at AOL.T

Bernard MazerDepartment Of The Interior

John OwensPatent And Trademark Office

T

obbie Stempfley isn’t exactly afederal CIO, but she does haveone of the most important fed-

eral IT jobs—heading up cybersecu-rity for all civilian agencies. Stempfleygave up a CIO job at the Defense In-

formation Systems Agency to moveinto the new role last year. Under her leadership, the National

Cyber Security Division has increasedits role as a unifying force for agencies’cybersecurity efforts. Stempfley headsa cross-section of cybersecurity efforts,including public-private partnershipsto secure critical infrastructure, a na-tional cyberrisk management program,and the U.S. Computer EmergencyReadiness Team, a system to alert gov-ernment and industry of threats andrespond to them. She’s spearheadingdeployment of the Einstein intrusionprotection and prevention systems,and last year helped manage CyberStorm III, the largest of a series of sim-ulated cyberattack exercises that in-cluded industry, government, and for-eign nations. Prior to being DISA’s CIO, Stempfley

was its vice director for strategic plan-ning and information and its CTO.

Bobbie StempfleyNational Cyber Security Division,Department Of Homeland Security

B


In mid-March, Microsoft releasedversion 9 of its storied Internet Ex-plorer browser. Previous releaseshaven’t had important implications

for software developers, mostly addingnew features and baubles of interest tousers. But IE9 has definite implicationsfor programmers, focusing on the useof HTML5, the new specification of thelanguage that defines Web sites.HTML5 is widely viewed as a water-

shed technology that makes it easier to

use multimedia and construct applica-tions that run in the browser. Thesebenefits hinge on the widespread ex-pectation that complex applications in-creasingly will run inside the browseror the browser will function as the GUIto cloud-hosted apps. If you’ve usedGoogle Docs and Zoho’s online spread-sheets and word processors, then you’llunderstand how this scenario works. Behind the scenes, the browser and

the server exchange data and com-mands. The commands are generallywritten in JavaScript and executed inthe browser, but the browser is limitedin what it can do. As a result, Web ap-plications in the pre-HTML5 worldwere left with two alternatives: Sendover lots of JavaScript to the browser,which slows things down for the user,

or force the user to install browser plug-ins such as the Adobe Flash plug-in. While users might be willing to

download a plug-in from Adobe,Google, or Microsoft, they don’t wantto download one for every app they runin the browser. That has left many Webapps sending lots of JavaScript over theconnection so that the browser will re-spond appropriately to actions andcommands. HTML5 changes this by specifying a

range of capabilities that the browsermust support, including video, drawing,text manipulation, and offline storage.The applications then simply invokethem via commands, rather than send-ing bits over the network to run on theclient or using plug-ins.

Rendering AdvancesWhile interest in HTML5 has been

growing, Microsoft’s slow adoption ofthe spec has been a barrier to jumpingin fully. Because IE is the dominantbrowser in the market, any HTML5 de-velopment would have an indeterminateoutcome if it couldn’t be tested in theMicrosoft browser. Before the release ofIE9, the rendering engine in IE—knownas Trident—didn’t fully support severalstandards essential to HTML5, including

several HTML5 syntactical advances.The new release of Trident, version 5.0,can render much of HTML5, as well asCascading Style Sheets 3.0 and ScalarVector Graphics (SVG). SVG uses XML to specify a drawing

or text. It relies entirely on the browserto take the data elements and renderthem as lines, curves, colors, andshapes. For years, IE has been the onlybrowser without native SVG support.This situation accounts for the long de-lay in adoption of SVG as a commonformat for specifying 2-D graphics andillustrations. The possibility that Mi-crosoft might similarly fail to adoptcore elements of HTML5 was a con-cern that couldn’t be ignored until theRedmond giant released an officialbrowser version with these capabilities.IE9 gives both HTML5 and SVG a

shot in the arm. Perhaps sensing theimportance of the release to develop-ers, Microsoft added other tools thatexpand previous capabilities to let de-velopers go behind the scenes and ex-plore the execution of a Web page, byviewing and stepping through the codeand even profiling its activity. As Web applications become a larger

part of workers’ daily lives, it appearsthat Microsoft’s browser will remain atthe forefront—no longer just based onmarket share, but also because of itsstandards support and the technologywith which it equips developers.

Write to Andrew Binstock at [email protected].

Read more about Windows development at drdobbs.com/windows

IE9 Unlocks HTML5Browser gives developers a new Web experience By Andrew Binstock

IE9 lets developers explore theexecution of a Web page, by viewing thecode and even profiling its activity.


There’s a new skirmish between the oldand new schools of IT architecture. Theold school calls for matching the system

used to the workload at hand—we’ve been do-ing that for decades. The new school—thecloud school—argues for massive replication ofcommodity hardware, which can be sliced up,shaped, and reshaped to handle any workloadthrown at it.

If you thought there was going to be asmooth and rapid transition from the oldschool to the new one, recent evidence sug-gests neither vendors nor IT pros see thathappening. Now, there’s some vendor games-manship going on, and reading that right willtell you a lot about the vendors you’re work-ing with and whether the transition will hap-pen on your timeline or theirs.

As for the gamesmanship, Oracle said lastweek that it’ll stop developing its databaseand other software for Itanium becauseHewlett-Packard and Intel aren’t committedto the future of systems based on that chip.Oracle, it appears, still believes in selling onlyworkload-specific systems—mostly its own.Both HP and Intel, meanwhile, deny any in-tent to dump Itanium, and if you considerthe size and complexion of that business—particularly on HP’s part—Itanium will havea long horizon. But we didn’t need the yelp-ing from Oracle to see that workload-specificsystems are alive and well. IBM’s entire prod-uct line is a nod to that thinking. Big Bluecontinues to develop the z (mainframe), p(proprietary Unix), and x (x86-64) series ofservers, and—at least until Oracle declaresotherwise—there’s no evidence IBM is givingup on any of them.

For its part, HP knows a thing or twoabout what it takes to sunset a processor ar-chitecture. It has killed more chip lines thanalmost any other company has started. Someof the most notable ones include Alpha,

which it got when it acquired Compaq (andCompaq got from Digital Equipment) and itsown PA-RISC line. The upshot is that killingprocessor lines is an expensive and unpleas-ant prospect, and it’s unlikely HP would doso with Itanium, considering it has no alter-native for its own proprietary Unix, HP-UX,a still lucrative though shrinking segment ofthe high-end server market.

IT transitions of any large scope—whetherthey’re away from an IT architecture, likeworkload-specific computing, or away froma processor line—take a decade or more. Sovendors that have the interests of their cus-tomers at heart let the transition happen at itsnatural pace. Vendors with limited offeringsforce the issue, as Oracle is doing here. Its ac-tions are dictated by the strange hand it hasdealt itself, in that it wants to own the lastgeneration of IT architecture. Sun hardwarerunning Oracle software is all about work-load-specific design, and while that’s a high-margin market now, it’s one that will slowlybut surely give way to cloud computing.

Oracle is trying its best to force HP into sup-plying only commodity-level cloud productsto its customers well before HP would havehad any intention of heading down that road.The big loser here is likely to be customers thatstill want Oracle software on HP hardware.While it’s harder to replace a strategic softwarevendor than a key hardware vendor, customersshould keep the vendor that’s keeping their in-terests in mind. If it were my IT shop, I’d belooking into an exit strategy from Oracle.

Art Wittmann is director of InformationWeekAnalytics, a portfolio of decision-supporttools and analyst reports. You can write tohim at [email protected]. More than100 major reports will be released this year.Sign up or upgrade your membership at analytics.informationweek.com/upgrade.

Oracle Vs. HP: Who’s Got Your Back?

practicalAnalysisART WIT TMANN

Customers should opt

to keep the vendor

that’s keeping their

interests in mind. In

my book, that’s HP.

Public-private partnerships, coveringeverything from toll roads to sports sta-diums, are all the rage. The idea is to

combine government money or influencewith business know-how to produce better,more cost-effective products, services, andother outcomes. The movement even rates itsown acronym (PPP) and an interest group ortwo, including the National Council for Pub-lic-Private Partnerships.

InformationWeek is an advocate of public-private collaboration on certain kinds of bigIT endeavors. With regard to national cyber-security, for instance, our recent cover storycalls for federal agencies and businesses toshare more information on threats and bestpractices, pool their resources to defendagainst attacks on critical IT infrastructureand other facilities, and collaborate more inreal time as threats occur. No-brainer.

And at the request of federal CIO VivekKundra, InformationWeek is leading a meetingat the White House on May 4 that will in-clude Kundra, several of his top agencyCIOs, and several top private-sector CIOs.Their aim is to share best practices and strate-gies and look ahead to what’s next in IT.Then, at the opening session of our Govern-ment IT Leadership Forum on May 5, Kun-dra and three of the corporate CIOs will takethe stage to talk about some of the big take-aways from the White House discussion.

Government decision-makers, in IT andother fields, stand to learn plenty from theirprivate-sector peers about delivering valuecost effectively. One step in the right direc-tion is ExpertNet, an online tool outlined bythe White House in December that will letgovernment officials pose questions to thepublic on a variety of subjects, from educa-tion to innovation, and gather answers frompeople with (hopefully) deep expertise. Af-ter an initial public comments stage, Expert-

Net is now under development.But let’s not get carried away with the

prospect of institutionalized public-privatepartnerships solving the planet’s problems.Getting commercial leaders and doers andthinkers to help with government mandatesis one thing; inviting commercial enterprisesto feed at the government trough is another.At their worst, public-private partnerships arelittle more than special interest aid programsfor speculative ventures—taxpayer subsidiesto produce wind turbines or raise alpacaswhen there’s little market to do so.

Such partnerships may fit someone’s wellintentioned vision of what’s “good” for thecountry long term, but they mostly benefitthe trough feeders and their lobbyists. Forexample, 34 CEOs of solar, wind, geother-mal, biomass, and biofuel energy companieswrote to Congress recently urging continuedsupport for the Department of Energy’s loanguarantee program “to preserve billions ofdollars of private sector investments that willbuild the nation’s domestic clean energy in-frastructure.” Without the billions of dollarsworth of loan guarantees, we’re told, theircompanies “will be unable to begin con-struction of major commercial renewable en-ergy projects.” So how are they viable com-mercial entities?

Whether you’re for or against governmentsubsidies in areas such as broadbandtelecommunications and electronic healthrecords, at least those underlying technolo-gies are established and the feds aren’t pick-ing winners and losers. And as a principle,public-private collaboration makes goodsense. But the extent of that collaborationneeds to be watched closely.

Rob Preston is VP and editor in chief of InformationWeek. You can write to Rob at [email protected].

Public-Private Partnerships: The Good And The Bad

Collaboration on big

IT issues and projects

is one thing;

companies feeding at

the government

trough is another

ROB PRESTON

48 April 11, 2011

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