Ode to a Curmudgeon

Several years ago when he was a Morgan Stanley financial analyst and I was a Gartner industry analyst, Charles Phillips (now with Oracle) sent me a poem extolling curmudgeons and that he was proud we were both members of that club. A few laptops later, I cannot find that ode - wish I could as Dennis Howlett in some recent correspondence referred to himself and me as curmudgeons. And Thomas Otter of SAP on his blog chides me for "not playing cricket" for picking on software vendors in the SOX debate. He would rather me just pick on the SEC and auditors. (I am glad Thomas does not work for AT&T given how hard I am on telcos!)

I like to think of myself and Dennis as complex, convoluted curmudgeons. We are not always grumpy. We are just as gushing, rose-colored about technology applied well.  I have a whole other blog focused on technology innovation and magic - New Florence. New Renaissance. It is my antidote to the viewpoint "IT doesn't matter". And I tip my hat to individual executives on this blog even as I beat up their companies. So I have been generous to Gates, Ellison, Kagermann, Feld and several others even as I am tough on Microsoft, Oracle,  SAP and EDS.

But I will always be tough on:

a) Mega, multi-year projects and vendors who sell them - big ERP, SOA, mega-outsourcing etc. They fail at alarming rates. Have done so, will continue to do so. Small is beautiful.

b) Utility, keep the lights on and compliance spend as against innovation spend. Empty calories. Margins driven by lock-in versus innovation and continuous improvement,

c) Selling driven by fear and politics - SOX, over exaggerated security projects, vendors who try to scare customers that cheaper or smaller competitors invariably bring more risk.

d)  Business processes which require angioplasty - bothers me that technology often is the plaque in the process and needs to be itself cleaned out.

e) Vendors who spend more than 20% of revenues in SG&A - Quit making excuses. It is not in your customers' or investors' best interests. Even worse when the SG&A is many times R&D spend. And then the salt in the wound - "but more R&D does not always equate innovation". Guess what  - it has X times more of a chance than does SG&A.

f) Low payback projects - in my consulting business our payback to clients is quantifiably many, many times our fees. Sorry, but I expect every vendor to do just as well. Excuse my standards.

g) Bigotry - national, racial, sexual etc - I am proud of how tech is a global, talent driven industry. Let's not let bigots or politicians pollute that.

Most of the time I represent the tech buyer's interests. As I like to say True North for our industry is on Main Street, not Wall Street or DC. There are enough other blogs watching out for vendor and investor interests. Besides, vendors have huge marketing budgets of their own and do not need my pandering. But that does not mean I do not question buyer behavior (and those of auditors, politicians etc) if it falls in to the categories above.

Those are the guiding principles of this Complex, Convoluted Curmudgeon. Dennis has slightly different ones but I have seen him merciless on bad behavior of Chartered Accountants and others.

Thank you, our readers for continuing to read and comment even as we sometimes make you squirm about your project, product or position. And hopefully make you smile and feed good about technology when it works magic and does not cost the moon.