On the road

IN THE PAST FOUR WEEKS, I have logged over 20,000 miles in the air, and when I'm flying that much there is a lot of time to think. Traveling can be a good time for reflection on lots of different things, so forgive me for not having a single topic this week. Think of this as "random thoughts from the road."

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If there was ever any question that the CTO job is primarily an externally facing, business-oriented position, my past four weeks should remove that doubt.

During that time, I met with a focus group of potential customers for new services offered by InfoWorld, visited vendors bidding to provide InfoWorld with strategic back-end functions, represented InfoWorld at a meeting of business units from our parent company to describe some of our new revenue-producing online initiatives, and (finally!) I gave a talk about the InfoWorld Test Center to a group of New York CTOs. In my dozens of hours on planes, I was busy putting together a business plan for key initiatives in our next fiscal year. These responsibilities further underscored in my mind that the successful CTO must have solid communication skills and understand how to create and drive business strategy.

One of the major frustrations of my road trip was the spotty availability of a decent Internet connection. When will high-speed Internet access, preferably wireless LANs, truly become pervasive? At the Westin in Chicago, I was stuck with dial-up (and analog lines in hotels seem to be consistently worse than analog lines anywhere else for some reason). The Sheraton in New York had dial-up. Le Parker Meridien in New York advertised free high-speed Internet access, but all I saw was what appeared to be an Ethernet jack in the wall with no instructions (and I hadn't brought a cable). The Westin in Boston had complimentary high-speed Internet access and provided the Ethernet cable and simple instructions.

And although one of the promises of 802.11 has been easy Internet access in airports, coffee shops, and other public places, I was only able to connect to a wireless LAN at the Denver airport in the United terminal -- the five other airports I passed through had nothing. I'm keeping a close eye on Boeing's developing Connexion service ( http://www.connexionbyboeing.com ), which will provide high-speed Internet access at 40,000 feet sometime in 2003.

The WorldCom saga unfolded during my travels and the news of the company's income restatement engaged me on many levels. First, it deepened my concern about how telco troubles affect our day-to-day business and the long-term growth prospects for Web services. An astoundingly large percentage of Internet traffic worldwide travels over WorldCom's UUNet backbone. While that backbone is still running and seems safe for now, the company laid off 20 percent of its employees shortly after the restatement. Meanwhile, business executives around the world are wondering why their IT departments seem to constantly struggle with telco problems.

My answer: The telcos were largely unresponsive when they were rolling in profits and had enough employees to answer the phones. Now, solving a telco problem leaves most IT staff sinking into hopelessness. The other thing about the WorldCom situation that truly amazed me was the cause of the problem: classifying operational expenses as capital outlays. Anyone who has ever done a corporate budget or participated in planning one knows the difference between expenses and capital. Bottom line: WorldCom is in trouble, and as a result, anyone who relies on the Internet should be worried.