A CTO's downsized holiday wish list

The holidays are the one time of year when adults can guiltlessly make lists of things they want and have a good chance of having those wishes fulfilled. Last year, I put together a CTO wish list for Santa that went so unfulfilled that I considered writing a letter to the local newspaper letting all the young Virginias know that there is not, in fact, a Santa Claus.

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My request for a port of Groove Workspace for OS X was met with lumps of coal, but fortunately I learned during the course of the year that Wikis and Weblogs could be an adequate substitute. My plea for Wi-Fi in the public areas of United Airlines terminal at Chicago O’Hare was largely ignored. Worse, Wi-Fi remains absent from the domestic skies. Bah, humbug.

This year, I’m thinking about more practical wishes that extend beyond my personal, petty desires. And because Santa failed me last year, I’m bypassing him and going direct. If my wishes come true this time, I may just rescue myself from being a CTO Scrooge next year.

First, if you are an enterprise software company selling a product that sits on top of other pieces of enterprise software (think databases and application servers), please ensure some degree of open source compatibility.

Just last week, I urged a content management vendor to extend support for its solution beyond the usual (Oracle, SQL Server, and Sybase) to MySQL. The commercial databases are all excellent pieces of software, of course, but sometimes I don’t need ironclad capability in the database layer. When you’re pricing a solution for me, realize that if I don’t have to pay for a commercial database, you can give me a better overall cost of ownership and probably even add a small cut of what I would have spent on the commercial database to your price. Everyone comes out ahead, except maybe the database vendors.

The same goes for software that requires application servers to run: Give me solutions that work with Tomcat and JBoss.

While we are on the subject of enterprise software, I’ll issue a plea to my fellow CTOs and CIOs: Give your business to vendors who offer the best solutions.That may sound obvious, but some IT buyers still seem more concerned about the quality of the steak dinner a vendor buys them rather than the quality -- or suitability -- of the solution. They’d be better off asking “Where’s the beef?” when listening to the sales pitch instead. Personally, I try to focus my energies on making purchasing decisions that allow my employees to enjoy quiet dinners at home with their families because the solution we’ve implemented keeps the pager quiet.

IT staffing is picking up, and I’m getting more cold calls from staffing companies pushing potential candidates, regardless of whether I’ve posted a job listing. My cranky holiday message to them and anyone else making cold calls is simple: Ask me what I need before you start the sales pitch. Don’t breathlessly offer me .Net developers before asking me what kind of shop I’m running (it’s Java). It’s like agents for NHL players cold-calling the NBA to place hockey players. Hockey sticks won’t help get a basketball in the hoop -- send me people with a solid jump shot.

Despite the Grinch-like tone of this installment, I want to thank the readers of this column for the amazing feedback that makes every week merry and bright -- happy holidays!