Overview

The world bombards the average CEO with messages about technology, initially about how wonderful it is, but lately about how caution is needed when dealing with matters concerning IT.

I used to pull my hair out when one of our business people would come into my office and indulge in a little of what I call magazine management . This person would sit down and tell me that they had read, or heard or been told on his last airplane flight by a friendly IT salesman sitting next to him, about a company that had cut all its paper from its operations, or turned all its sales force into overnight shipment managers, or cornered the market just by having a web presence, or had solved the world peace problem, pollution and overpopulation just by using Spigot s latest software (the names of products and companies have been changed to protect business people from magazine management). The media is full of hype about how IT is revolutionizing business. It has to be, given the current cynicism about the value of IT, the sales/hype engine has been cranked up to maximum.

To support my argument I quickly trawled a few websites and magazines and picked up these headlines:

Spigot architects the ultimate office: Spigot s Bunghole netware platform could be the company s best bet for developing office comms that will have it all. Customers were given a look at some of the fruits of the company s $5 billion R&D bill today.

(IT website)

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