JP Morgenthal

Why do I blog?

For me it's a civic duty. I have an ability to identify the real value of IT investments and directions to business. There's a lot of noise out there coming from sources with their own agendas, both internal and external to an organization, that makes it difficult to fully understand the long term impact of any IT decision.

Overall, most IT failures have been washed away in short time spans, perhaps the IT leader suffered a political death in the organization, if not downright asked to leave, but overall the business does not abandon the solutions that are working, even if they are not working effectively. However, these continual failures do have an aggregate effect in wearing away confidence, which has an overall negative effect on the industry in which I make my living. As more business leaders lose faith that IT can be used to directly help them, the less inclined they are to spend and grow this industry.

I view my content as putting out some filters into the system to balance the noise. We all have an agenda, and mine is to improve the quality of information available to business decision makers regarding emerging directions in IT. However, my agenda is not self-serving with the exception of improving the entire community, thus, my information should be deemed trustworthy. Moreover, my blog, articles and community discussion input provide real discussion and enhance the overall quality of the conversation around these topics, which delivers greater value than reading a vendor-sponsored white paper.

The realities of the situation is this, executive business leaders need a system of checks and balances for IT acquisitions within their own organization. 99.999% of people attempt to forward their own agendas. Sometimes, those are aligned with the mission and sometimes they are not. Projects that are the equivalent of the "hail mary" play in the final seconds of the game to win, or promote oneself as the hero of the day, often end up being dropped passes that waste precious time and money. If I was a CEO or CFO that was not technically savvy, I'd make sure I had an advisor that could assess and provide objective feedback on the direction and decisions of IT management, which, by the way, is a great role for an Enterprise Architect.

My agenda is simple, improve the quality and reliability of solutions being provided by the IT industry as a whole. To make sure that IT decisions are vetted for economic feasibility and provide real value toward the mission of the organization. And, most of all, to raise the overall confidence of business in investing long-term IT investments that ensure continuity of the business in a world of growing uncertainty. While we cannot know what will happen tomorrow, we do have the ability to lay a foundation that will allow faster response to changes as they occur. Moreover, this goes beyond pure software, but the way we deliver IT as a service in general.