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|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

It appears my column about avoiding ambiguity calls for a correction and a clarification.

The correction: As Joris Linnsen, writing from the Netherlands, reminds us, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there,” appeared in Alice in Wonderland long before George Harrison wrote it into a song. I should have given the Cheshire Cat proper credit.

The clarification: Some readers thought I took an unfair shot at General Eisenhower when I said, “Yes, Eisenhower said plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” And if you can figure out how to plan without creating a plan, go for it. I recommend a different formulation: Plan the work and work the plan.”

I had no such intention. While Eisenhower’s performance as president is debatable (which is to say, many have debated it), that he was a phenomenal general is beyond any reasonable dispute.

Eisenhower’s point was that events make plans obsolete. Bad military leaders stick to the plan anyway. The good ones use it as a platform for ongoing adaptation. My point was similar: Plan, then continually adapt your plans as circumstances change and new issues, opportunities and facts become available.

Which brings us, through logic so tortured I won’t bother presenting it, to Apple Computer and its debatable decision (which is to say, many have debated it, too) to base future systems on Intel chips. But unlike the subject of Eisenhower’s presidential performance, on which I have no opinion worth sharing, I have plenty to say about this subject.

Well, actually, I don’t. Mostly, the words, “Who cares?” came to mind when Steve Jobs announced the MacIntel, and the clamorous debate that followed hasn’t changed that reaction.

If you’re a CIO or are otherwise responsible for planning your company’s IT architecture, I suggest you adopt a similar stance. Apple isn’t, after all, planning to sell OS X on generic PC boxes. It’s merely replacing the PowerPC chip with Intel chips in its proprietary ones. So the MacIntel will sell for the same premium prices Macintoshes do. And the idea of running MacIntel computers instead of Windows machines brings with it these exciting scenarios:

  • Move all the Windows client software needed by your enterprise applications onto Citrix servers and deploy a Citrix client on your new Macintoshes.
  • Run Virtual PC for all your Windows client software, still deploying Citrix servers and clients for the odd applications that stubbornly refuse to run on it.
  • Replace every enterprise application that requires anything Windows, experiencing colossal conversion costs along with the loss of your job for showing equally colossal poor judgment.

In our consulting business, we advise clients to evaluate technical solutions in four dimensions: technology, features and functionality, market viability, and vendor desirability. To help you ignore the noise, here’s how the Mac stacks up:

Technology: Superior to every other desktop alternative. MacIntel’s architecture, construction, and security will beat both Windows and the entire bewildering array of Linux distributions because of OS X. MacIntel hardware will be comparable to Wintel; in any event they won’t differ enough to matter to anyone other than industry wonks, who think hardware comparisons make fascinating reading.

Features and functionality: OS X has everything a desktop OS needs at the moment. MacIntels will be fully administrable, and will integrate with directory services and access server file systems just fine. When evaluating MacIntel, though, you have to include the question of compatibility with your whole installed base of software. For most enterprises, MacIntel, as Macintosh before it, rates better than Linux but worse than Wintel. Your mileage, of course, may vary, and MacIntel may also rate very well for some corporate niches, such as marketing and media production. Where it does, Macintosh rated just as well, of course.

Market viability: Macintosh is a niche player — Linux appears to have surpassed it; the two together claim perhaps 6% of the total market. Market viability matters — for staffing, and for assessing the extent to which developers will support the platform in the future. MacIntel inherits Macintosh’s marketshare and does nothing to change it.

Vendor desirability: Apple provides little support for enterprise IT, and is legendary for its shabby treatment of distributors and early adopters. Add to that the Mac’s premium pricing and MacIntel is a clear loser when considered from this perspective.

The short version: The Macintosh has always offered terrific technology, and has never had anything else going for it. MacIntel offers the same terrific technology and lack of anything else, running on a new chip.

Big deal.

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|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

IT managers deal with contracts a lot — from technology vendors, systems integrators, outsourcers, and other miscreants who regularly darken the doors of corporate IT. Even many who recognize the importance of strong negotiating skills do their best to ignore the contracts that express a negotiated agreement. Mostly, it’s a matter of time and attention span. They have too little of either.

It should be obvious: What you agreed to doesn’t matter. It’s what the contract says you agreed to that matters. Even if the contract is an End User License Agreement (EULA) or some other “shrink-wrap” contract that wasn’t preceded by a formal negotiation, it’s still an agreement, and it’s up to you to negotiate a fair version of it.

So if you negotiated the deal, you need to read the contract provisions to make sure they accurately reflect the deal you negotiated, and if you didn’t negotiate the deal, you need to read the contract provisions to find out which terms need to be negotiated.

Here are a few rules of the road to keep in mind as you do so:

1. If you weren’t party to it, you aren’t bound by it. For example, it’s increasingly popular for EULAs to make the transfer of software licenses to another party, even an acquiring corporation, a contract violation. If you’re on the wrong end of this provision — perhaps you have to integrate the information technology of an acquired company — are you stuck buying new licenses, just because the company you acquired agreed to the EULA and that’s what it says?

No, you aren’t. Yes, you acquired the signed EULA as part of the corporate acquisition. One of two conditions is true: Either you own the license as part of the acquisition and are bound by its terms and conditions, or you don’t. If you do, you can use the license, if you don’t you aren’t bound by it. Even if, for some reason, you’re stuck with the worst of both worlds, so what? Call the offending vendor and make it clear: Either it sells you new licenses for a dollar and continues to collect revenue from annual maintenance, or you’ll convert to a different vendor that’s interested in your business.

2. What isn’t in the contract is more important than what is in the contract. Not really, but there’s more risk there. Spotting circumstances that might arise and prove disadvantageous to you that aren’t described in a contract is much more difficult than analyzing what’s there. If it’s a negotiated contract, shame on both of you for not thinking of the circumstance and negotiating it in advance. If it’s a non-negotiated contract, spotting the missing items takes more work. Before you sign, make sure you can live with its terms and conditions; negotiate those you can’t live with.

3. Contracts only matter when things go wrong. Probably the single biggest mistake managers make in reviewing contracts is focusing their attention on whether the contract accurately reflects the intent of the agreement. That is, of course, necessary, but it’s pretty much irrelevant, because so long as everything is going well, neither party will ever pull the contract out of the file drawer. Companies review contracts when something goes awry. When you analyze a contract draft, do so from the same perspective.

4. After non-delivery, the second-biggest problem that can arise in a contract is excessive success. Take a step back. Does the contract assume failure, or at best mediocre results? Joint ventures are especially susceptible to the danger of success, with one side often giving away far too much on the premise that, “We have nothing right now, so there’s no downside risk.” Sure there is — whatever you’re trying to accomplish might work out far beyond your current estimates, which are, after all, predicated on worst-case analysis.

5. Involve the lawyers, but don’t make it their problem. It’s your deal. Their job is to help you make sure it’s the right deal, not to make sure it’s the right deal themselves. Which means, by the way, that it’s up to you to make sure you’ve established a strong working relationship with your corporate attorneys.

Speaking of lawyers, a common negotiating ploy is for a vendor to say to you, “Do you really want to let the lawyers become involved?” It’s an implied threat: The lawyers will kill the deal, or at best cause unaffordable delay. Your best response is to answer with a question: “Why — is there something in the contract our lawyers might object to?”

If nothing else, their response will have some amusement value.

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