Intelligent Enterprise

Better Insight for Business Decisions

RSS
Webcasts
Whitepapers
Subscribe
Home

March 1,2000 Volume 3 - Number 4

Here is a response one of our readers gave to the question, “Which companies do you think deserved to be in this year’s “The 12 Most Influential Companies in IT” list? (Intelligent Enterprise, Jan. 1, 2000.) Stay tuned to read more reader input and go to www.intelligententerprise.com/revenge.jhtml to submit your votes.

InfoRay Convenience

You [Editor-in-Chief Justin Kestelyn] are wrong in your statement: “As of press time, VIT is the only software company with a solution on the street for helping general business users analyze supply-chain performance, a capability available only to technical specialists until now (Intelligent Enterprise, January 1, 2000).”

InfoRay Inc., headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., has had this solution since 1994. We give business users the ability to analyze their supply-chain performance without having to move the data into a proprietary database. This is certainly something that you may have interest in adding to your list in the future.

Jane McDonald
InfoRay Inc.
Cambridge, Mass.

Editor-in-Chief Justin Kestelyn responds:

Nice to hear from you; it’s always a pleasure to get in touch with companies in our space with which we’ve had no contact. I stand corrected on the extent of VIT’s competition, but stand behind our selection of that company as one to watch in 2000.

The Curse of Innovation

Intelligent dialog certainly belongs in Intelligent Enterprise, and Ted Holt’s response (Correspondence, Dec. 21, 1999) to Nick Imparato’s earlier article (Strategic Knowledge, Sept. 14, 1999) certainly qualifies. Privacy and innovation are potential adversaries, but could collaborate for the benefit of a free society. Because technology creates a demand for itself, there is an implicit threat to privacy in, for example, the use of “cookies,” supermarket scanners, and huge databases to accumulate information about the details of individual lives. One of the “rights” that Mr. Holt neglected to attack is the presumed right of businesses to engage in targeted marketing ad nauseam, based upon data collected and purchased without the data subject’s knowledge.

Innovators would do well to provide us, the data subjects, with vehicles to grant or withhold permission for the use or sale of the data around us that has been acquired in the course of day to day business, recreation, or travel. Whether shopping on the Web or in a store, the use of credit cards as a payment vehicle represents tacit permission for the financial institution to collect and hold data about us and our purchases. Further permission should be required before that data can be legitimately used for purposes other than billing us for the convenience and the temporary use of their money.

In a representative democracy, some of the “rights” Mr. Holt seems to resent are based on the permission of the electorate, as taxes are levied for public education or other programs. As the mood-pendulum swings, the nation may change its views. In the meantime, the democratic process works to implement the will of the “majority” and the protection of the minority against oppressive governmental interference.

On the issue of innovation and privacy, the consensus is yet to be formed. It is debate and discussion such as this that help us understand and feel our way through a process that, while imperfect, has generally served us well.

Jack Hornfeldt, CIO
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Boston