Oracle Openworld 2014

Another keynote speaker was the CIO of Xerox, Steve Little. Little talked about the proliferation of choice in the IT world.

“I feel like in my career I’m Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, with me spinning around and all of these new technologies are spinning around, and you have to reach out and grab one,” he said. 

“PCs are still a choice, they’re still around, we have a 140,000 of them – the challenge is what do you pick?”

Even with the large number of devices today, choice is not a new challenge for Little. He said in the early 1990s he was writing an application for Microsoft Windows 3.2, and there were three different types of laptops, so he brought in three sales people to evaluate which one should be chosen.

“They each picked a different one,” he said. “So I picked and figured out which was the one to keep.

“A lot of times with these technology decisions the business wants to participate, and that’s fine, they can participate, but I’ll end up deciding,” he added.