The Cutter Blog » Vince Kellen

Vince Kellen
Senior Consultant

Vince Kellen is a Senior Consultant with Cutter's Business-IT Strategies and Business Intelligence practices. Kellen's 25-year experience involves a rare combination of IT operations management, strategic consulting, and entrepreneurialism. He previously served as Vice President for Information Services (CIO) at DePaul University. He also served as a partner with strategy consulting firms where he helped Fortune 500 and mid-sized companies with business and IT strategies, IT organizational development, customer experience management, CRM, and analytics. More...

21 November 2008- 12:08 PM

IT-Enabled Synchronous Psychosis?

Is information technology accelerating the wild swings in the market?
Oil barrel prices, thought to cross over $200 are now around $50. The stock market jitters 5% - 7% in a day looking like warmed-up jello. The talking heads on TV are talking with more emotion and I can see their veins popping on […]

Comments [0] Category: Business Intelligence, Business-IT Strategies, General, Leadership, Web 2.0

12 November 2008- 12:34 AM

A Direct-To-Citizen Presidency?

For Abraham Lincoln, it was the telegraph. For John F. Kennedy it was the television. For Barak Obama, it is Web 2.0.
Each of these politicians proved adept at adapting new technologies to communicate. Lincoln took to the telegraph and used it for rapid communication. No doubt the advantages of the telegraph were on Lincoln’s mind […]

Comments [1] Category: Business-IT Strategies, Collaboration+Teams, Featured, General, Leadership, Web 2.0

8 October 2008- 01:45 PM

Don’t Downsize. Rightplace Instead.

I had just gotten off the phone with a Merrill Lynch advisor who I know well. She surmised that maybe there is even more capitulation ahead. Maybe we will soon see the Dow at 8,000? Jokingly, I said I would start buying at 6,000. The fear, however, is real and the effect of […]

Comments [1] Category: Business-IT Strategies, Featured, General, IT Management, Leadership, Outsourcing

17 September 2008- 09:12 PM

Attack! Attack! Attack! IT Strategies for a Down Market

I just can’t wait to hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth.
The housing bubble bursts. The highly interconnected U.S. economy, overly dependent on overstated home values, buckles at the knees and is taking a standing eight-count. Stock prices are falling. Confidence in the market is waning. Global markets are impacted.
Time to batten down the hatches, […]

Comments [3] Category: Business-IT Strategies, Featured, IT Management

27 June 2008- 01:27 PM

The Mainframe Cometh

It is back. And it is angry.
And it is called virtualization. And it has people afraid. But not me.
Think of it. All CPU cycles completely fungible. Imagine the possibilities.
Got 500 idle desktops running Microsoft Vista? Assign the CPU and I/O resources to your core ERP system. Need to bring up seven servers with a full […]

Comments [0] Category: Business-IT Strategies, Enterprise Architecture, General, IT Management, Outsourcing

7 June 2008- 02:45 PM

The Fourth Age

Twenty years ago, Peter Drucker wrote about the coming of the new, information-based organization, which twenty years later we now take nearly for granted as incarnate everywhere. While information-based organizations rely on and have been largely created by advanced IT, Drucker notes that not all such organizations require advanced IT. Advanced IT lets firms eliminating […]

Comments [1] Category: Agile Project Management, Business Technology Trends, Business-IT Strategies, IT Management, Leadership

19 May 2008- 03:16 PM

My Killer Architecture Team

At the Cutter Summit this year, I attended Mike Rosen’s talk on “Ten Things an Architect Does” and thoroughly enjoyed the conversation about the job of an architect. But it got me thinking about the different things architects do and how many kinds of architects it would be nice to have.
My Killer Architecture Team would […]

Comments [0] Category: Business-IT Strategies, Enterprise Architecture, IT Management

25 April 2008- 09:33 PM

The Parable of the Bike Race

I finally had the chance to catch up with a long-time colleague of mine for lunch a few months back on a cold, wintry and blustery Chicago day. We sat down, and ordered tea and coffee. Not waiting to order our food, she immediately began to tell me a story about a recently retired CIO […]

Comments [0] Category: Business-IT Strategies, IT Management

27 February 2008- 09:37 PM

A Disparity of Clarity

Recently, I had the chance to talk with two CIOs from large, multi-billion and multi-national businesses with names we all recognize. To protect the identities of those involved, let’s call them Firm A and Firm B.
Firm A is a still rapidly growing consumer electronics manufacturing firm. But over the past ten years, this firm went […]

Comments [0] Category: Business-IT Strategies, IT Management, Outsourcing

6 February 2008- 11:10 AM

Choking on “One Throat to Choke”

Beat ‘em up. Knock ‘em down. Slap ‘em around. Keep them on a short leash. Teach them a lesson. Make ‘em behave. Vendors, that is.
This phrase has recently seeped into common IT parlance. I’ve even heard vendors, typically large ones, say that the reason we should buy their wares is that they can then provide […]

Comments [0] Category: Business-IT Strategies, Enterprise Architecture, IT Management, Risk Management, Vendor Relationships