Buyer beware

Caveat emptor, or let the buyer beware, particularly in regard to secure portals and communications, says Joe Ruck, President and CEO of BoardVantage.

“You cannot do due diligence by surfing the internet or skimming PowerPoint”

The schedules of senior leadership teams are often driven by M&A discussions, reviews of the company's top line and other highly confidential matters. But the means at their disposal to conduct these communications are less than satisfactory. Email is the usual default, but although email offers the benefit of immediacy, the medium is crippled by the notoriously weak security, and the fact that email clients were not designed for downloading and organizing large files and other high volumes of information. It is not surprising, therefore that so many management teams are now looking at the range of web-based collaboration systems now available.

When it comes to hosted services, there is a huge spectrum of capability, yet hidden behind glitzy web sites it can be hard to discern the wheat from the chaff. It is made worse by the fact that many hosted service providers actively try to cut IT from the decision process by appealing directly to the business users. In doing so, critical IT functions such as ensuring security and system reliability are short-circuited.

These vendors adopt this stance because IT can make life difficult by asking pesky questions about security, often requiring proof or even visiting the vendors data center or insisting on an ethical hack. This is a process which is very familiar to my company, BoardVantage, which makes secure collaboration portals for boards and senior leadership teams. Procedures like these are time-consuming and expensive, but they are effective in rooting out the dogs, so they serve a purpose. In fact at BoardVantage we welcome IT involvement in the sales cycle - there is no faster way for the prospect to see the depth of our own internal processes compared to our competitors. It is however, a distinction few business people would be able to make on the basis of a simple demo.

When it comes to board content, clients almost always engage IT, since nobody can afford to make a mistake in front of the chairman. However, lower down the organization, junior staff might access confidential sales projections and product plans, and see no harm in putting that content up on a free service. Needless to say this presents a real security vulnerability.

Unfortunately, some vendors border on the unethical by inviting free sign-ups from corporate email addresses to set up a company account for the sole purpose of inviting further company staff. This practice lends an aura of respectability to the trial encouraging customers to put confidential content on these systems.

It is fair to say there is still a perception that IT and the business are not aligned. Nicholas Carr's (in)famous 2003 HBR article IT Doesn't Matter, simply put into words what many in the business had been thinking for years. But, whatever shortcoming IT has in relation to serving the business, it is important to realize they do have specialist skills and by cutting them out of the evaluation process for a hosted service provider you are essentially denying yourself of important insurance. You cannot do due diligence by surfing the internet or skimming PowerPoint. Do you know what Systrust is, or the difference between level 1 and level 2 SAS 70 compliance? How do you know the vendor really has the backup systems they claim in place? These though, are precisely the sorts of questions that your IT department can help answer.

Buyer beware means getting IT involved first - do not just sign up blind.

Joe Ruck is President and CEO of BoardVantage. Previously, Ruck was senior vice president of marketing at Interwoven and has held sales, marketing and executive positions at Sun Microsystems, Network Appliance and Genesys Telecommunications, subsequently acquired by Alcatel.