On Blakley

As several folks have noted (see here, here, and here), Bob Blakley left his position with IBM to join us. His official first day with the company was this past Tuesday.

To be honest, I was unsure about commenting on Bob’s hiring here. I am, of course, thrilled to no end that Bob has joined our team. I’ve known Bob for some 10 years or so, and he’s spoken at Catalyst many times. I always find myself having a better understanding of something relating to identity, privacy, or security after hashing it out with Bob. 

But we have lots of great folks here, and I don’t want to leave unintended and erroneous impressions with any of them (or anyone outside the company either) regarding relative value by singling out our latest hire. Burton Group is truly a team-oriented company. We work very hard to populate our analyst teams with folks that have different backgrounds, different points of view, and different (but equally valuable) capabilities. That way, we ensure that we’re not engaging in group think, that, while we have a collegial environment (which we do), we also have a healthy one in which all thinking is challenged and thoroughly tested internally. If it can stand up internally, we have full confidence that it can stand up externally. We are where we are today precisely because we have a great team of people, not because of the efforts of any one or two specific people. 

From that perspective, then, Bob is, as I said earlier, our latest hire, part of an ongoing effort to ensure the quality of our work. But, given Bob’s profile, I’m not surprised that his joining us garnered some attention. And this post from James Governor ended the waffling, and set me to pounding out this post. 

First, let me assure James that no cease and desist letter is in the offing. I can’t think of anything sillier. (Well I could, but let’s not get into that here, and it's still pretty darn silly.) 

Second, let me assure anyone who cares that we did not hire Bob to drive up our consulting fees with IBM. As I’ve said here before, over 80 percent of our revenue comes from enterprises. Our value proposition is based on our ability to provide top-notch, technically deep advice to people running IT systems for some of the largest companies in the world. Bob has been writing and thinking about security for a very long time, and we hired him for his ability to contribute to both our identity/privacy and security/risk management research efforts. And, if you ask Bob, I think he’ll tell you that he joined us because he felt he could influence those fields more effectively if he wasn’t operating from a vendor perspective. Our intention is to have Bob contribute to our research and, if he’s doing paid consulting gigs, I’d honestly prefer that they be with enterprise customers, not vendors. The more we understand the customer's problem(s), the better we'll be at serving our customers.

Third, regarding James’ comment regarding our “ultra-opiniated coverage,” I had to smile. One of the things I consistently hear from our customers is that they like our willingness to put a stake in the ground. There’s no question that Richard Monson-Haefel did just that with the report James refers to. That report has created controversy (see an example here, and a good overview here; you can also listen to Richard's podcast). Creating controversy for controversy’s sake (or marketing’s sake) is not our style. (Nor is it Bob’s.) But we won’t back off an opinion just because it’s controversial if we think it’s the right thing to say. The APS team vetted that report internally, as well as externally with key players in the Java community, before publication. The APS team felt it was the right thing to say to customers, so we said it.

And knowing Bob, I don’t think he will hesitate to say what he thinks after giving it serious thought. And that, in nutshell, is why we hired him. But same goes for all our other analysts too.