Re:Viewing 2006: CIO quotes of the year

"I've always been grateful for the HR department because if ever there's been anybody the business liked less it was HR."
-- Neil Cameron, global CIO, Unilever, speaking at the silicon.com CIO Forum

"It's a British cultural thing to look at what's gone wrong."
-- John Suffolk, UK government CIO, defending the government's record on large IT projects at the silicon.com CIO Forum

"Frankly we have much bigger business priorities that re-inventing the desktop yet again. XP is fine. "
-- Nicholas Bellenberg, IT director, Hachette Filipacchi UK, on whether his organisation will upgrade to Windows Vista

"It requires a lot of travel, a lot of late-night meetings, phone calls, early morning meetings. Any CIO that works in a global organisation of significant size pretty much is on call 24/7."
-- Rick Davidson, global CIO, Manpower, on the lifestyle of a global CIO

"It sounds like a total support nightmare."
-- Nick Clark, director of IT services, Tower Hamlets College, speaking about running Windows on a Mac

"I always wanted to be a paratrooper when I was kid - now I guess I am."
-- Luke Mellor, IT director, Expotel, in response to finding out what kind of CIO he is

"A more likely Unix on the desktop is Mac OS X."
-- Rorie Devine, IT director, Betfair.com, speaking about the chances of the Linux desktop taking hold

"Who would have thought that books would sell online but dog-food wouldn't?"
-- Paul Hopkins, director of IS, University of Newcastle, on the role of web 2.0 in businesses

"The good CIO, the one who will remain and stay in charge, is the one who learns how to outsource."
-- Philippe Courtot, CEO, Qualys on whether CIOs must 'outsource or die'

"Open source is a bit of a red herring. It's just a piece of software at the end of the day."
-- Richard Steel, chief information officer, the Borough of Newham, speaking at London's IP'06 event

"I can't think of life without the BlackBerry."
-- Nicholas Evans, European IT director, Key Equipment Finance on whether he would consider using BlackBerry alternatives

"I probably would find my best shirts and suits cut-up lying in a pile on the lawn on my return from work, and the locks changed to my house."
-- Phil Young, head of IT operations, Amtrak Express Parcels, on what would happen if he stood up his partner on Valentine's Day to attend to IT problems at work