One great aspect of the Information Technology field is the pace of change. It's fast and furious.

My job was to get involved with projects and help select the technology. For systems new to the company, I would research the field and select vendors.

Here's how it normally worked. It all started out with business drivers and long term strategic goals. We would then identify the top contenders in the area under scrutiny, then collect information from Gartner, Mega, Giga, and the vendors themselves. We would check references, hold demonstrations, and establish criteria for judgment. Finally, we would build consensus through a series of meetings and write a report on the results.

After the product was selected, I would negotiate contracts and prices and bring in the staff, hardware, and software to handle the task.

This is how it worked for our email system, unix systems, our database engine, etc.

As a result, I also ran the Unix and Email systems for a number of years until they stabilized and could be transferred to the operations group.