An interview with Santa’s CIO

in the early morning on Friday, the 24th of December 2004 by Chad

As the holidays approach, many oriented businesses are much busier than usual. Such as the post office, department stores, and Santa’s workshop. Here’s an interview with Santa’s CIO on preparations that the team up north is making for tomorrow’s festivities:

Ãƒnter Klaus is CIO of Christmas HQ, and as the mist billows round the windows and the car sets off he explains how his responsibilities centre on the NGBS (Naughty Girl & Boy System) with its billions of records.

The reality of Christmas HQ is far from the pixies and fairies wonderland described in legend. Klaus must manage the terabytes of data and facilitate the Big Day (BD) or Christmas Eve. “We have tremendous organisation, logistics and planning for each year’s timetable,” he says. “I must make sure each child gets only what their record demands.”

The size of the job is impressive and while delivery is run with Santa’s special abilities IT must rely on its own resources. “Magic is very expensive and hard to control,” says Klaus explaining how it requires technical expertise to wield magic effectively. “Things can go very wrong without the right level of support, maintenance and specialist staff.

“We recently implemented a Magic Oriented Architecture (MOA) but had enormous difficulties integrating NGBS. The project has been a major compliance exercise, but no matter what products say on the box, we’ve found there’s no silver bullet.”

Compliance is Klaus’s top item. Christmas HQ runs via many organisations world wide and each has its own requirements. Even though the enterprise is beyond any single jurisdiction they must still respond to requests from subsidiaries and pressure is escalating due to ever-more financial products given away in Christmas stockings. “Kids don’t just want chocolate and model cars,” he says. “They have sophisticated tastes we have to cater for.”