Hail the conquering hero..

You know the IT industry is getting mature when delegates start talking about the good old days when passwords were the ultimate and mainframe security was the main issue.

So when Gartner’s Victor Wheatman took the stage he was greeted with cheers and the geek equivalent of Shakespeare’s “Hail stout yeoman, well met” – in this case more shouts of “Where’s my client server software you dog!”

But the excitement of seeing someone who’s fun, intelligent and has seen it all for the last twenty years can’t be feigned. We may be a young industry by the standards of some but there’s an esprit de corps among those in the know that recognises someone who spots the trends before they happen.