As usual, my son got a huge amount of Easter eggs from family and friends this year. The volume of chocolate, variety of eggs, and velocity of eating them always amazes me. I think my son probably eats more chocolate over the Easter weekend than during the rest of the year put together. I’m sure many other children must be the same. Easter and Xmas (with those lovely selection boxes) must obviously create spikes in demand for chocolate.

I’ve been thinking about IT change recently. Last week, I ate out at one of my favourite village pubs. They do an awesome mixed grill and it goes really well with a couple of pints of Guinness on a Saturday lunchtime. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as good as usual. Everybody has a bad day but, that aside, what could have happened? I found out afterwards from a friend that they had recently changed the chef. This obviously had a really negative impact on the quality of the food they served.

New Year has only just passed and then along comes Valentine’s Day. Another cracking excuse……not that we need much of one......to open a bottle of Champagne. Unfortunately, it all went a bit wrong this year and the cork flew out violently leaving a real mess. It really took me by surprise because I followed my usual rigorous champagne opening process. Yes. I have a process. Sad, I know.

You can’t write a blog in January without reference to Xmas. And, as usual, my blog is about eating and drinking. Like many of you, my family did a lot of hosting over the holidays. And guests arrived with all sorts of wine. Red, white, rose, sparkling, French, Italian, New World. But interestingly a few people bought boxes of wine. I don’t know what the current wine connoisseur’s thinking is about boxes of wine. But the convenience, flexibility and ease of use intrigued me. The big strong box on the kitchen table ensured that wine was always easily accessible (literally on tap).

When I go for a meal in a nice restaurant, I expect a good customer experience. The ingredients that constitute this (pardon the pun) are quite obvious. I expect good food and good service from the waiting staff for example.

I often speak and blog using food as a metaphor for the value that an IT performance system brings to the business. This time, I’m going to go the opposite way and use a sport theme.   The London 2012 Games have passed, and were a huge success. And for the last 2 weeks I kept hearing the motto for the Games.  The motto is “Citius, Altius, Fortius”, which is Latin for "Faster, Higher, Stronger".

I love the simplicity of this motto in summarising the objectives of the Games. And I take the same approach when speaking to customers, partners, analysts and the press.