Bruce F. Webster

Bruce F. Webster is an internationally recognized expert on information technology (IT). He has been an invited speaker at international IT conferences in Russia, Japan, Central America, and the Middle East. At the invitation of the US government, he has given private IT-related briefings to representatives of other nations. He has given presentations at private conferences of the World Bank, the US intelligence community, and U.S. Congressional staff. He has testified about information technology issues three separate times before Congress and has provided analysis and documents to Senate and House committees. Likewise, he has been an invited speaker and participant at public and private conferences at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Webster is a Principal at Bruce F. Webster & Associates, as well as an Adjunct Professor for the Brigham Young University Computer Science Department. He provides expert analysis in matters involving information technology, with a focus on system development, project failure, intellectual property, web and internet technologies, and software engineering. He has worked with several large corporations, providing advice on enterprise systems architecture, software technology, development methodology, and intellectual property practices. He has also consulted in several dozen legal cases in the United States, as well as in Japan and the United Kingdom. Webster has acted as both an arbitrator and as a neutral expert in IT-related litigation; he has also qualified and testified as an IT expert in federal and state court, as well as in arbitration.

Webster personally has been involved in developing, delivering, analyzing, and advising on information technology for over 45 years in a broad range of fields: e-commerce, finance, communications, commercial software, manufacturing, aerospace, and law. He has done consulting with or at a variety of companies during that time, including Fannie Mae, Sprint, Capital One, USF&G, Northrop Grumman, ARINC, Motorola, MCI, Apple Computer, Borland, NeXT, and Sun. He taught computer science for two years (1985-1987) at Brigham Young University and has been teaching there again — a class in “real-world software engineering” — since 2017.

Webster also spent more than a decade in the commercial software market, helping to start up two different software companies and to raise over $7M in venture funding for one of them. He has contributed to over a dozen commercial software products on half a dozen platforms, acting as chief architect twice. He has served as chief technical officer for two different companies.

Since 1980, Webster has written and published over 150 articles on computer industry analysis, product evaluation, and software development. Since 1989, he has authored four popular and well-received books on information technology issues while contributing to two others. In 2000, Webster authored the PricewaterhouseCoopers white paper “Patterns in IT Litigation: Systems Failure (1976-2000)” (PDF, 214KB). Webster subsequently wrote two articles based on that research, one for Mealey’s Cyber Tech Litigation Report and the other for the ABA Computer & Internet Litigation Journal. Webster wrote for two years as an IT management columnist (“Surviving Complexity“) for the online version of Baseline.

Webster has spoken at numerous US-based conferences, including: Mealey’s IT Systems Failure Conference (originator and co-chair); ABA Section on Litigation Winter Leadership Conference; Mealey’s Internet Law Conference; the Blue Cross/Blue Shield Millennium Solutions Conference; the National Association of Securities Dealers Conference; the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business Annual Management Conference; the MBA National Technology in Mortgage Banking Conference; and several of the Software Development and ObjectWorld Conferences.

Webster has been on “Special Report” (Fox News), “The News Hour with Jim Lehrer” (PBS), on other news shows on MS-NBC and Fox News, as well as in other TV shows and productions. He has appeared in news reports for NBC, CNBC, and ABC, among others, as well as a panelist in a three-hour C-SPAN broadcast. He has been cited in Newsweek, Barron’s, The Wall Street Journal, National Journal, National Review, American Banker, and a wide range of radio, magazine, newspaper, and newswire stories.

Webster is a graduate of Brigham Young University (BSCS, 1978) and did graduate work in computer science at the University of Houston/Clear Lake City. He and his wife Sandra live in Provo, Utah. He can be reached at bwebster@bfwa.com.