Stories about: Take Two

Fiona Balfour had taken on what many people saw as the biggest CIO challenge in the country when she accepted the role of Telstra CIO in January 2006, just as her contract as Qantas CIO was drawing to an end. In February 2007 she resigned from Telstra for professional reasons

Service-oriented architecture, or SOA, has moved from buzzword of the moment to a concept that has absorbed the attention of CIOs at enterprises large and small (but mainly large). According to our State of the CIO 2007, 19 percent of local respondents were already working on their SOA, 15 percent were planning to start this year and 22 percent defined it as a long-term goal

To call Clyde Thomas a high performer would be an understatement. As CIO and executive vice president of global operations and technology for eFunds, a $US600 million financial services company, Thomas logs nearly 70 hours a week on the job. He oversees five data centres in the US and two abroad, managing 450 people who serve 6000 users overall. He is responsible for the company's software engineering, call and data centres, and security. He is also building new enterprise projects in China and Eastern Europe

Boards are important. They exert significant influence over the enterprise on behalf of shareholders and stakeholders. It's easy to say that CIOs must build board-level business acumen. After all, as board interest in IT grows, so CIOs must master the critical skill of interacting well with board members. But how?

Having implemented a fast digital-analogue IP network, Bathurst Regional Council decided VoIP would cut costs, improve collaboration and let the local government authority use existing infrastructure.

Knowledge-intensive companies are focusing on a mix of measures to enable more effective human capital accounting.

Too many business leaders have little faith in IT's ability to deliver value. To save themselves - and their businesses - CIOs must change that negative perception into a positive belief in IT as a strategic partner

The US Defense Information Systems Agency is aggressively enhancing its current end-to-end information transport system to support the Pentagon's controversial dreams of establishing its own Internet - a $US200 billion Global Information Grid.

It's the best kept secret for success: Marketing IT's achievements will boost its credibility, create transparency and might even help win instant approval for your next $2 million project

Weblogs - or 'blogs' - are not just for Internet pundits. They're valuable tools that IT managers can use to improve company communications internally and externally