Stories about: NICE

When the negotiating team for international law firm Mallesons Stephen Jaques began bargaining for a new data centre four years ago, almost no one in the industry was anticipating that the cost of cooling and energy in co-location centres was set to skyrocket

When Craig Urizzola's company decided to make a seven-figure investment in a new ERP system, he contacted his local reseller to order hardware to run it on. "We told them exactly what we wanted and said, 'We don't need SANs or clustering or any of that,'" says Urizzola, CIO at Saladino's, a food service distributor in Fresno, Calif. "But their proposal came back with SANs and 10 more servers than we asked for. They just don't listen."

Quite frankly, I'm not a fan of cloudy weather. As a redhead with curls, clouds mean dampness and frizz, and something sleek and well defined turns into a nebulous hairball. Something sleek and well defined: now there's a laudable ambition for CIOs struggling with legacy, ERP, CRM, limited bandwidth and capacity. Most enterprises are still struggling to achieve that degree of integration, never mind incorporating Web 2.0, commercialising it effectively, and protecting brand.

This week's eWeek contains what should be a wake up call for every CIO regarding the pervasiveness and challenge that open source represents to their jobs and organizations. In the midst of an extensive interview with Jonathan Schwartz and Rich Green, Schwartz cites this anecdote, which provides dramatic evidence of the role open source plays in today's IT landscape. Here is the anecdote in its entirety:

A local power failure has left Dr Richard Sykes temporarily without electricity at his home in Islington, London. He is also being photographed to illustrate this article but the double delay in being able to talk to him affords a little time for admiring his collection of modern art and perusing his bookshelves, groaning under the weight of volumes that testify to the interests that have underpinned his career.

You'd think the words "brain drain" would strike fear into the hearts of IT managers. As the calendar has turned to 2008 -- and the oldest baby boomers are now eligible to receive Social Security -- it has become clear that growth in the number of older workers will soon surpass the growth in the number of those just starting out. In eight year's time, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, one in four workers will be 55 or older. And particularly in IT, there's not a big influx of new talent. According to the Computing Research Association, computer science enrollments dropped 14 per cent each year between 2004 and 2006.

We've all heard the line about 'realigning IT with the business', which is sort of like saying we want our 'pivot to make better passes to the shooters' -- duh. But as crazy as that sounds, it's reality -- and it isn't getting better, it's getting worse.

Sometimes, there isn't much you can do to kick-start your career. Not everyone can be lucky enough to get involved in a high-profile project at work, or to develop a talent in a technology that's suddenly in-demand. But it surprises me when IT professionals who aim to move up the career ladders don't take advantage of one resource that's a win-win solution all around: get involved in an open source project.

Tributes are flowing in for former Federal Labor Minister for Industry, Technology and Commerce, John Button, who died in his sleep on Monday night at the age of 74.

In business circles Toyota is talked of with awe. Not for its cars or well-heeled Formula One team, but because it is a manufacturer that has a policy that has lifted it from Japanese almost ran, to serious rival to Ford in Henry Ford's home, the USA.

Your budget is decided and it'll be a stretch to deliver all that's expected of you with such limited resources. Then comes the 'unfunded mandate' - that project you don't have money or staff for, but can't say no to.