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Strategies for Dealing With IT Complexity 24 December, 2007 10:30:47
Every innovation, every business process improvement, comes with an IT complexity tax that must be paid by CIOs in time, money and sweat. Here are strategies to mitigate the increasing complexity of IT as it enables new business.Every innovation, every business process improvement, comes with an IT complexity tax that must be paid by CIOs in time, money and sweat. Here are strategies to mitigate the increasing complexity of IT as it enables new business. - +
9 Paths to Higher Performance 10 December, 2007 14:09:23
When an organization brings together talented people in a creative, collaborative environment it fosters a culture of high performance, which in turn leads to superior business resultsLike high-achieving individuals, some organizations seem to have the Midas touch. Virtually every initiative they touch earns them gold and even those that fail never seem to cost them much of anything at all - +
What Price Innovation? 05 November, 2007 13:44:31
CIOs say they want more than the traditional “your mess for less” relationship with their outsourcing providers. And the providers want to market themselves as partners in innovation. So why isn’t it happening?CIOs say they want more than the traditional "your mess for less" relationship with their outsourcing providers. And the providers want to market themselves as partners in innovation. So why isn't it happening? - +
Ticked Off at Tick the Box Mentality 04 February, 2008 13:01:15
Does your executive search firm know the difference between an MIS manager and a CIO, and if it does, can it explain that difference to its corporate clients?Does your executive search firm know its MIS managers from its elbow? Does it even know the difference between an MIS manager and a CIO, and if it does, can it explain that difference to its corporate clients? - +
Process Trip 04 February, 2008 13:07:03
Why Maritz Travel revamped key business processes — and how business and IT came together to make it workWhen Rich Phillips became COO OF Maritz Travel about two and-a-half years ago, he sat down and took a hard look at the big industry picture
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Can Macs conquer the enterprise? 11 January, 2008 10:55:53
The field is wide open for a Macintosh insurrection on the business desktop. It could happen, but probably won't. Here's why.If Apple were a football team, the New England Patriots would have had some serious competition this year.
Hummer Winblad Venture Partners was established in 1989 as the first venture capital fund to invest exclusively in software companies. These days, 12 of the 30 companies in Hummer Winblad's portfolio are SAAS ventures. We spoke with Ann Winblad, co-founding partner, to better understand the extraordinary momentum of SAAS and her company's relationship with IBM.
How did Hummer-Winblad get so heavily invested in SAAS?
A fourfold thing was going on. We had service-oriented architecture becoming real, and our belief was that the first applications that would come out of SOA would be delivered on-demand. Plus, people were using a pure LAMP [Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl/PHP/Python] stack, so new entrants didn't have to go buy a whole bunch of expensive infrastructure to build new applications. Also, true multitenant applications were being developed. And finally, we went to a subscription basis for these companies versus the old enterprise software model, so we could address the midmarket.
What was your first SAAS company?
One of our earliest investments was a company called Employease, which is outsourced benefits management. It's probably the most profitable private on-demand software company today. Employease was a great first company, because with the providers, the employers, and the employees, the application lives naturally outside the firewall.
I understand that IBM provides technology assistance and in some cases the platform for some of your companies. What else exactly can IBM bring to startup companies to help them succeed?
They can do a variety of things. First of all, they can directly bring it to their marketing organization so in over-arching campaigns that might be in platform plays. On-demand computing is a great example.
I suppose IBM can also bring them into Global Services engagements as well.
Absolutely. And they do.
Would you say that IBM is building an ecosystem similar to the AppExchange model?
They have the opportunity to build that. But if you go to their Web site now you'll find 8,000 vendors you can buy from. That's not AppExchange, that's a directory.
In selling SAAS to the enterprise, you're dealing with some pretty entrenched IT interests -- people who want to keep control of their fiefdoms and have been running things the same way for years. Does that make a lot of this stuff a business-side sell rather than an IT sell?
Not necessarily. Besides the entrenched interests, the other thing that you have is smarter customers. People say gee, you know, how much am I continuing to pay for these in-place products? I think that large vendors want us to believe that once entrenched, always entrenched. But once the meteorite hits, there are fewer dinosaurs walking the earth.
2008 CIO Summit
19th August, 2008 Four Seasons Hotel, Sydney Developed in partnership with CIO Magazine, IDC, INTEP and the CIO Executive Council.
The world of the CIO is extremely complex and diverse. Multiple priorities demand attention and decisions are needed instantly. Individual teams need to be driven towards common goals, and businesses strive to become more mobile, agile and responsive. For CIOs, the challenge never ends.
Every year the CIO Summit identifies what is top of mind for CIOs across Australia and New Zealand, and offers insight for CIO benchmarking and vendor strategic planning alike.
Recent IDC research shows that over 59% of CIO's believe that 'to achieve their business strategies, technology should be used more aggressively than today.'
Join us on August 19th to discover how this is possible with the latest technologies including Virtualisation, Web 2.0, IP Surveillance and Software as a Service (Saas).
Click here for more information.
Please email Denyse_Robertson@idg.com.au for further information.
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CIO Live Podcast #79: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires Part II 05 October, 2007 06:00:00
For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders. - +
CIO Live Podcast #78: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires 28 September, 2007 17:34:25
For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders. - +
CIO Live Podcast #77: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part III 21 September, 2007 07:00:00
Part three in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance. - +
CIO Live Podcast #76: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part II 14 September, 2007 07:00:00
Part two in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance. - +
CIO Live Podcast #75: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part I 07 September, 2007 07:00:05
Part one in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
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Best Western forced to play defense on data breach disclosure 29 August, 2008 08:08:00
Could hotel chain have done a better job of defusing story about system intrusion?The headline in this week's Glasgow Sunday Herald -- "Revealed: 8 million victims in the world's biggest cyber heist" -- was a grabber. - +
US Terror threat system crippled by technical flaws 28 August, 2008 09:53:00
US Congress charges that US$500m project to prevent another 9/11 is a complete failure.A US House subcommittee is charging that a US$500 million IT project intended to "connect the dots" on terrorists and help prevent another 9/11 is a failure; it can't even handle basic Boolean search terms, such as "and, or and not." - +
Malware infects space station laptops 28 August, 2008 08:15:00
Not the first time, says NASA; astronauts load up Norton AntiVirusMalware has managed to get off the planet and onto the International Space Station, NASA confirmed yesterday. And it's not the first time that a worm or virus has stowed away on a trip into orbit. - +
Separation of duties and IT security 28 August, 2008 09:40:00
Muddied responsibilities create unwanted risk. Kevin Coleman says auditors may start labeling poorly defined IT duties as a material deficiency.Separation of duties is a key concept of internal controls and is the most difficult and sometimes the most costly one to achieve. This objective is achieved by disseminating the tasks and associated privileges for a specific security process among multiple people. - +
How to recruit and retain the best young security employees 27 August, 2008 08:32:00
Today's youngest generation of workers, known as Generation Y, have different career goals than their parents did. What do you need to know to get them to work for you?The final installment in a series of articles about generational differences and security. Part one looked at managing workers in different age groups. Part two examined the types of security concerns that are most commonly associated with different generations in the general workforce. This article provides recruiting and retention advice for security employees.
Tumbleweed appoints O2 Networks to its Australian Channel Partner Program 29 August, 2008 12:31:00
HP ProCurve Brings Big Business Gigabit Switching Features to Small Businesses 29 August, 2008 12:00:00
GlobalConnect Provides Treatment for Healthcare Provider’s Contact Support Requirements 29 August, 2008 09:59:00
Sybase and Logica Partner To Mobilise The Supply Chain 29 August, 2008 09:47:00
New global landscape for qualitative researchers with Spanish and Chinese software releases 29 August, 2008 09:34:00
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Why Security SaaS Makes Sense Today
Corporate IT teams are waging a significant security battle on two fronts these days: stopping attacks via the Web and through email. Security SaaS can solves these problems and more. Read on to discover 7 reasons why security SaaS makes sense for your business.












