Features
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Adobe launches hosted services, adds Flash to Acrobat 03 June, 2008 09:02:44
Adobe to launch Web site offering users free hosted services for document creation, sharing and storageAdobe this week is set to unveil the next version of its Adobe Acrobat software, which adds support for the company's Flash multimedia technology. The company also plans to launch a new Web site offering users free hosted services for document creation, sharing and storage.
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Return on investment (ROI) metrics drove more IT project decisions in the past year than did total cost of ownership (TCO), an exclusive CIO survey finds. Which metric is used more often signals how the IT department is viewed inside your company.
Devising ways to show the value of corporate technology has occupied CIOs for about as long as the 25-odd years the profession has existed. While measures such as internal rate of return and economic value added are applied with mixed success, ROI and TCO remain stalwarts.
An ROI calculation quantifies both the costs and the expected benefits of a specific project over a specific timeframe, usually three to five years. TCO, on the other hand, includes just costs.
"When you think TCO you don't see IT as a business driver or an asset that can increase revenue, profit or customer value," says Anthony Giannino, a consultant at Cornerstone Solutions, a value-added reseller in Chicago. Giannino was CIO at pharmaceutical distributor Alliance Wholesale from 2002 to 2007.
In an online survey of 225 technology managers, 59 percent said that ROI influenced whether they pursued a project in the past 12 months, compared to 41 percent who reported TCO justified the decision. In the coming 12 months, the relative difference in importance between the two measurements is more pronounced: 62 percent of respondents favoured ROI compared to TCO's 38 percent.
"ROI has to be the answer. TCO only looks at one side of the equation," says Wayne Sadin, CIO at Loomis USA and a survey respondent who chose ROI.
TCO, Sadin says, works well for must-do infrastructure projects, such as upgrading an e-mail system. An IT leader might present options to other senior managers that compare the cost of adding one e-mail feature or another. But e-mail doesn't typically uncover new sources of revenue or other topline growth opportunities that ROI can measure, he says.
Ken Harris, CIO at Shaklee Corp., agrees. He chose ROI in the survey, too. Although TCO has a place, extensive use of ROI signals how sophisticated a company is about IT's strategic importance, Shaklee says. "There has been for awhile a shift going on toward more IT projects that impact topline than that are just focused on cost savings," he says. Harris has also been a CIO at Gap Inc, Nike and Pepsico
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).
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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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Citibank debit card fraud highlights ATM vulnerabilities 08 July, 2008 08:17:53
'Back-end servers are kind of a joke,' and the trouble doesn't end thereMalicious ATM intrusions, such as the late-winter breach that resulted in the compromise of Citibank debit card data, are not at all surprising given the vulnerable state of many of the servers and other components involved in processing such transactions, according to some industry representatives. - +
How to not have your Web site hacked like Sony's 07 July, 2008 08:23:22
A SQL injection attack was used to plant malicious code on pages of two popular Sony Playstation games - SingStar Pop and God of War, reports security company Sophos. Hundreds of Web pages from other businesses have also been compromised.The US Sony Playstation Web site is the latest high-profile victim of a hacker attack on business sites that's spreading malware at breakneck pace, says a security vendor. - +
AG launches review into national e-security 07 July, 2008 11:07:49
Howard's security agenda dragged over coals.A review of Australia's top e-security projects lead by the Attorney-General's Department has been launched to scrutinise the Howard's government's $73 million E-Security National Agenda. - +
Selling zero-day exploits has a down side 07 July, 2008 10:16:36
There is an ongoing argument about the ethics of selling 0-day exploits on the open market: It helps if you don't sell exploits targeting the company you work for.Information Security can sometimes be a funny field to work in. Some days it seems as if anybody with their hands on unpublished exploit code can sell it for all they're worth, and others it seems that they are set to become the target of law enforcement and the companies the code affects. It does help if you don't work for one of the companies that is set to be affected by the exploits you are trying to sell and aren't trying to bootstrap a competing company in the process. - +
'I have a lost laptop horror story for you' 30 June, 2008 10:08:14
The devil of identity theft is in the details that follow...The devil of identity theft is in the details that follow: Russ Jones tells a tale of woe that isn't particularly dramatic -- or rare -- and yet it's exactly the kind of story that worries me enough to ignore my better judgment and buy identity-theft protection from my insurance provider.
WD’s New My Book® Mirror Edition™ External Hard Drive Provides The Safest Place For Valuable Personal Content 09 July, 2008 15:00:00
Zepto release the Mythos, the 2nd installment in the Centrino 2 refresh 09 July, 2008 12:05:00
Symantec Data Protection Solutions Preferred by Users and Industry Experts 09 July, 2008 11:56:00
Frost & Sullivan: Australia’s Mobile Advertising Spend to Grow 300 Per Cent in 2008 09 July, 2008 07:57:00
DIARY ALERT - Symantec data leakage prevention seminars 08 July, 2008 17:20:00
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SOA Governance: Rule your SOA
SOA Governance is no side issue, but rather the key factor to overall SOA and business success! Effective SOA Governance supports your IT organization, aligns business and IT, and provides the foundation for compliance management.
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