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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 - +
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? - +
How to Get Real About Strategic Planning 04 February, 2008 12:50:59
Everyone agrees that having a strategic plan for IT is a good thing but most CIOs approach the process with fear and loathing. In fact, the majority of CIOs (and the enterprises they work for) are faking it when it comes to strategic planning. Isn't it time we all got real?Oh, it must be nice to be the CIO of a FedEx or a GE or a Credit Suisse. Places where IT and the business are so tightly aligned you can barely tell the two apart. Where corporate leaders understand that IT is a strategic asset and support it as such - +
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
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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.
Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell hardware, software and services. Newsletter Subscription
First Steps to a Customer Embrace
A necessary early step on the path to customer alignment is unified customer information that is filtered through linked databases. When individual product and geographic groups have their own information systems, including ordering and fulfilment, the firm is unable to coordinate its offering. The consolidation of information at the point of customer contact also makes it easier to separate the front-end customer solution units (at stage four) from the back-end product infrastructure.
Good performance metrics systems are also critical to success - they breed cooperation across formerly independent units that all had different goals and rewards. For example, Enterprise Rent-A-Car uses an IT system to rank its 5000 branches with two customer survey questions, one about the quality of their rental experience and the other about the likelihood that they would rent from the company again. GE Plastics uses systems that track delivery performance so it can reduce variability in delivery date - its number-one customer satisfaction metric.
Mismatched capabilities, fragmented information systems and inadequate execution can all undermine the realignment process. The good news is that these obstacles are familiar and were overcome by the organizations we studied. (Other issues, such as customer resistance to the new model and internal cultural resistance, proved much more intractable among the studied companies.)
Because it takes longer to reorganize the organization than to plan a change in strategy, there is an unrealistic expectation about how quickly the move to a market-focused organization can be accomplished. Those who are successful are able to factor the inevitable challenges into the overall strategy transition plan and don't try to push it faster than the impediments allow. CIOs can play a critical role in success by clearly outlining the implementation realities in the time line - but must also deftly avoid becoming the scapegoat for delays beyond IT's control.
Compared to this challenge, the implementation will probably seem like the easy part.
George Day is a professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He can be reached at dayg@wharton.upenn.edu
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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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DNS error brings Sophos antivirus updates to a halt 05 September, 2008 13:40:00
Optus, Internode and Equinix affected among others.A sporadic Domain Name Server (DNS) error has blocked Sophos anti-virus updates around the world. - +
Information security governance: Centralized vs. distributed 05 September, 2008 10:15:00
Should security policies, procedures and processes be managed within a central body, or distributed at an individual level? You need to find the middle ground.The management of information risk has become a significant topic for all organizations, small and large alike. But for the large, multi-divisional organization, it poses the additional challenge of determining how to deploy an information security governance program among what are often disparate business units. Should the policies, procedures, and processes that define the program be developed and managed within a central, corporate body? Or perhaps responsibility would be better placed at the individual unit level? Is there a workable middle-ground? - +
Ouch! Security pros' worst mistakes 04 September, 2008 08:05:00
We've all done regrettable things on the job, but does any valuable wisdom come of it? Four security pros candidly explain their biggest blunders and what they learned in the processIt was a mistake so bad the person who made it asked that his name and company not be mentioned here. Let's call him Frank. - +
Security ROI: Fact or Fiction? 03 September, 2008 08:32:00
Bruce Schneier says ROI is a big deal in business, but it's a misnomer in security. Make sure your financial calculations are based on good data and sound methodologies.Return on investment, or ROI, is a big deal in business. Any business venture needs to demonstrate a positive return on investment, and a good one at that, in order to be viable. - +
Information Security and the Importance of Context 01 September, 2008 10:00:00
Those entrusted with information security must raise their contextual awarenessWhen the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was first created, it created a sudden need for tens of thousands of screeners. Getting a job as an airport screener was a pretty easy process. It seemed as though if you had a pulse, you were in. Jump forward to 2008 and becoming a screener is a bit harder as the TSA has instituted background checks, has upped the educational requirement to include a high school diploma or GED, and added other significant requirements.
Viva la Verticals! Key to Vendor Growth is Through Vertical Market Opportunities, Says IDC 05 September, 2008 11:05:00
F-Secure delivers fastest protection in the online world 04 September, 2008 16:50:00
Rogue security apps dominate Fortinet's Aug 2008 IT threat report 04 September, 2008 16:00:00
IntraPower Signs Deal with Australia’s Largest Service Station and Convenience Store Network 04 September, 2008 10:07:00
TANDBERG Begins Desktop Videoconferencing Roll-Out at New England Credit Union 03 September, 2008 16:01:00
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Revolutionising Back-up and Recovery
Rapid adoption of virtual server technology, and the challenges associated with the backup and recovery of ever-growing stores of information is causing a number of IT managers to reevaluate their data protection strategies. New backup and recovery methods which use data de-duplication technology to reduce capacity and network bandwidth requirements are being deployed to keep up with explosive data growth, shrinking backup windows, compliance initiatives and security concerns. Read on to find out more.
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