Tuesday | 14 October, 2008
CIO
Opinions
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    How Better Software Can Save the World 13 October, 2008 13:18:00

    Achieving a quantum leap in IT productivity isn't merely possible, says Adam Kolawa, author of an upcoming book on IT productivity. It is absolutely essential.
    About 30 years ago, I tried to calculate the mass of a glueball, a highly mysterious subatomic particle composed entirely of gluons, which are the infinitesimally tiny elementary particles that make it possible for protons and neutrons to stick together in atomic nuclei. As you can imagine, the calculations were extremely complex and required an enormous amount of computing power.
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    Sustainability is Not an Add-on or a Departmental Issue 30 June, 2008 15:04:24

    Like security and compliance, sustainability is pervasive, creeping into every corner of the organisation, the CIO, will be right at the heart of its planning and implementation.
    A curious phenomenon has emerged with environmental action within organisations. For once, the staff appear to be ahead of the business.
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    IT full of 'ducks'? Declare open season 22 April, 2008 09:25:01

    Ducks are employees who have a detrimental effect on productivity, and are dangerous to the health of your organisation
    Every organization has some "ducks." Ducks are employees who have a detrimental effect on productivity. Their work is consistently substandard, they rarely meet deadlines, and their skills are out of date. They hate change, resist taking responsibility, and blame their failures on co-workers. They constantly complain about their projects, their teammates, their workloads and their managers. They stifle innovation by shooting down new proposals, claiming that changes "just can't be done."
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    Are Users Getting a Good Deal? 31 March, 2008 14:19:18

    What we can do to build clients' understanding of the value of IT
    All who remember how painful the budget process was understand that a CIO's negotiating power is, to a great extent, determined by how well clients understand the value they get for the money. There are three components to the concept of value: understanding exactly what IT delivers, believing that the cost is fair and evaluating the contribution of those deliverables to the bottom line.
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    Why You Need More Than One Software Vendor 14 January, 2008 12:58:31

    The conventional wisdom is that it's always better to have fewer software vendors - or even a single vendor - to manage than it is to use multiple vendors.
    Lining up a single vendor to supply most of your software seems easy but isn't always smart, says an IT management expert. With fewer vendors to choose from these days, it's best to hedge your bets
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    Big Iron is back 15 August, 2007 09:52:20

    Server farms provide the platform for big iron's return from the cold
    After some two decades of having its market share eroded by migration to server-based applications, "big iron" is back. And, irony of ironies, the catalyst for the comeback is the need to deal with server farms that have grown out of control.
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    Selling IT to Business 31 May, 2007 15:22:53

    To position networking as a strategic asset, you need to do three things. First, understand in your particular organization whether the primary priority is less expensive, more, new or forced dollars — and in what order those priorities go
    In recent columns, I've discussed the need for business to align with IT. Yes, you've got that right - my point is that successful businesses need to ask how they can best leverage IT as a strategic asset.
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    Zapped! 03 April, 2007 12:33:13

    Rising energy costs are short-circuiting performance gains from faster, cheaper servers. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to keep your costs in line
    Server prices are dropping, performance is increasing, and IT is consuming less space. So why is total cost of ownership headed through the roof?
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    Higher Standards 06 March, 2007 12:13:57

    Success with standards: or how to avoid "qualicide"
    In the last two decades, we have seen the IS organization mature in its approach to software development.
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    A Formula for Alignment 06 March, 2007 12:21:39

    Take an equal measure of business experts and IT professionals. Mix well. And watch IT-enabled processes flourish
    Why would someone complete medical school and residency training, then spend a decade in IT to become a CIO?
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    Financial Disciplines 07 February, 2007 15:25:03

    IS is being called on to provide a wider range of business services. Its financial approaches need to evolve as well
    "Budgets are not something I agonize over any more" said one CIO contributor to some of our recent research. Many CIOs have to invest time and political capital to hone their IS budgets because the fact is that annual budgets are today's near-universal means of providing oversight, transparency and direction for most IS organizations. This particular CIO at least has got budgets right.
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  • Gates says goodbye to Microsoft

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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.
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    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.
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    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.
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    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.
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    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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    Cutting Through the Spin of Recent Vulnerability Disclosures 13 October, 2008 10:53:00

    The FUD surrounding the ClickJacking and TCP/IP vulnerabilities has the world seemingly frozen in fear. But once you cut through the spin, the vulnerabilities aren't all that they were made out to be.
    There are a few highly publicised vulnerabilities at the moment which haven't completely been disclosed and which, it is claimed, could threaten the whole Internet as-we-know-it. Only, when the vulnerabilities are finally disclosed, it seems that the whole incident has been somewhat Chicken Little.
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    PCI app security: Who's guarding the data bank? 13 October, 2008 11:09:00

    Compliance strategies for PCI's new application security requirements
    While Willy Sutton never really said it, the truth is that people rob banks because that is where the money is. Today's criminals don't walk into banks with loaded guns and get-away drivers. Rather they connect from a remote location using a browser and are armed with hacking tools and spyware.
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    Data-center security tools to not overlook 10 October, 2008 11:37:00

    With the rise of security suites, it's time to consider some emerging security tools and rethink others
    Protecting a corporate data center is like trying to keep an elephant safe from a swarm of flies. Despite your best efforts, bites happen. As the staples of security -- such as firewalls, antivirus software, spam and spyware filters -- come together in suites of products that allow for sophisticated management, there are other security tools either emerging or worth a rethink.
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    IBM, Secret Service, others study identity/cybercrime issues 09 October, 2008 10:09:00

    Center for Applied Identity Management Research organization teams experts in criminal justice, financial crime, biometrics, cybercrime and cyberdefense, data protection, homeland security and national defense.
    IBM, LexisNexis and the Secret Service are among a group of corporations, government agencies and academic institutions that has formed to study and help solve identity management challenges around cybercrime, terrorism and narcotics trafficking.
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    Strange account management at Amazon 09 October, 2008 09:51:00

    A careless login led to the discovery of some strange ccount management practices at one of the Internet's largest retailers.
    Via the RISKS mailing list comes an interesting tale of poor online account management at a major online retailer. According to Graham Bennett, accounts with Amazon display an odd behaviour that doesn't seem to have attracted much attention in the past.
CIO Webcast Innovation #8 - What are the biggest roadblocks to IT's involvement in innovation at your company?
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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
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Sign up to the CIO Live email
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