Business Processes

When I started in IT at insurance company MetLife in 1970, my background was as far away from insurance as you could possibly imagine. I was an engineer, and I had studied towards a doctorate in solid-state physics.

According to the Boston Consulting Group, between 1992 and 2006 around 58.3 per cent of all mergers and acquisitions (M&As) not only failed to create shareholder value but actually destroyed it, resulting in a net loss of 1.2 per cent across all transactions.

When 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

To call Clyde Thomas a high performer would be an understatement. As CIO and executive vice president of global operations and technology for eFunds, a $US600 million financial services company, Thomas logs nearly 70 hours a week on the job. He oversees five data centres in the US and two abroad, managing 450 people who serve 6000 users overall. He is responsible for the company's software engineering, call and data centres, and security. He is also building new enterprise projects in China and Eastern Europe

Social networking outlets such as MySpace and Facebook are offering new avenues of communication for corporations and governments, but are also presenting fresh challenges to CIOs deciding how best to fit them into their business processes. Dave Nikolejsin, CIO for the Government of British Columbia, discusses his own experiences thus far in the world of Web 2.0.

Meyer (Sandy) Frucher, CEO of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange (PHLX), loves a good story. He tells them easily, like one might tell a friend or spouse about the day at work. Even when he's pressed for time, he weaves a juicy plot and leaves listeners begging for the conclusion. With this in mind, it seems only natural that Frucher relies on an anecdote to explain the importance of IT in his organization.

I have a slightly unusual background in that I spent much of my time on the end-user side of the fence before setting up as a software vendor. The gulf between the vendor and the enterprise buying community can be seen by the term which software vendors use for their customers: "users". There is only one other industry that I am aware of that names its customers in the same way, and that is the narcotics industry.

That the PR hordes at Microsoft would begin the jungle drumbeat for the next version of Windows within an ace of the launch of Vista was, of course, to be expected. The company's default position whenever challenged about its latest products has always been to pique the appetite for the next version through calculated leaks, the drawing up of roadmaps, the tossing around of code names and the issuing of possible feature details. This predictable tactic is rearing its head again with a steady stream of stories appearing in the media: Google News today lists 862. The question is: why do we play along?

Back in the last century, when business and society changed more slowly, companies could afford to take their time fine-tuning their operations. Today, the marketplace rewards those companies that change most quickly

Why would someone complete medical school and residency training, then spend a decade in IT to become a CIO?