• Salesforce.com shakes up Standard support plan features

  By Chris Kanaracus | 09 February, 2012 08:37

  Salesforce.com has made a series of changes to its support services that include the removal of certain features from the Standard tier, but which the company says overall will provide a better experience for customers.

• SAP community portal launch date still unclear due to bugs

  By Chris Kanaracus | 07 February, 2012 03:45

  Serious technical problems that have delayed the rollout of an upgrade to SAP's community portal are persisting, to the point where the company is no longer specifying a launch date.

• How to make IT irreplaceable

  By Niel Nickolaisen | 27 January, 2012 11:12

  We all know that, given the availability of hosted software and cloud options, going around IT is easier than ever. So how can we make sure that our IT service customers become our biggest fans and start to think of IT as irreplaceable?

• How IT helped shape UL's new business strategy

  By John Gallant | 27 January, 2012 10:22

  Lots of people make New Year's resolutions, using the turning of a calendar page as a spur to change. But for Underwriters Laboratories' CIO Christian Anschuetz, January 1 marked the beginning of a profound transformation -- one that he and his team have helped envision and enable. As the ball dropped in Times Square to mark the start of 2012, UL -- the product testing and certification company that has been ensuring safe products for over a century -- transformed from a non-profit organization to a for-profit company in the U.S., with a focus on delivering new products and services to its global customer base. In this first installment of the IDG Enterprise CIO Interview Series, Anschuetz spoke with IDGE Chief Content Officer John Gallant about IT's role in shaping and supporting this business change and what it means for him and his organization. Anschuetz, who worked for years in the advertising industry, described why embracing consumer technology is critical to 'amplify human ability' and how IT should be measured for its success in driving customer value and revenue. He explained why he holds up Amazon.com as UL's 'metaphorical competitor' and why 'big data' without 'big discretion' will lead to 'big failure'.

• Why pricing should be done on more than just instinct

  By Maryfran Johnson | 27 January, 2012 09:58

  Sometimes complexity is our friend. We tend to forget that in the barrage of talk about simplicity that surrounds us these days (blame it on the election year). Yet easy answers to complex problems are always, as H.L. Mencken once observed, "neat, plausible, and wrong."

• Working with HR - Part 2

  By Tim Mendham | 18 August, 2011 11:37

  Stephanie Christopher, national director of SHL Australia New Zealand, a company which assists companies — including recruitment firms — in their recruitment activities, says that for the more technical positions HR has to fill, “it would lean toward the line manager for advice; it would be the line manager who would have final say”.

• Working with HR - Part 1

  By Tim Mendham | 17 August, 2011 13:50

  Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: “Managers aspire to be strategic, but they are required to fulfil their duties as a functional expert.”

• The leadership formula: IQ + EQ +SQ - EGO - Part 3

  By Darren Horrigan | 04 July, 2011 10:14

  Yvette Vignando has been working for 11 years as an executive coach specialising in emotional intelligence. She describes EI as her soapbox issue. Vignando says people often arrive to executive management after many years in a technical or semi-technical role, but rarely with any management or leadership training.

• The leadership formula: IQ + EQ +SQ - EGO

  By Darren Horrigan | 23 June, 2011 12:34

  Imagine your four-year-old self in a room with an adult who offers you a marshmallow. As you reach for the sweet, she says if you wait while she runs an errand, you can have two when she returns. She departs, and leaves behind the marshmallow. Do you weaken, or hold out for double the treat? Psychologists would have us believe that the children who sit tight are showing early signs of high achievement in later life. They say the ability to delay gratification is a master skill; a triumph of reason over impulse. Some claim such self-control is one of the five elements of superior emotional intelligence, a main ingredient of leadership.

• UWS farewells public service veteran

  By James Hutchinson | 15 March, 2011 17:08

  After 20 years at the helm of information systems at the University of Western Sydney, IT director Mick Houlahan will retire this week. The trials of the past two decades, however, are likely to retain their mark on his for some time.

Whitepapers about CIO role

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  The Pathways ICT Leadership Development Program Brochure and Curriculum 2012

  Developed by the CIO executive Council, Pathways is a unique, flexible, self-managed, self-paced 12-month CIO designed and delivered professional development program that brings together best practices, thought leadership and business insights for today’s most promising ICT professionals.

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  Pathways Advanced ICT Leadership Development Program Brochure and Course Outline 2012

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  Pathways Advanced Course Outline 2012

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  Pathways Business Brochure 2012