business unit

How to become a successful CIO

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 06:59:56 -0500

Unlike doctors, accountants and lawyers, the CIO is a relatively new profession. There are few master's programs that give you a degree in being a CIO and fewer training courses at the undergraduate level. So today's CIO is often flying in the dark, testing out ways to carry out a job that is becoming increasingly important at every kind of company. Here are a few ways to handle the job, though not by any means all of the ideas out there that can help you in your mission to become a great CIO:

Find the right technology partner
Build steady relationships with vendors
Get your board and executive in your corner
Keep the business unit appraised of what's going on in your shop and get their buy-in
Get your strategy down and follow it
Communicate with those above you and those under you

By employing some of these ideas, you can get your job to sing and make the CIO an integral part of your company's business. Let us know what helps you.

For more tips on being a great CIO;
- Check out this InformationWeek article

Storage is hot

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 06:59:58 -0400

IBM has purchased a storage services company to help it compete in the high-growth, high-margin software and services field. Big Blue picked up NovusCGIB, part of its strategy of becoming a larger supplier in the market. And what CIO doesn't need more storage? It's a good move for IBM to embed itself in a growing field. NovusCG will become a part of the Storage and Data Services business unit within IBM Global Technology Services. It's all part of IBM's big plans to transform itself from a legacy hardware manufacturer to a provider of software and services. NovusCG's focus on storage software. Clearly, IBM is reading the tea leaves and focusing on the future

For more on Big Blue's strategy:
- check out this article from InformationWeek

eBay's secret to innovation

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 06:59:57 -0400

Just how do you maintain a competitive edge, stimulate innovation and align IT with key business objectives? James Barrese, VP of systems and architecture at eBay tackles some of these issues in a think piece for InformationWeek. His credentials for offering some prescriptions are impressive. eBay serves 233 million users and is growing at a rate of 130,000 users per day. It hosts 100 million concurrent listings, which are updated at a rate of 500 times per second and are searched 3,800 times per second.

So, how do they do it? The key is to establish global, automated and interdisciplinary solution development teams. The company has moved away from the more traditional "waterfall" solution development cycle in which you start with a business concept, create a list of requirements, and hand them off to engineers for implementation.

The technology group at eBay has been restructured into global, cross-functional teams, which include business-unit representatives, a product management group, technology staff, and customer service representatives. In addition, these teams are physically integrated. Barrese writes that the company rolled out the new process and organizations in the first quarter of this year with positive feedback from both the technical and business teams.

For all the details on eBay and innovation:
- learn more in the InformationWeek article

Survey: The federated model wins

Sun, 20 May 2007 20:01:39 -0400

According to an ongoing survey by the Society of Information Management, IT organizations that follow a federated model are probably better aligned with the business. Federated models combine the best of centralized and decentralized models, centralizing common services and assigning services specific to a business unit to those units. To make the federated approach work, all parties involved must understand the value of IT and must appreciate the ability to enable autonomy in services that are directly related to the business and its objectives, and to centralize common IT functions such as infrastructure. That happens through IT communicating and partnering with the business, doing strategic planning, and practically demonstrating the value of IT while placing governance controls on it.

Read more about the federated model:
- read the article at CIO Update

Up-and-coming IT jobs

Tue, 08 May 2007 20:01:39 -0400

Your IT department probably has a host of application developers, IT managers and programmers, but does it have an information steward? How about a mobile application developer? The IT department of the future will have both of these, and more. The information steward will determine who has read, write and copy access to information and will be in charge of how information is secured, backed up and archived. The service delivery manger will deliver all components of a company's technology to a business unit or group of users as a service. The service delivery manager is part project manager, part application developer and part contracting specialist. The technology-business relationship manager helps the CIO understand the business perspective and serve business customers better while explaining technology capabilities to business executives. The outsourcing relationship manager is responsible for holding outsourcing vendors to their agreements and fixing problems when they arise. The mobile application developer pulls together the latest technologies to support traveling executives, telecommuters and other virtual workers.

Learn more about the IT jobs of the future:
- read the article at ComputerWorld Malaysia

Responding to a data breach

Sun, 22 Apr 2007 20:01:36 -0400

If your organization has been compromised, create a plan and form a committee consisting of representatives from each business unit, the corporate attorney, the corporate compliance officer or equivalent, a public relations expert, and someone on the CFO's team. The group should first find out what laws govern your industry and state. Then begin the customer notification process, acting quickly. Then start the breach containment process by making sure the breach is not still open. Also, decide if you are going to try to preserve the evidence. Finally, decide whether to involve law enforcement. That decision is typically made by the organization's legal counsel early in the process.

To read more about recovering from data breaches:
- read the article at ComputerWorld

Related Article:
Recovering from a cyber attack. Report

The business impact of IT investments

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 20:01:39 -0400

Determining whether your company is getting enough value from its IT investments is one of the most difficult things to measure. Making sure that you're measuring accurately means taking advantage of benefit realization--the proactive forecasting, management and measurement of the financial, operational and strategic benefits being realized. For effective benefit realization, start by building selectively, piloting with a particular business unit and setting initiatives. Next, secure business co-ownership by ensuring that senior leaders collaborate in choosing IT measurements and soliciting input from corporate finance. Regularly review and adjust performance measurements to prevent them from getting stale or obsolete. Demand business accountability for funding and delivering IT results. Be selective with benefit realization metrics, focusing on a few performance measures instead of a long list. And make sure you know what results really matter. Also, use metrics that are business-relevant and matter to stakeholders, and make sure to measure the benefits of the benefit realization process itself.

Read more about benefit realization:
- read the article at Optimize

Is it the end of the line for CIOs?

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:01:39 -0400

While the role of CIO is of chief importance in many companies, some companies are actually eliminating it, citing a desire to roll the tasks into another business unit and other strategic and financial reasons. But eliminating the role of CIO can harm long-term IT planning and vendor relationships by pushing the responsibility down instead of up. CEOs don't have the skill set, and in many cases, neither do IT managers. Eliminating the role also can cause the collapse of strategic technology planning. To make sure your job isn't on the cutting block, be more assertive so that senior management fully understands the scope of your work. But take heart: cutting out the role of the CIO isn't common and likely won't result in a significant trend.

Read more about companies eliminating the role of CIO:
- read the article in Australian IT

A brand-new IT age is dawning

Sun, 19 Nov 2006 19:01:38 -0500

With the New Year just six weeks away, here comes a encouraging report on how today's IT enterprise will quickly morph into an invigorated, innovative business unit, taking a more critical role in making business happen. It's tied to a new growth cycle that's full of new Web-based technologies such as collaborative Wikis and marketing applications. IT will shift from serving as an end-user support base to serving as the policy driver, when it comes to data management.

For more on the transformation of IT:
- read the article at BPM Today

Case Study: State CTO cleans up a huge mess

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 20:01:37 -0400

Indiana's CTO admits that when he was brought in to revamp the state's IT agency and infrastructure, he had never seen such a messed up scenario. But with the support of the governor, Gerry Weaver has consolidated services and hardware, re-negotiated contracts and has saved the state $25 million in the process. The very first thing the tech leader did was build a service excellence plan and mapped out 20 top service areas. In just 18 months he revamped the IT organization into a streamlined business unit.

For more on the state IT revamp:
- check out the NetworkWorld article