Stories by Edited by Divina Paredes

Customer experience is no longer a nice to have, it’s become an imperative, says Nicole Crump of TactixICT. So what does this mean for CIOs and their teams?

In case you think your industry isn’t in any immediate danger of disruption, consider the huge range of potentially disruptive technologies, many of which are now gaining traction. Before you panic, there are three things your organisation can do to benefit from disruption and not fall victim to it, writes Rob Stummer of IFS.

Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk are among the scientists who have raised concerns about the risk AI poses to humanity. While there genuinely is something frightening about sentient computers, they have little to do with how artificial intelligence is actually developing today or how it can be used in business, writes Bruce Aylward of Psoda

“While these warnings are scary and there genuinely is something frightening about sentient computers, they have little to do with how artificial intelligence is actually developing today or how it can be used in business.”

The category of big data should neither be rarefied as a highly specialised domain nor ghettoised as a Babel of inconsistent or impossible-to-standardise data types, argues Michael Whitehead of WhereScape.

Or, how the best defence strategy of rugby can be applied to protect New Zealand enterprises from new ‘advanced threats’

How will Kiwi businesses make sure their technology and workplace practices meet the needs of millennials entering the workforce in ever greater numbers? Michael Russell of Origin presents a five-step, five-year plan to prepare the business.

So how do you progress through these stages to become the modern CIO – earning a seat firmly at the top table? Craig Charlton of Epicor distils the findings of a new research on the CIO role.

The single biggest challenge businesses face is how to provide availability that meets user demand without breaking the bank, notes Don Williams of Veeam. He lists four steps to help CIOs can consider as they manage this challenge.

But first, it is important to decide which metrics are key for your organisation, then measure each cloud vendor against the prioritised metrics.

Would you step into an old but functioning lift that is no longer getting maintenance support from its manufacturer? That’s the question CIOs should also ask themselves when looking at IT inventory that is obsolete but still working, according to Arun Ulagaratchagan, general manager, cloud and enterprise group, Microsoft Asia Pacific.

Around the table
Nigel Bailey, group technology director, Fairfax Media

Recession and the organisation
Glenn Myers: Our focus has really been more on how do we deliver more efficiently. It’s not a case of recession driven, it’s good business practice. It has made us think carefully about what to prioritise, what is important to the organisation.

In the round:

Around the table
• Phil Brimacombe, chief information officer, healthAlliance

Around the table: