Stories by Thomas Wailgum

Technological innovations in sports have had a dramatic impact on athletes and their abilities to compete. Much of that can be attributed to advances in equipment, training and the venues themselves.
But the athletes aren't the only ones who have "gained a step" from technology. Today's sporting fans have access to gluttonous amounts of statistics, news, transactions and in-depth data sources that provide visibility into every aspect of the games. In fact, it could be argued that a typical business user's "dashboard" is nowhere near as complete or easy to use as an average fan's "dashboard." How much access do business users have to real-time data about every competing company in their industry, every employee and partner of those competitors (from the CEO on down to the intern), and every single business arena they play in?

His title may be senior partner at The East Wing Search Group, but Russ Riendeau is much more than that: He's got a Ph.D. in behavioral sciences, is a motivational speaker and corporate entertainer, has authored five books on talent and career management, and is a musician (he sings and plays the guitar).

CIOs work in a world of constant communication and wave after wave of information flows — where the Extreme CIO, available 24x7x365, is always connected and always on.
According to a recent Burton Group report, however, the cumulative response from the CIO community to all of this info-insanity is: "Stop the world! I need to get off!" Writes Burton Group analyst and report author Jack Santos: "The unceasing barrage of too much information affects not only a CIO personally, but also the IT organisation and business as a whole."

Urban legends have been with us since human beings started sharing stories. The best urban legends are dramatic, unbelievable and told with such frequency that recipients assume they have to be true. There are the historic "URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL" lucrative business proposals from deposed Nigerian leaders, the horrifying heroin-contaminated hypodermic needle in the McDonald's ball play area and the albino alligators terrorizing New York City sewers.
Of course, these outlandish stories are totally false. The world of information technology is not immune from the reaches of the urban legend. Here are some of the most notable IT urban legends that have propagated over the years.

After fending off Oracle's advances since October 2007, BEA Systems acquiesced to Redwood City's latest offering of US$8.5 billion, which was nearly $2 billion more than Oracle's original October bid. CIOs and IT departments must get ready for a year of confusion, analysts say, as product sets, sales teams and engineering organizations get sorted out. But there are smart ways to cope.

John Halamka is one busy man. He's not only the CIO of Harvard Medical School and the CareGroup system of four hospitals. He's also a doctor, a husband with a 14-year-old daughter, a rock climber, a wine maker and a passionate blogger.
And thanks to his BlackBerry ad running online and in magazines such as Time and The Economist, he's now a celebrity. Halamka's spot is part of Research In Motion's "Ask someone why they love their BlackBerry" campaign, which features a wide range of people (a fashion director of Elle magazine, a chocolatier, a consultant to the Native American community) professing their undying affection. CIO.com Senior Editor Thomas Wailgum talked with Halamka about why RIM chose him, and his newfound fame and (lack of) fortune.

CIO recently obtained a copy of an RFP (request for proposal) that Claus and his elfin management team distributed to the world's top enterprise application vendors in 2007. The RFP contains never-before-seen information that details the scope of Claus's worldwide operations and his IT needs.
The proposal process was supposed to be completed by the end of last February and the system implementation started in April, which would have provided enough time to get everything ready for this Christmas season.

Though it became a global company long ago, Wal-Mart has historically run its operations from its Bentonville, Arkansas., headquarters. But management experts say the command-and-control approach practiced by many companies-which leaves little decision making to local store managers-won't cut it in today's partner-driven world.
When you are big and global, there are "more vulnerabilities and points of disruption" to your operations, says Hau Lee, the Thoma professor of operations, information and technology at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. Companies have to adjust by balancing local flexibility with centalisation.

There isn’t much about Tom Sanzone that bespeaks drama. The CIO of Credit Suisse is direct, meticulous and practical, and it doesn’t seem as if he’d suffer fools gladly — an impression partly informed by his New York accent, nearly shaven head and confident demeanour.
But ask him what virtualisation has helped him deliver to Credit Suisse, and you’ll get a dramatic answer: “Tremendous results”. He’s not just talking about savings reaped from data centre consolidation — which was what the first wave of virtualisation projects was all about. Sanzone and other leading CIOs are taking virtualisation to the next level. They’re using it to become the fast, flexible business partners that CEOs have always wanted.

It was the best of times. And then, all of a sudden, it wasn't.
"We had just gotten over Y2K. And the dotcom boom and bust. And then came...the disillusionment," recalls John Doucette, CIO of United Technologies. "It was a depressing couple of years to be in IT," says Doucette, who took over the high-tech and aerospace conglomerate's IT helm in 2000. "There wasn't that much innovation in software and hardware. Security wasn't there. People weren't focused on the business." And CIOs, who had surfed so high on the frothy Internet-driven economic waves of the late 1990s, had come crashing back to earth.

Turnaround artists are hired guns and risk takers who see themselves first and foremost as agents of change. They’ve got deep experience in IT and have the ability to come into a chaotic situation, ascertain what the business needs most, recharge a beaten-down staff and start piling up the wins — quickly.
Completely messy, chronically dysfunctional and insanely challenging: That’s the IT situation in which Turnaround CIOs usually find themselves, though the company names and locales change. And they love it.

When you first meet CIO Ron Rose, he's more than happy to tell you about the 70,000 or so things that can go horribly wrong at Priceline.com, the consumer travel company built solely on a website that gets 10 million page views a day and books nearly US$3 billion worth of travel transactions annually.

Sage Research recently announced the winners of a contest recognizing organizations that have successfully rolled out voice over IP (VOIP) systems. Here is advice from these top practitioners (which include Outrigger Hotels & Resorts and Prudential Northwest Properties).

Organization structure is one tool that CIOs wield in their perennial effort to build a better IT group. Now a new structure, the Office of the CIO, or OCIO, has gained favor in government and academic circles, and is spreading to large companies in the private sector.