it strategy - News, Features, and Slideshows

From securing IoT to retraining IT talent to finding new revenue streams, CIOs have more than their share of concerns keeping them up at night

It is important to develop an IT strategy harnessing cloud-based innovation without stifling it, writes Daniel Lund of Accenture NZ.

If there's anything Cal Henderson knows about, it's scaling technology to keep up with extremely rapid growth.

According to a report by the Project Management Institute (PMI), Managing Change in Organizations: A Practice Guide, "Trust is identified as particularly important in obtaining support for and participation in change efforts. Executives and employees see change differently: (a) senior managers typically see change as an opportunity for both the business and themselves; and (B) employees typically see change as disruptive, intrusive, and likely to involve loss. When managing change, it's essential to identify the key issues, such as loss of turf, attachment, meaning, future, competency-based, and/or control."

Back in 1980, the woman who now runs the data center at State Street Bank started her career there by pricing a mutual fund in a ledger book. That process would get automated as the bank became a computerized enterprise. Today, she can connect State Street's systems with those of customers and partners and produce sophisticated reports to let customers analyze the mutual funds they might buy. That's the digital enterprise.

Rogue IT, a term used to describe something as commonplace as an employee bringing a smartphone to work or using a cloud-based service to back up files, exists for many reasons. Sometimes it's because the software offered by a company doesn't offer enough features -- maybe an employee can't send an attachment to a client so they turn to Gmail or Dropbox. Other times, it's simply a result of technology's place in our everyday lives -- most people don't think twice about using their smartphone on the company Wi-Fi.

The newest buzzword in IT is digital enterprise – a company with all-digital customer interactions, processes, jobs and information that's fast and easy to access. A panel of CIOs and a CMO at the recent CIO Perspectives Chicago event to talk about how companies are becoming fully digital and addressing the challenges associated with it.

The term "shadow IT" has become a bugbear for IT organizations in recent years, an unknown that brings to mind security vulnerabilities or even suggests IT's creeping irrelevance to the business. But CBS Interactive CIO Steve Comstock says that's the wrong way to think of shadow IT. Instead, he says, IT should view shadow IT as an opportunity to understand the business and how to be an actual partner that understands the business's needs.

Microsoft is pledging dramatic improvements to its notoriously complex enterprise licensing, but experts are skeptical about the potential impact of the plan.

Last week's OpenWorld conference made on thing clear: Oracle remains committed to its next-generation Fusion Applications but massive growth in the product line is probably not around the corner.