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News

• Virtualisation wars heat up again

  The virtualisation marketing wars that heated up the summer competition among VMware, Microsoft and Citrix, then dampened and cooled with the winter weather, are heating up again.

• The right stuff 03032009

  “The data for my reports was on hand, but there was no automated way to generate the output I needed.”
  David Hurst was in just this situation while working on a complex enterprise architecture project at a large multinational company in the US.

• A proactive move pays off

  Financial services group Suncorp has just completed a major desktop integration project across 50 locations in New Zealand, following its merger last year with Promina.
  The infrastructure project used Agile delivery principles more commonly associated with software development.

• Obstacles to innovation

  Guy Kawasaki is busy. He's a founding partner of seed-stage and early-stage venture capital fund Garage Technology Ventures, co-founder of "online magazine rack" Alltop, and author of nine books, including Reality Check and Rules for Revolutionaries. And if you follow him on Twitter (and more than 19,000 people do), you will probably realize the truth of his words-that he's discovered a way to use Twitter as a weapon.

• Forward thinking security

  Early this year, international financial services group Credit Suisse kick-started its worldwide proactive information security strategy, called the Security Operations Centre (SOC) program.
  Credit Suisse, which provides private banking, investment banking, asset management and insurance services worldwide, is active in more than 50 countries and employs about 50,000 people.

• Five can't miss vendor negotiation tips

  These are tough times for IT. There are less people and resources to get things done, budgets are shrinking and everyone still expects the same levels of service and functionality. Something has to give. With budgets being so constrained it's even more important than ever to get the best value for every dollar spent. Even in this tough, budget conscious, economy there are still some purchases that must be made, services that have to be paid for and maintenance contracts that have to be renewed. So how do you ensure that you are getting the best deals possible from your vendors?

• Q&A with IBM's CIO

  Mark Hennessy speaks candidly on transforming the IT organization at IBM, fostering a culture of innovation, managing IT during the financial crisis, maximizing the value of social networking tools, and taking advantage of an imminent technological game-changer.
  How are you, as a CIO, responding to the current difficult financial situation on an immediate and longer term basis?

• Doing better with less

  “It’s not about doing more with less, but rather doing ‘better with less’,” notes John Brand, research director for IT industry analyst firm Hydrasight, on the key issue facing CIOs in the coming year.
  His comments stem from the results of Hydrasight surveys among CIOs across Australia and New Zealand completed in late 2008, in which CIOs shared their perception on their roles, where they are heading in the next 12 months and their barriers to success.

• ‘Think like a CFO’

  How does your CFO view ICT? What is the best way to get their attention? Richard Paik regularly talks to CFOs across industries as director of finance, Microsoft New Zealand. He shares his insights on CIO-CFO relationships.
  Be key partners: CFOs are feeling a lot of pressure in today’s economy. As the market retracts and companies fight for a seemingly smaller pie, we’re asked to help grow the business, improve productivity and drive compliance, all with fewer resources. CIOs are a key partner in enabling us to be successful.

• Breaking down barriers

  The desire to see information technology align with the goals of the business it serves seems as old as the IT industry itself. The fact that this is still talked about indicates how little progress has been made.
  The importance of aligning IT with the business is even more vital when implementing service-oriented architectures. The idea of breaking up the deployment of technology into discreet interoperable services based around business processes requires an in-depth understanding of what those processes are, how they are used, and their interdependencies with other processes within the business.

• From isolation to rock stars

  Security practitioners used to be seen as propeller-hat wearing introverts hunched over computers in dark, cold basements for weeks on end, shunning daylight and anyone who tried to start a conversation with them. But times have changed.

• Fail now, succeed later

  For optimum success, encourage failure.
  A contradiction in terms, yes, but Steve Prentice, vice president of analyst firm Gartner, says this is one strategy for enterprises to consider in the current economic environment.

• The case against cloud computing

  I've had a series of interesting conversations with people involved in cloud computing who, paradoxically, maintain that cloud computing is-at least today-inappropriate for enterprises.
  I say paradoxically because each of them works for or represents a large technology company's cloud computing efforts, and one would think their role would motivate them to strongly advocate cloud adoption. So why the tepid enthusiasm? For a couple of them, cloud computing functionality is really not ready for prime time use by enterprises. For others, cloud computing is too ambiguous a term for enterprises to really understand what it means. For yet others, cloud computing doesn't-and may never-offer the necessary functional factors that enterprise IT requires. While I think the observations they've made are trenchant, I'm not sure I'm convinced by them as immutable problems that cannot be addressed.

• The CIO's personal brand and board influence

  Two-thirds of CIOs and IT executives believe that having a strong personal brand is "very important" to the IT department of their organisation, the latest research from CIO UK and Harvey Nash reveals.
  But the survey, jointly carried out by CIO UK and global IT recruitment and professional services provider Harvey Nash, also reveals that although CIOs understand the importance of a personal brand, many are failing to develop their brand.

• Gartner: Tough times call for CIO introspection

  Technology advisory firm Gartner has come out with four strategic themes for CIOs to help them excel and deliver better personal and team outcomes beyond their core IT agenda.
  "The unfolding economic crisis of late 2008 has created a more challenging situation than many businesses and most CIOs have ever experienced," said Mark Raskino, vice president and fellow at Gartner. "They face a daunting and uncertain year ahead. Many CIOs have already been instructed to operate with lower budgets and many more expect such instructions. Chief executives need to cut short-term costs very quickly to cope with volatile market sentiment in many industries and countries, but without damaging recovery growth prospects."