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News

• The top five predictions that won't pan out for 2009

  At this time of year, journalists love to compose lists to fill demand for content that can be rolled out at some point in the media dog days over the festive period, even if the writers themselves have disappeared off on holiday. Nothing wrong with that, so here is ours, but in the form of an antidote, suggesting some things that won't happen next year.
  5. Broad deployment of business intelligence tools. Lots of people think that BI tools will be deployed on more desktops so end-users can better understand trends -- and, naturally, BI vendors are keen to expand from their executive customer base. But BI is advanced software for advanced people and giving full-scale analysis tools to the troops is a bit like providing a Howitzer to get rid of a mouse -- silly and really quite dangerous too. Making the tools cheap and more usable is just marketing department window dressing.

• Re-wiring IT for tough times

  Can the adoption of an IT service management (ITSM) approach 'historically re-wire' an enterprise's IT systems in a time of economic turmoil? We talk to Deloitte Consulting Southeast Asia's newly-appointed financial service team director Axel Winter.
  How important is ITSM in the current economic downturn?

• Point of steal

  When thieves stole the PIN pads at a cash register in one of his company's stores, Daniel Marcotte was amazed. Not that they'd done it -- such thefts can happen once a week during the holiday season. But watching it on videotape later, "I couldn't tell they had it with them when they left" the store, says Marcotte, director of systems and data security at La Senza, a Montreal retailer now owned by The Limited.
  A couple of hours later, the thieves were back. They'd doctored the PIN pads to let them get customer card data. They got them back onto the point-of-sale system quickly, too. But here's where La Senza's security precautions kicked in: Its PIN pads in effect have their own Media Access Control address, and once they're disconnected, that address is no longer available. So the thieves were foiled--this time.

• Heads up on major IT services issues for 2009

  Ovum says the impact of the slowing economy on BPO business models, the convergence of IT and telecom services, and the continued importance of quality and security are among the top issues IT service providers will face in 2009.
  “The Ovum Eight’ compiled by the IT advisory and consulting firm, are the main issues that will impact ICT vendors, their partners and end users.

• LINZ CIO retires next month

  Tony Lester is leaving chief information officer role at Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), after four and a half years.
  Lester, a member of CIO magazine’s editorial advisory board, says he will stay in his post until January.

• Solnet Solutions scoops Supreme IBM prize

  Solnet Solutions is the Supreme winner in this year’s IBM Business Partner Awards, having also won the Workplace Collaboration category for its provision of new web portal infrastructure for Inland Revenue.
  Solnet’s northern region general manager Brett Arthur says it isn’t often people get to thank Inland Revenue, but described the government organisation as a “fantastic client”.

• Brave new world

  On the day the global financial systems melted down, a mate who is a
  chief information officer at a bank called me with gallows humour in

• Strategies to beat the budget crunch

  CIOs face a monumental dilemma as they find themselves caught between tough economic conditions, competitive pressures and mounting compliance demands.
  The mantra of the day? Contain costs while continuing to drive productivity. This is a tall order for CIOs who have slashed their 2009 IT budgets and feel the pinch from runaway compliance costs.

• How not to be a firefighting CIO

  Being an IT leader is tough enough at the best of times, but what do you do when your company is stacked with IT experts? 'Make the most of it' would appear to be the attitude of Frank Modruson, CIO of Accenture, one of the world's biggest management consulting, technology services and outsourcing companies.
  "It's interesting: There are 180,000 experts on my job here," he quips, referring to the total size of Accenture's workforce. He also has 3500 staff working for him. "That leads to feedback and scrutiny, and that's good. The educated consumer puts you in good stead. They challenge you as long as you're willing to try things. I get to leverage this capability."

• IT for better beer

  IT is now essential to any beverage company's business, according to Allan Ong, general manager, group management information system, Asia Pacific Breweries (APB).
  "IT solutions are designed to play a critical role in supporting brewery operations, such as facilitating logistics, sales and distribution transactions," says Ong. "IT also helps in the delivery of information for analysis and business decision making, in the various overseas markets where APB operates."

• Championing collaboration

  For some time now, various District Health Boards have come together to make savings and efficiencies in the purchasing of technology and the operations of their IT departments, some even sharing the same CIO.
  The State Services Commission last year released a report on similar bodies working together, noting the experiences of Australia, Canada, the UK and other countries. In the tertiary sector, the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic and the University of Waikato are among the pioneers in the shared services model.

• No more drunk emails to your flame

  Gmail, Google's free consumer email, added a unique new feature to the service Monday: Mail Goggles, which gives you the ability to double check whether you are really sure you want to send an e-mail message, particularly late at night. But the feature might also help business users of enterprise Gmail make better decisions about sending out vindictive or hastily-composed emails to co-workers.

• The new-look tool kit

  Tom Honan knows his blades from his non-blade servers, the difference between consolidation and virtualisation, the benefits of commoditisation, the risks of consumerisation and personalisation, and the importance of embracing green technology. The chief financial officer of Computershare knows the numbers - in units and dollars - spent on, and saved by, adopting new hardware-based technologies and trends. (Honan starts as CFO at Transurban this month.)
  Village Roadshow chief financial officer Julie Raffe, on the other hand, may not be able to spot a blade server at 10 paces, but she is well abreast of hardware technologies and trends. Like Computershare's Honan, she knows the details of her company's adoption and implementation of the latest hardware, keeps a close eye on progress and is happy with the results.

• Rise of the anti-manager

  Where have all the good managers gone? The Peter Principle has long been a fact of corporate life - the statistical inevitability that in any organisation there will always be a group of people who are promoted beyond their competence.
  But now the happenstance Peter Principle has become the Peter Prerequisite: somewhere along the line, incompetence has become a mandatory requirement for appointment to positions of responsibility, and that applies all the way up to mahogany row. It is difficult to fathom how this can be. Despite the fashion for psychometric testing, performance evaluations and myriad human resources systems, ill-advised appointments and poor management abound. Or should that be because of?

• Secret men's business revealed

  Norwegian research reveals that private, manipulative decision-making is rife on company boards and that some directors are more equal than others.
  An academic study from the Scandinavian country that mandates that company boards must comprise at least 40 per cent women confirms what many female directors already know: Men are chronically underprepared for board meetings.