‘Heebeegeebees’ Slowing Tech Spending

Depending on whom you ask the IT market is up, down or holding steady. Cisco publicly warned of a slowdown and Juniper and Alcatel-Lucent reported earnings that clearly indicate the braking system is engaged but not screechingly so. Gartner says down, CDW says up Gartner keeps readjusting its 2012 IT spending forecast downward but according…

Cloud is Not a Cornucopia of Savings

by Barbara Rembiesa, CEO of IAITAM Organizations that chose to “go to the cloud” do not necessarily bring about dramatic savings and IT efficiencies that outweigh or eliminate the need for asset management. In fact, the adverse effect may be the case based on the added risk surrounding data security, access, data transfer and backup…

How to Create a Value-Centric IT Organization

By the numbers Another look at our data on “business metrics” shows that the top three measurements are: business process impact metrics, business activity metrics, and metrics to show end user effectiveness in interacting with applications. Classic SLA/OLA metrics came in fourth. Other business metrics included metrics to show end user application preferences, and then…

How to Create a Value-Centric IT Organization

In my last column, How to Make User Experience Count, I wrote about user experience management (UEM), and how I believed it was a continuum of customer experience management and business impact. The reason why is that all IT services are ultimately consumed by flesh-and-blood mammals (most often of the homo sapiens genus), and how…

The eDiscovery Implications of Structured Data

3. Validation and authentication Once the required information has been collected, it still needs to be validated and authenticated. Validation is the ability to determine whether the query was accurate and complete. It must in fact return all “California employees” as they were defined, so the report is complete and “correct.” Authentication, a legal construct,…

The eDiscovery Implications of Structured Data

What is IT to do? In many enterprises, the challenge of dealing with structured data has created dangerous gaps between information policies — driven by business, legal and compliance issues — and the information practices of IT. In most organizations, the tissue connecting information policies and IT practices is made up of little more than…

The eDiscovery Implications of Structured Data

by David White, partner, Seyfarth Shaw LLP & CGOC faculty member E-discovery has been a hot topic on everybody’s radar for a number of years now. The past several years have shown exponential growth in the number of high-profile e-discovery sanction cases due to missteps. Headline avoidance: preserving and collecting data The resulting headlines have…

How to Deal with Failed Deliverables

Icebergs and sinking ships This is the point in the story where most advisors, consultants and offshore outsourcing vendors will start preaching the mantra that prevention is the best cure. Not a single CIO will disagree with that premise, but such a recital isn’t helpful when the iceberg has already hit and the ship has…

How to Deal with Failed Deliverables

Failed deliverables from offshore outsourcers are a common experience as evidenced by the size and number of LinkedIn discussions, other social media and community posts, and court queues. There are, of course, numerous excuses rendered, few accepted, and passionate arguments on both sides. But when you cut through the noise and look at what you’re…

Cloud is About More than Just Technology

Moving to the cloud Deciding to move to the cloud and using it wisely will require the creation of architectures of the enterprise, both its current and future desired states. This is known as a strategic enterprise architecture (SEA). An SEA is a story of what the organization is trying to accomplish and how. It…