Strategies and Trends for Information Technology Leaders
by Daniel Burrus of Burrus Research One inevitable byproduct of advancing technology and every changing competitive landscape I talk about in part one of this article is commoditization. Someone makes an innovative breakthrough, and by doing so they stand out as unique in their field. However, because of the breakneck speed of technological advance, soon…
by Stephen Bennett of Oracle Confronted with the age old problems of agility and complexity, today’s CIOs are under more pressure than ever to improve the strategic value of IT to the business. At best, these challenges have increased costs, limited innovation and increased risk. At worst, they have reduced IT’s ability to respond to…
Organization readiness – An enterprise first needs to adopt the principle of service-orientation. However, successful SOA depends on the readiness of the enterprise to become service-oriented. To get started with SOA, the guide recommends conducting a maturity assessment. Such an assessment is available from The Open Group and enables a practitioner to assess an organization’s…
Doing the opposite has always been a smart strategy for breakthrough. Today, though, it has special implications, because in so many ways our entire world and everything about it is going through an intensely rapid and comprehensive reversal. The acceleration of digital technology is turning conditions on their heads, creating a profound shift in the…
Faced with this latest period of tumult and uncertainty in the tech industry (and the economy in general), how should CIOs respond? Almost certainly, some emerging companies with promising products or services, will run through their cash or otherwise fail to achieve reasonable scale. Or they’ll fall victim to first mover dis-advantage and be eclipsed…
From managing the exploding volume of data to keeping the network secure to taking a high-level strategic role at the C-level table, CIOs live in a complex and intense environment. Therefore, when challenges appear, overcoming them quickly is key for long-term success. But part of the challenge about challenges is knowing how to do that….
What are you really trying to do with IT service management (ITSM) Are you focused on aligning your organization with ITIL or some other framework; or are you concentrating on process improvement? Too often I see the two confused; with ITIL alignment mistaken for process improvement instead of being treated as one tool in the…
There has been quite a few arguments in trying to prove or debunk that ITIL can produce any kind of ROI. The pragmatic answer is: Yes it can, but not as easy as ITIL guidance can hope for. Let’s step back and define what ITIL is. A simplistic view is that ITIL is a set…
I have always been an advocate of IT outsourcing but over the last several years it has become apparent that services available from many sources has made outsourcing of other business processes a viable option, as well. I was talking with a friend recently and had an epiphany regarding this subject: Just like IT, there…
It ranks as one of the most common and impactful outsourcing mistakes of the past decade — too many service level agreements (SLAs), designed around the wrong business outcomes, and exceedingly focused on financial remuneration rather than operational remedies. Whether due to a rush to get an RFP out the door and quickly ink a…