How to Change the Corporate Mindset Towards IT

by Derek Lonsdale, Nilesh Chandra and Chris Gallacher of PA Consulting – The IT function exists to support the business in achieving competitive advantage. However, many business users often see IT merely as a barrier to their initiatives; a function that over-spends and under-delivers. In order to foster a better relationship with the business, IT…

The Cloud has Crashed but …

At some point cloud services will be as reliable as the electricity in our homes and offices. Now, I am not an old man by any stretch, but I remember as a child in the UK, expecting to have power cuts in the winter. We took candles and matches or flashlights to bed. Wood was…

Special Report – Technology Fueled Transformation is Just Getting Underway

For many people, change is difficult and transformation even more so. According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, “change” means “to make something different,” while “transform” means “to make a thorough or dramatic change.” It is a difference of degree, I admit, but that degree is so extreme that it becomes a qualitative difference. Changing…

Top 10 Reasons Why BlackBerry’s PlayBook is a Winner

The reviews of the new BlackBerryPlayBook are in and they are terrible. David Pogue in the New York Times dismissed it with, “It must be skating season in hell.” In the Wall Street Journal, Walt Mossberg was a tiny bit more charitable but he, too, ultimately shrugged it off as a non-event. Laptop Magazine just…

The Most Mismanaged IT Asset of All – the CIO

Pretend for a moment that you are a CEO, and you learn that an asset that costs your company a cool quarter of a million dollars a year is chronically underutilized. Wouldn’t you want to do something about it? Well, with the average CIO commanding $250,000 or more annually in salary and benefits, it would…

In 2011 Go Mobile or Go Home

Biz Stone, a co-founder of Twitter, recently spoke at one of our conferences. According to Biz, he and his team first knew they had something at the SXSW conference in Austin, TX. His friends were using an early version of the micro-blogging service to let one another know what bars they were moving to —…

Do You Think?

If I could offer one idea that will have a huge impact on your success and your satisfaction with work it would be that you give yourself time to think — with purpose. (You can stop reading here if you accept that point!) I work with so many executives that tell me they would be…

When It’s Time to Decide … Decide

I was working with a CEO and his executive team on their strategy when we came to an interesting point in the day about their needing a game-changing initiative. The group brainstormed for awhile, and discussed several potential game changers. We narrowed the list to three really cool ideas. Then came the big question: Which…

Case Study – Proving IT’s Value to the Business

I have always approached my role as CIO with the mindset that IT has to be more involved in the business in order to help the company. The Journey to the Future-State CIO framework from the CIO Executive Council immediately struck me as a good model with specific goals for advancing my own role and…

8 IT Strategy Tips for a Successful Sun Migration

Editor’s Note: CIOUpdate guest columnist Brandon Harris is a senior technologist for Logicalis, which sells remote monitoring, operational management, co-location, and full or partial outsourced partnering. Mergers and acquisitions always have an air of uncertainty about them. But when you combine longtime players in the enterprise computing space, users who have significant real dollars and…