Facilities, IT and Data Center Power

Organizations are under pressure to reduce their environmental impacts. One metric being scrutinized is the amount of Green House Gasses (GHGs) being released into the atmosphere. At first blush this would not seem relevant to data centers, but when you stop and look at their explosive growth, this focus becomes understandable. In 2006, an EPA…

The Outsourcing Continuum, Part I

There are lots people looking at outsourcing these days as a potential cost cutter. Let me say right up front that, more often than not, outsourcing won’t save you a significant amount of money. More likely, what you will get is more value for the dollars spent. The decision to outsource some or all of…

Of Titles, Age and Angst

In the world of business and technology consulting, a person’s capabilitiesoften are measured by his title. His aptitude and wisdom appear to grow in stature as the title loses its activity-based nature and assumes the mantle of hierarchical power. Although developers, data analysts, systems integrators, database administrators, et. al. can possess great vision and often…

Can CFOs Help Prevent Cyber Attacks?

Today, 2,000 chief financial officers (CFOs) at corporations around the country will get a copy of an action guide that will help them deal with cyber attacks. Not chief security officers or chief information officers, but chief financial officers. There’s a reason for that choice. Despite the highly publicized losses due to a data breach…

Service Catalog: To Build or Buy?

In recent years service catalog has grown in awareness and a growing number of commercial products are available. Yet the majority of implementations have been developed as in-house or ad-hoc projects. This article outlines the evolution of service catalog capabilities and the trade offs involved in building rather than buying. As the broad movement toward…

How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot When Presenting to the Board

Question: are you a propeller-head? It’s an honest question, but before answering know that your boss and the company’s board do not want to have sit-down sessions with a propeller-head who intends to review the minute details of a proposed new data center. What they want to know is how much money this data center…

The Predictive CIO

When CIOs made the jump from back office support to boardroom elite, many felt they had truly arrived. Celebrations may be a bit premature, however, since there is a marked difference between getting there and staying put. Keeping a seat at the boardroom table often boils down to a renewed focus on information management but…

Good CIOs Lead By Following

A 2006 study claims that 97% of IT workers say they experience job-related stress on a daily basis. Some 80% say they feel stressed before they even get to work, and around 25% admit to taking time off to deal with the stress. These numbers place IT as the most stressful profession -– beating out…

The Top 20 Best Practices for Managing IT

In an effort to help CIOs struggling to justify IT’s business value to their bosses while, simultaneously, reducing waste and cost, Forrester Research analysts Phil Murphy and Andrew Bartels decided to put together a list of the best practices they, and their peer analysts at Forrester, think would offer the most help. What they come…

Using Budgets to Manage Your LOB Counterparts

For many CIOs telling their line-of-business (LOB) counterparts that a particular project isn’t a good idea is hard to do. The LOB manager, VP, president, etc. have project “X” in mind and feel it is exactly what they need to make situation “Y” better, go away, produce, etc. The problem isn’t that the LOB manager…