CIO Strategy

IT Business Edge – Digital Transformation Starts with Infrastructure

Business models around the world are rapidly shifting from selling products to monetizing services. It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, if you are not generating revenue by digitally connecting to consumers, the future of your enterprise is in doubt.

While this digital transformation requires new approaches to organizational structures, workforce skillsets, business processes and customer relationships, it all starts with infrastructure. Static, silo-laden data systems are out; agile, software-defined architectures are in.

But how, exactly, are traditional enterprises supposed to implement such a radical upgrade in time to ward off competition from digitally driven upstarts who are unburdened by legacy infrastructure? To be sure, it will take a concerted effort, and a clearly defined strategy as to how digital transformation can be optimized for the enterprise’s unique market strengths.

More of the IT Business Edge post from Arthur Cole

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31
Oct 16

Data Center Knowledge – “Right-Sizing” The Data Center: A Fool’s Errand?

Overprovisioned. Undersubscribed. Those are some of the most common adjectives people apply when speaking about IT architecture or data centers. Both can cause data center operational issues that can result in outages or milder reliability issues for mechanical and electrical infrastructure. The simple solution to this problem is to “right-size your data center.”

Unfortunately, that is easier to say than to actually do. For many, the quest to right-size turns into an exercise akin to a dog chasing its tail. So, we constantly ask ourselves the question: Is right-sizing a fool’s errand? From my perspective, the process of right-sizing is invaluable; the process provides the critical data necessary to build (and sustain) a successful data center strategy.

When it comes to right-sizing, the crux of the issue always comes down to what IT assets are being supported and what applications are required to operate the organization.

More of the Data Center Knowledge article from Tim Kittila

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28
Oct 16

Continuity Central – Maintenance of a business continuity management system: a managerial approach

Practical approach to achieving the difficult task of keeping your business continuity plans up to date.

When a business continuity management system (BCMS) has been established and implemented, a serious managerial challenge evolves: the BCMS has to be maintained and put into a continuous improvement process. In this article, Alberto Alexander. Ph.D, MBCI, looks at the activities that need to be performed to maintain and improve a BCMS.

INTRODUCTION

Any organization that establishes and implements a BCMS needs to follow the BCMS processes and deliverables, which are depicted in figure one. The BCMS processes, also known as the BCMS process life cycle model, (Alexander, 2009), consist of six phases.

The stages of the BCMS process life cycle model are the following:

Stage one: business impact analysis
The business impact analysis (BIA), which is conducted during the first stage, analyzes the financial and operational impact of disruptive events on the business areas and processes of an organization. The financial impact refers to monetary losses such as lost sales, lost funding, and contractual penalties. Operational impact represents non–monetary losses related to business operations, and can include loss of competitive edge, damage to investor confidence, poor customer service, low staff morale, and damage to business reputation.

Baseline – Mobility is at the Center of Digital Business

Mobile 2.0 has arrived, so organizations must develop an enterprise mobile strategy that extends beyond smartphones and tablets and into the IoT.

Only a few years ago, a mobile strategy focused mostly on arming workers with phones and laptops that would allow them to call the office and work remotely from home or while on the road. File sharing was difficult, collaboration was challenging, and staying in sync as an organization was next to impossible.

However, as enterprise mobile technology has advanced and clouds have made data more accessible, organizations are learning that basic communication and collaboration, while vitally important, are only part of the picture.

“As mobile devices have evolved into powerful computers and the definition of mobility has expanded, organizations are recognizing that mobile is now at the center of a successful business strategy,” observes Abhijit Kabra, managing director at Accenture Mobility, part of consulting firm Accenture.

More of the Baseline article from Samuel Greengard

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24
Oct 16

CIO Insight – How CIOs Wield Influence in the C-Suite

The influence of CIOs and other IT leadership execs is growing within the majority of midmarket companies, according to a recent survey from Deloitte. The accompanying report, titled “Technology in the Midmarket: Taking Ownership,” indicates that this shift is emerging at a time when these businesses are increasingly viewing tech investment as a strategic value-builder. They’re pursuing cloud initiatives, for example, to boost the effectiveness of accounting, enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management efforts. In addition, many are pursuing predictive analytics to boost competitive edge. To ensure they can expand investment into these and other IT areas in a secure manner, CIOs and other tech leaders are convincing the C-suite and other executive leaders to deploy data encryption more than ever. These companies “are increasingly realizing value through early investments in the cloud, social, mobile and data analytics,” according to the report.

More of the CIO Insight slideshow from Dennis McCafferty

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20
Oct 16

The Register – Internet of Things will turn up the compute heat for data centres

IPExpo The Internet of Things will put more demand upon mid-range and co-lo data centres, according to the marketing manager of data centre kit firm Minkels.

Speaking at London’s IPExpo conference this morning, Minkels’ Niek van der Pas explained how, in his view, the explosion of IoT device usage will push more and more workloads into smaller data centres.

Highlighting how IoT devices, by necessity, spend their time talking to what he called the “edge layer”, comprising “metro/local” data centres – as opposed to core layer “public cloud and hyperscale” data centres – Van der Pas said the main effect of this is going to be to scale up the age-old problems of cooling and power demands.

Two graphs on one of his slides illustrated the problem. LINX handles just under 3Tbps of internet traffic at 9pm. While the graph showed the usual peaks and troughs during the day, a similar graph showing power drawn by LINX was almost flat.

More of The Register post from Gareth Corfield

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19
Oct 16

SearchCloudComputing – Optimize your enterprise network design for hybrid cloud

Public and hybrid cloud adoption has a major ripple effect on enterprise network design. New bottlenecks arise, and some businesses need to alter their network configurations — particularly those for wide area networks — to ensure they get the performance they need.

With hybrid and public clouds, in particular, the networking focus shifts heavily to wide area network (WAN) connections. Businesses need to link their data centers to their public cloud provider’s sites, and often rely on their existing internet lines to do so. But this approach has shortcomings.

First, bandwidth is an issue. Traffic that used to roam about the data center now needs to move off-site, often increasing WAN traffic. Consequently, organizations may need to upgrade their internet lines, which can be expensive; pricing depends on a business’ location and amount of bandwidth needed.

More of the SearchCloudComputing article from Paul Korzeniowski

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18
Oct 16

Continuity Central – Many organizations mistakenly leaving cloud business continuity to third-party cloud providers

According to new research published by CTERA Networks, while enterprises continue to migrate workloads to the cloud at a rapid pace, protection of cloud-based servers and applications has not fully evolved to meet enterprise requirements for business continuity and data availability.

CTERA’s new eBook, ‘Game of Clouds’, showcases the findings of CTERA’s inaugural cloud backup survey, and presents a deep look at the state of enterprise cloud data protection. A CTERA-commissioned study was conducted by independent research firm Vanson Bourne to examine the data protection strategies of 400 IT decision makers and IT specialists in organizations using the cloud for application deployment at US, German and French organizations. The study analyzes the benefits and pitfalls of current backup strategies, offers key considerations for organizations moving to the cloud, and looks at the impact of poor backup practices on business continuity.

CIO Insight – A CIO’s Guide to Improving Vendor Management

The ability to effectively manage complex, multi-vendor sourcing arrangements is becoming increasingly important in today’s business enterprises. In many cases, however, vendor management capabilities aren’t adequate to the challenge. As a result, business value erodes, service quality suffers and enterprises are exposed to operational and financial risk.

As a discipline, Vendor Management and Governance (VMG) is gaining boardroom attention for a number of reasons. At a high level, achieving more value from outsourcing is becoming a top priority. A sourcing strategy based on cost reduction alone is no longer sufficient, and executives are recognizing that an effective VMG function can enable the operational transparency and process consistency needed to drive business benefits such as enhanced data analytics and customer insight.

More specifically, the continued growth of complex multi-vendor outsourcing agreements is underscoring the need for effective VMG. As delivery models constantly evolve, and as providers become more numerous and more specialized, the ability to oversee constant change and track multiple moving parts is essential.

More of the CIO Insight post from guest author David England

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13
Oct 16

CIO Insight – Why Adaptability Is Critical for State CIOs

To keep up with tech shifts and changing business demands, today’s state government CIOs must constantly redefine the way they manage a wide range of IT systems and applications, according to a recent survey from the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), Grant Thornton LLP and CompTIA. The accompanying report, titled “The Adaptable State CIO,” indicates that most state CIOs, for example, are moving toward outsourcing, managed services and shared services models for IT infrastructure and operations. Most are exploring or adopting agile software development approaches. They’re also looking to modernize the wealth of legacy systems that account for a substantial portion of their overall tech portfolio. In addition, many are focusing on ongoing innovations in mobility and the internet of things (IoT). In other words, our nation’s state CIOs face very similar challenges—and opportunities—as those in private industry. “(State government) CIOs are adapting to changing circumstances and expectations,” according to the report. “This requires agility to respond quickly to the unexpected, but also the strategic vision to anticipate and to plan for a future that cannot be easily predicted.

More of the CIO Insight slide show from Dennis McCafferty

Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.