Digital Transformation

InformationWeek – Should You Declare Bankruptcy on Your Technical Debt?

Technical debt is a hidden cost that robs your business of its ability to be nimble and make needed changes for your customers
Decision-makers, it’s high time we wake up to the real cost of technical debt. Financial debt is a burden that’s familiar to many people, but for businesses, especially retailers, that burden takes on an additional form: technical debt.

For companies building their businesses on outdated platforms, technical debt is what’s keeping them from evolving to meet the demands of today’s increasingly mobile consumer. According to a study by Accenture, 85% of executives believe that their legacy platforms are hindering their ability to move to a more digital model.

Executives and IT teams often put software migration on the backburner, choosing instead to focus on the kind of projects that result in more immediate monetary returns. Yet the longer technical debt is allowed to accrue, the costlier it becomes. Should your IT department stick with its broken platforms, just to avoid the overhaul, or is it time to pull the plug?

More of the InformationWeek post from Sara Hicks

CIO Strategy / Cloud Computing / Cloud infrastructure / Digital Transformation / Hybrid Cloud / IaaS / IT Strategy / Multi-Cloud — Comments Off
15
Mar 19

GigaOm – Cloud Storage Is Expensive? Are You Doing it Right?

In my day to day job, I talk to a lot of end users. And when it comes to the cloud, there are still many differences between Europe and the US. The European cloud market is much more fragmented than the American one for several reasons, including the slightly different regulations in each country. Cloud adoption is slower in Europe and many organizations still like to maintain data and infrastructure in their premises. The European approach is quite pragmatic, and many enterprises take somewhat advantage of the experiences made by similar organizations on the other side of the pond. One similarity is cloud storage or, better, cloud storage costs and reactions.

The fact that data is growing everywhere at an incredible pace is nothing new, and often faster than predicted in the past years. At first glance, an all-in cloud strategy looks very compelling, low $/GB, less CAPEX and more OPEX, increased agility and more, until of course your cloud bill starts growing out of control.

More of the GigaOm post from Enrico Signoretti

CIO Strategy / Cloud Computing / Cloud infrastructure / Digital Transformation / IT Leadership / IT Strategy — Comments Off
25
Feb 19

Future of CIO – Running Indispensable IT: How to Scrutinize IT Effort via the Business Lens?

It has become more obvious that information is the real source of business innovation. IT will continue to be a critical department.

IT is one of the most invaluable assets of the business besides people, IT is also perhaps one of the most expensive investments in modern organizations today. Many IT organizations are at the cross-road, either keep providing commodity IT service as a business support center – becoming irrelevant, or contribute to the top line business growth by leveraging technology as a means to an end. How can contemporary CIOs put “Chief Investment Officer,” hat on, scrutinize IT effort from the business lens and make the IT organization indispensable?

IT investment in the business can often become the decisive factor to run a high-performance organization with a long-term perspective: IT investment is usually costly. Considering many companies across sectors making a huge investment in sophisticated information & technology tools are greatly wasted because the appropriate processes to leverage those tools are not implemented or adopted smoothly. More often than not, IT can lift or break the business in a shorter time spectrum.

More of the Future of CIO post from Pearl Zhu

CIO Strategy / Cloud Computing / Cloud infrastructure / Digital Transformation / IT Governance / IT Leadership / IT Strategy — Comments Off
04
Dec 18

Future of CIO – Three Root Causes of Stalled Change or Digitalization

Digitalization represents the next stage of business maturity which will improve how the enterprise works and interacts with its ecosystem, with people at the center of its focus.

Digital transformation represents a break from the past, with a high level of impact and complexity. It is important to understand that digitalization is multifaceted. It is not a single dimensional technology adoption, but a multi-dimensional business expansion and optimization. When digitalization seems to get stalled and culture is stale, business management must ask the big “WHY” question and dig into the root cause. Because the organization’s ability to change and adaptability directly impact the organization’s long-term competency and business maturity.

More of the Future of CIO post from Pearl Zhu

CIO Strategy / Cloud Computing / Cloud infrastructure / Data Center / Digital Transformation / IaaS / IT Governance / IT Strategy / Risk Management — Comments Off
30
Nov 18

IT Business Edge – ERP Entering All Facets of the Economy

Enterprise Resource Planning platforms have been around for several decades. Some people love them, some hate them. What is indisputable, however, is that organizations around the world are being continuously pushed to achieve greater efficiency and faster turnaround, and ERP is a way of achieving both goals.

According to Market Research Engine, ERP is expected to near $50 billion in total market value by 2024, infiltrating tasks as wide-ranging as sales and marketing to distribution management and finance. What’s interesting about the current phase of ERP development is the way it dovetails with a number of other industry requirements besides the perennial need to become more efficient. The rising acceptance of mobile and cloud-based applications, for instance, places greater onus on the need to build more flexible, user-friendly means of support. As well, as business processes become increasingly digital-oriented, ERP brings much-needed intelligibility to complex workflows.

More of the IT Business Edge article from Arthur Cole

CIO Strategy / Data Center / Digital Transformation / IaaS / IT Governance / IT Strategy — Comments Off
28
Nov 18

ComputerWeekly Survey: Data very fragmented, and that’s a worry for most

Cohesity-sponsored survey finds most organisations store multiple copies of secondary data and worry about the cost and the effect on their competitiveness

Most UK organisations store up to 10 copies of the same secondary data, run four or five different products to manage it, and keep it in up to four locations, including two or three different public cloud storage providers.

Not surprisingly, a majority (54%) are also worried about fragmentation of their secondary – ie, not production – data.

Those are some of the findings of a survey sponsored by Cohesity, which provides scale-out data protection appliances and a data management platform.

The survey questioned 250 UK IT decision-makers as part of a study that also asked 650 of their counterparts in the US, France, Germany, Australia and Japan.

The average number of copies of the same datasets in secondary data held by UK respondents is five, and that came out the same across all countries except Japan, for which the number is seven.

More of the ComputerWeekly post from Antony Adshead

Business Development / CIO Strategy / Digital Transformation — Comments Off
06
Nov 18

WSJ – It’s All About Business Model Innovation, not New Technology

New technology, no matter how transformative, is not enough to propel a business into the future.

To survive in today’s fast changing marketplace, every business–large or small, startup or long established–must be capable of a continual process of transformation and renewal. Surveys show that most executives agree, and in fact, many believe that business model innovation is even more important to their company’s success than product or service innovation. But other studies have determined that no more than 10% of innovation investments at established companies are focused on creating transformative business models.

More of the Wall Street Journal article from Irving Wladawsky-Berger

CIO Strategy / Cloud Computing / Cloud infrastructure / Data Center / DevOps / Digital Transformation / IaaS / IT Governance / IT Security / IT Strategy — Comments Off
25
Oct 18

InfoWorld – Serverless cloud computing: Don’t go overboard

The new cry from the big public cloud providers is ‘serverless computing for everything.’ Don’t be fooled

There are lots of big cloud shows coming up, and the core themes will be containers, devops integration, and more serverless computing services, such as databases, middleware, and dev tools.

Why the focus on serverless computing? It’s a helpful concept, where you don’t have to think about the number of resources you need to attach to a public cloud service, such as storage and compute. You just use the service, and the back-end server instances are managed for you: “magically” provisioned, used, and deprovisioned.

More of the InfoWorld article from David Linthicum

CIO Strategy / Digital Transformation / IT Governance / IT Leadership / IT Staff Retention / IT Strategy / Shadow IT — Comments Off
23
Oct 18

CIO.com – Shadow IT: the CIO’s perspective

Here’s a must-read for organizations dealing with rogue or shadow IT.

Should CIOs fear or endorse shadow IT? The CIO’s perspective may surprise you.

CIOs have many reactions to shadow IT. Some complain that IT is generally measured as a success only by delivering something the business wants. However, IT organizations can get caught up in just doing cost control, security and overarching governance.

With this context, CIOs say, it’s important to realize that shadow IT is not the problem. Instead, it is a symptom, real or perceived, that IT is not delivering what the business needs. While some CIOs suggest that if you have shadow IT, it means IT isn’t doing its job.

More of the CIO.com article from Myles F. Suer

CIO Strategy / Cloud Computing / Cloud infrastructure / DevOps / Digital Transformation / IaaS / IT Governance / IT Leadership / IT Security / IT Staff Retention / IT Strategy — Comments Off
19
Oct 18

CloudTech – How multi-cloud business models will shape the future

Architects of the future build optimal businesses. In an automated, security conscious world, organisations must rethink their cloud strategies, embed security into application development, and embrace new work practices to stay relevant. Now is the time to plan your journey.

Shaping the future
Experts agree that, over the next five years, the multi-cloud world will be the playground for innovation, allowing organisations to launch new services and enhance advanced technologies.

A recent Foresight Factory report entitled, The Future of the Multi-Cloud (FOMC) sponsored by F5, reveals how the pace of digital transformation is already dramatically disrupting existing business models.

More of the Cloud Computing News article from Tristan Liverpool

Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.