IT Security

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

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12
Oct 16

Continuity Central – The State of Enterprise Resilience: survey report

Control Risks has published the results of its latest ‘The State of Enterprise Resilience’ survey, which assesses the degree to which the concept of resilience has gained traction and become embedded within organizations.

Over one third of respondents felt that their organizations lacked the relevant skills or talent to drive corporate resilience; this is an increase of 17 percent on 2015. This is in spite of the fact that 27 percent of respondents have actively recruited dedicated resources to support the resilience agenda and 46 percent have invested in training, awareness, and communications.

Other key findings include:

ISO 22316 provides guidance on resilience programmes
62 percent of respondents were either aware of or have read the draft of ISO 22316 – the guide to organizational resilience. 92 percent of respondents agree with the core principles which focus largely on shared purpose and collaboration across functions. However, 18 percent of respondents indicated that they would not be striving to adopt the core principles, preferring instead to stick to existing processes.

ZDNet – Is the IT budget ready to power digital transformation? The journeys of four CIOs

The digital transformation is upon us, with many CIOs expected to lead the charge. These technology leaders must determine how much of next year’s budget will drive internal and external innovation to meet staff and customer needs — and we’ve found a wide variety in investment levels across different industries.

While 72 percent of CXOs report that it is ‘critical’ or ‘very important’ for an organization to turn to a digital business model, only 15 percent said their company is agile enough to build such a system, according to an August survey from Unisys and IDG Research.

Another recent study found that 52 percent of companies surveyed looked to their CIO and CTO to lead their organization’s digital transformation, but only half said they actually had a business-wide digital transformation strategy.

More of the ZDNet post from Alison DeNisco

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04
Oct 16

Continuity Central – The IT DR program: a crucial, but not well understood, aspect of disaster recovery

This is the shortest, most complete treatment I’ve ever seen of what it takes to be successful with IT Disaster Recovery. Worth the read.

While the hardware and software costs for disaster recovery are well understood many organizations do not fully realize that, in order to be assured of successfully executing the plan in the event of an outage or disaster, a comprehensive IT DR program must first be in place. An organization can have all the right IT DR hardware and software, but without a properly managed program, its efforts will fail.

Even the organizations that do have this understanding often underestimate the complexities involved in creating an IT DR program and the associated costs.

The DR program consists of the people, processes and tools necessary to implement the IT DR solution and manage its lifecycle. Because this implementation process requires considerable expertise and experience, organizations must carefully consider the costs of developing their in-house skill sets as well as those of purchasing, implementing, and maintaining their own hardware and software in house. They should then compare this expertise and the hardware and software costs to those they could access by going to a third-party managed recovery provider that specializes in providing IT disaster recovery services.

Only by understanding what goes into a full IT DR program and the complete total cost of ownership (TCO) of both an in-house versus a ‘selectively outsourced’ solution can organizations make the right choice.

The DR program consists of five processes: application mapping; developing disaster recovery procedures; test planning and execution; post-test analysis; and recovery lifecycle management. The discussion below will address what each step involves.

CIO Insight – Do IT Workers Lie About Certifications?

A surprising minority of CIOs and other IT leaders actually check to see if their staffers’ claims of tech certifications earned are actually true, according to a recent survey from TEKsystems. But they should—because many IT pros admit that they do not always report this information accurately on their resumes. The lack of verification could result in long-term consequences, as the majority of IT leaders take into account tech certifications in making decisions about the hiring, developing and promoting of their staffers. Among the certifications most in need: Those related to cyber-security, programming and development, project management and software engineering. Given that many organizations pay for these educational opportunities, CIOs need to do a better job of making sure that their employees aren’t fibbing when they indicate they’ve earned them. “(Organizations) need to be more diligent in actually verifying certifications in order to avoid getting trapped in a certification shell game,” said Jason Hayman, research manager at TEKsystems. –

More of the CIO Insight slideshow from Dennis McCafferty

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28
Sep 16

CIO Insight – Why Enterprise Still Matters

In today’s economy, executives must account for market pressure while keeping focused on the evolution of innovation in technology. This new reality presents both challenges and opportunities for businesses and IT to align on IT strategy and finding balance between the desire to seek value and manage for risk. Due to the difficulty in finding this balance, business leaders are increasingly contracting with cloud-based service providers for the creation of applications, integrations and custom development, with or without the support of enterprise IT. These leads are essentially acting as CIOs by providing their own technology-led business solutions, which leads to fragmentation and delays in accomplishing business initiatives

More of the CIO Insight article from Mike Sommer

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19
Sep 16

ZDNet – 5 ways cloud computing is transforming software vendors

It’s never easy being a software vendor. Demanding users, incredibly smart competitors, and rapidly evolving technology mean constantly being on top of one’s game. Now, cloud and Software as a Service have added a whole new dimension to what it means to be a software vendor.

For starters, it means more, much more, than simply shifting the delivery model from on-premises installation to online download. A new report from PwC — its Global 100 Software Leaders report — states “cloud computing changes how software vendors run their companies. Sure, there are technical issues such as reliability and security. But there are also business and cultural issues affecting all phases of a company, from product development to marketing and sales, extending to customer service and support.”

This shift has accelerated since PwC issued a similar report two years ago. At that time, the report’s authors state, “it was clear that cloud computing was already starting to change the software industry. It wasn’t clear how much it was going to change the industry.”

This year, cloud is sweeping into every corner of the industry. “SaaS/ PaaS revenues of the Top 50 software vendors now approaches 10% of their total,” PwC reports. The cloud model, of course, means lower revenues, and perhaps cannibalizing existing business. But market realities are pushing this transition. “Software vendors who’ve made the transition are well on their way to restructuring their operations to the new realities of lower average sales prices and margins,” according to Mark McCaffrey, PwC global software leader. “The companies that haven’t done so may not be on the 100 list anymore — and we haven’t seen the effects shake out yet.”

More of the ZDNet article from Joe McKendrick

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15
Sep 16

ComputerWeekly – The pros and cons of cloud bursting

It’s fun to think about the possibilities of bursting and brokering, but countless barriers stand in the way of enterprise customers. Dynamic porting of workloads is an interesting concept, but not yet an agenda item.

Brokering refers to dynamic relocation of cloud workloads based on the lowest-cost platform at that time, whereas cloud bursting looks to optimise the cost and performance of an application at any time. For average use, an enterprise can pay for persistent usage in its own virtual machine (VM) environment, and it can use public cloud resources for additional capacity.

In 2011, the idea of dynamically sourcing and brokering cloud services based on real-time changes in cost and performance was the future vision of cloud’s pay-as-you-go pricing – and it remains a vision.

The first tools are only just emerging and the use cases are limited, especially since costs for public clouds don’t vary enough to drive significant brokerage demand.

More of the ComputerWeekly article from Lauren Nelson

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12
Sep 16

IT Business Edge – The Cloud: Not Just Better IT, All-New IT

It’s fair to say that the cloud is fast-approaching the tipping point as the dominant means of deploying enterprise infrastructure. But while the broad outlines are coming into view, the exact architecture and the host’s location are still very much “up in the air.”

The latest estimate on cloud deployments came from 451 Research this week, which pegged the current cloud workload at about 41 percent of the enterprise total with a likely rise to 60 percent by the middle of 2018. In breaking down the numbers, the firm noted that the majority of deployments are taking place on private clouds and public SaaS infrastructure, and that going forward the private side will see largely flat growth while SaaS will jump by 23 percent. As well, IaaS deployments, currently only 6 percent of the total, will double to 12 percent in the next two years.

More of the IT Business Edge post from Arthur Cole

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02
Sep 16

PM Times – Implementing IT Governance – A Perspective

Today businesses rely on information technology (IT) as an integral part of their overall enterprise strategy. For the same very reason, a new field of thought called IT governance has been under development for several years. Just as business management is governed by generally accepted good practices, IT should be governed by practices that help ensure
-An enterprise’s IT resources are used responsibly
-Risks are managed appropriately
-Information and related technology support business objectives
In other word IT governance is the process by which decisions are made around IT investments.

Although the level of maturity and acceptance of IT Governance varies considerably across different organizations and sectors but a number of different views emerge in its favor. These view, though present conflicting arguments but favor the implementation of IT Governance.

IT alignment to the business is the highest rated driver and outcome of IT Governance practices. A large majority of organizations recognize the importance of IT alignment in order to deliver sustainable business results, and feel IT Governance is the best means to achieve this. A general understanding among all the organizations and their CIOs is

“The successful application of IT Governance principles can provide a mechanism to increase the effectiveness of IT and, in turn, meet the increasingly high demands from business for IT.”

More of the PM Times article from Atul Gupta and Alankar Karpe

Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.