IT Security

IT Business Edge – Preparing for the Evolution of the IT Administrator Role

Just as writing has come to mean texting, blogging or any form of digital writing, the cloud today means one or all of the three Cs: computing, connectivity and communication. And just as nearly all thought to putting pen to paper has disappeared, all reference to the natural cloud is long forgotten. The three Cs have altered the way we consume services. The adage, “change is the only constant,” holds true in the IT landscape like no other, forcing IT admins to constantly learn new skills and make strategic decisions.

In this slideshow Vidya Vasu, head of the ManageEngine Community, takes a closer look at how the role of the IT administrator is changing and how individuals can prepare.

ZDNet – Delta outage highlights how airline industry needs new IT approaches

Delta blames a power outage in Atlanta for bringing its systems down, canceling flights, and stranding passengers. Southwest’s systems stumbled last month after a faulty router and nixed about 2,300 flights. United Continental grounded flights over a bad router in July and June. Welcome to the world of cobbled together legacy systems and an industry that needs to move toward cloud computing much faster.

IT outages are a fact of life. And now that technology is no longer a separate entity from business, screw-ups hit more people and damage reputations. The big question is why in 2016 airlines are being brought down by single points of failure when cloud services offer resiliency zones, backup options, and redundancy to keep critical systems running.

Delta cancels more flights as it recovers from system-wide outage | Delta Air Lines says power problems are behind computer outage that grounded flights

More of the ZDNet post from Larry Dignan

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26
Aug 16

HBR – 7 Questions to Ask Before Your Next Digital Transformation

Although digital investment is almost unquestionably the right course of action for most firms, organizations still struggle to create the desired results. Estimates of digital transformation failures range from 66% to 84%. Such a high failure rate isn’t surprising, as leaders are trying to create entirely new competencies and wedge them into an organization with strong legacy cultures and operating models.

While most executives are pros at managing change, digital transformation is a much deeper change than the usual process or system update. Of course, digital technology can be used to improve or augment existing ways of operating, but it also opens entirely new ways of doing business based on digital networks like Uber, Airbnb, Yelp, and the Apple Developer Network — which is where a great deal of the digital value resides.

So as you navigate your own digital transformation, we recommend beginning with a few questions that go deeper than “what talent do you need” or “how much money will you spend” and probe broader organizational readiness.

More of the Harvard Business Review post from Barry Libert, Megan Beck, and Yoram (Jerry) Wind

Bi-Modal IT / CIO Strategy / Cloud Computing / Cloud infrastructure / Digital Transformation / IaaS / IT Governance / IT Security / IT Strategy — Comments Off
25
Aug 16

The Register – Capacity planning in an age of agile and on – demand IT

Have we all been caught asleep at the capacity planning wheel? Business users today want, and expect new IT services to be delivered in the blink of an eye, the necessary resources provisioned instantly, and changes made “on demand”. But such IT flexibility requires that physical resources, server, storage and networking are ready to be allocated when required. The need for capacity planning has never been greater, yet a recent survey tells us that few organisations have the capabilities they need.

Furthermore, ‘overprovision and forget’ remains a common approach that elevates IT procurement and operational costs at a time when money is tight.

Business services at risk

Every organisation relies on instant availability to a wide range of IT services, from relatively predictable essential everyday functionality provided by key business applications to customer facing systems whose usage may be highly variable. In some environments, such as development and test systems, they also have to operate on a more ad hoc basis with unpredictable resource requirements. For some IT solutions, such as DR, the hope is that the resources required will never be used, but the potential impact of them kicking in needs to be accounted for.

More of The Register article from Tony Lock

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24
Aug 16

CIO Insight – CIOs and Their Salaries

These CIOs bring in seven-figure salaries as they lead their companies in an era when tech and business units must emerge as collaborative partners.

As a CIO, you probably consider yourself well-compensated. (Or at least we hope so.) But have you ever wondered what the elite of the elite make? If so, you’ll want to check out this list of the 10 highest-paid CIOs, as recently published by Janco. Gender-wise, it’s a pretty diverse list, with women accounting for half of the positions—including the top two slots and three of the top five. The CIOs also bring to the table a diversity of work and life experiences, including those related to community outreach, national policy, business leadership, tech design and the military. Collectively, they are leading their companies in an era when tech and business units must emerge as collaborative partners, navigating disruptive trends related to the cloud, mobility, Internet of things and even wearable tech. Indeed, one CIO describes this period as a “tipping point” and another in even more apocalyptic terms.

More of the CIO Insight slideshow from Dennis McCafferty

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22
Aug 16

WSJ – Only 19% of CIOs at Top U.S. Firms are Women: Study

Less than a fifth of chief information officers at top U.S. companies are women, according to a report by executive-search firm Korn/Ferry International.

Across all industry sectors, women accounted for just 19% of CIOs at the top 1,000 firms by revenue, the report said.

That outpaces the number of women who are chief executive or chief financial officers at these firms, but falls behind those who are chief marketing or human resources officers.

All told, women accounted for just 24% of all c-suite executives.

By industry, women were most likely to be the top IT managers at firms in the energy sector, where 35% of CIOs were women, followed by the life sciences at 22% and the consumer and industrial sectors, both at 18%.

Just 11% of CIOs at these firms in the technology sector were women, the report said.

More of the Wall Street Journal article from Angus Loten

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19
Aug 16

WSJ – Failures Like the Delta Outage Are a Fact of Digital Business

Customers are still feeling the fallout from computer problems at Delta Air Lines Inc. that began with an electrical outage in the dark hours of Monday morning. Flight cancellations grew throughout the day to about 1,000 and Delta continued to cancel flights Tuesday – 680 as of 5:15 p.m. ET – as it tried to restore normal operations.

“Following the power loss, some critical systems and network equipment didn’t switch over to Delta’s backup systems,” the company said in a statement. Delta hasn’t gone into detail about which systems didn’t perform as expected or why. Airline reservations, maintenance and operations systems are notoriously complex, made all the more so by layers of technology integrated after years of mergers and acquisitions.

Other industries deal with such complexity but none more publicly than airlines, says Allan Frank, co-founder and chief IT strategist at The Hackett Group, which advises large companies on technology best practices. You have “multiple systems from multiple companies over a period of years, he says. “A glitch can take down the whole house… In the end, people are stuck at airports and there’s a direct, emotional impact.”

More of the Wall Street Journal article from Kim S. Nash

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11
Aug 16

Baseline – Keeping Up With Digital Disruption

Key takeaway – The reality is that clouds and IoT technologies are now synonymous with digital innovation and change. Without them, it’s impossible to take various processes and workflows to a higher level and achieve performance and cost gains that are now critical for success.

Only a quarter of companies surveyed are investing in the cloud, and a fifth are focusing on the IoT. As a result, many of them are at risk of being disrupted.

The pace of digital change is clearly accelerating. For business and IT executives, all of this translates into huge challenges—but also enormous opportunities. Individuals who can innovate, disrupt and reinvent businesses and industries will emerge as the leaders in the new economy.

A recently released technology adoption report from TD Bank includes a number of technology trends. It recently surveyed CEOs, CFOs and company founders at the Bloomberg Breakaway Summit in New York City and found that:

More of the Baseline article from Samuel Greengard

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10
Aug 16

ZDNet – Half of all cloud services outside of IT departments, but IT is getting wiser

A new study from the esteemed Ponemon Institute says we still aren’t doing nearly enough to protect enterprises in the cloud.

For starters, the survey of 3,476 IT and IT security practitioners, commissioned by Gemalto, a digital security vendor, finds that half of all cloud services and corporate data stored in cloud are not controlled by IT departments. So, there’s a lot of cloud activity among business units that’s potentially not vetted or governed.

However, IT departments are getting a better handle on things, the survey also shows. Fifty-four percent of respondents are “confident” that the IT organization knows all cloud computing applications, platform or infrastructure services in use – a nine percent increase from a similar survey from 2014.

The survey doesn’t spell out how and why IT is getting a better grip on shadow cloud adoption. It may be assumed that there are more policies in place and greater communication and collaboration on best practices. IT may be getting more active in its evolving role as cloud broker or service provider to the enterprise, providing catalogs or directories of vetted services available to business users.

More of the ZDNet post from Joe McKendrick

Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.