IT Strategy

The Accidental Successful CIO – How CIOs Can Manage Their Millennial Managers

I really hate to share this with you – but, you’re getting old. How can we tell this? Simple, millennials are starting to become managers in your IT department. Wasn’t it just a few years ago that we were talking about how to deal with the millennials who were just then entering the IT department? Somehow time has marched on and now those same millennials are starting to be the ones in charge. As the CIO, how you choose to manage these millennial managers is going to be different and you need to know how to go about doing it correctly.

More of the Accidental Successful CIO post from Dr. Jim Anderson

Business continuity / CIO Strategy / Cloud Computing / Cloud infrastructure / Disaster Recovery / IaaS / IT Security / IT Staff Retention / IT Strategy / Risk Management — Comments Off
26
Oct 18

Continuity Central – For disaster recovery, there are better options than secondary data centers.

Disaster recovery is a headache that every IT department has suffered and in this arena, as in so many others, the cloud offers a better choice, says Laz Vekiarides. In fact, not only is a secondary data center for DR no longer needed, it’s actually no longer a sustainable option…

The days of the secondary data center / centre are numbered, and that is a good thing for the enterprises that have struggled to build them, fund them and maintain them solely for disaster recovery purposes. When on-premises disaster recovery was the only option, IT teams had no choice but to grit their teeth and take on the cost and resource burdens of physical secondary data centers. Today, though, the growing cloud adoption rate and availability of cloud-forward co-location providers have transformed the data center world. One result: the industry has more efficient and cost-effective choices, including hybrid cloud DR.

Key questions to ask before moving DR to the cloud
Nothing is easy in IT, and no data center leader should believe promises about quick or simple transformations from on-prem secondary data centers to cloud or hybrid models.

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

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24
Oct 18

Continuity Central – Why disaster recovery should become a thing of the past

For businesses today, regardless of industry, the outage of a key IT system ranks among the most serious technology challenges they can face. In fact, the Business Continuity Institute’s 2018 Horizon Scan Report estimates that unplanned outages are the third biggest risk to businesses globally. Beyond the financial ramifications of downtime, the long-term reputational consequences are significant as customer confidence is dented. Rebuilding trust after a major IT failure can be a multi-year process.

In the 1970s when data center / centre managers first came into being, they began to understand how dependent on computers their organizations would soon become. With that in mind they instigated the notion of disaster recovery – an insurance should one or more applications, storage components, databases or network elements go offline.

More of the Continuity Central post from Patrick Smith

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

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16
Oct 18

CIO.com – The CIO as storyteller

Effective communication across the enterprise requires a renewed focus on capturing an audience. Tech leaders from California State University, QEP Resources, and Arup share how they handle the challenge.

Communication is the bedrock of all social behavior. And multilingual communication — what linguists call code-switching — is the human norm. The British Council, the United Kingdom’s international cultural arm, has referred to recent surveys indicating that the majority of humanity is multilingual. The Linguistic Society of America reports that there are upwards of 6,000 languages worldwide, and humans have worked hard to accommodate this diversity. In Novi Sad, Serbia, for example, the sign to the mayor’s office is in the four official languages of the city: Serbian, Hungarian, Slovak, and Pannonian Rusyn.

More of the CIO.com article from Brendan McGowan

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12
Oct 18

Fast Company – Why you need to make your team uncomfortable from time to time

It’s crucial to have a sense of community in the workplace, but too much comfort can hinder progress.

People get comfortable with where they sit, what projects they work on, and what teams they are responsible for. For leaders, no‑drama days where everyone does their thing without any complaints or conflict feel great–so they assume that a calm, hassle-free existence is the one that produces the best work. As a result, they optimize for a steady state, where there are no surprises and people do as they’re told.

More of the Fast Company article from Scott Belsky

IT Security / IT Strategy / Risk Management — Comments Off
11
Oct 18

Continuity Central – Redefining the definition of operational risk

The definition of operational risk varies but generally covers the risk of loss resulting from inadequate or failed internal processes, people and systems or from external events. However, I want to take a fresh look at this general definition and present what I believe operational risk should reflect, taking into account all the cyber security related risks that are currently plaguing organizations.

We know that operational risk exists in every organization and size does not matter. What matters however are two critical areas that need to be included in the operational risk definition:

Internal controls
User awareness.

Internal controls
We often see organizations of all sizes that have experienced intrusion or losses due to lack of (or failed oversight of) internal controls. Although various certifications exist that verify that all is in place, organizations are dynamic in nature and internal controls and processes change rapidly.

More of the Continuity Central article from Adesh Rampat

Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.