Doug Theis - Leave your comfort zone.

ZDNet – How to turn down bad IT ideas at work – without upsetting your colleagues

Modern CIOs hear an awful lot about the importance of engagement, but partnerships are a two-way street. Sometimes you need to tell people — whether that’s someone on your team, a line-of-business peer, or your boss — that their idea won’t work. What’s the best way to tell people they’re wrong? ZDNet hears from five CIOs.

1. Let people know quickly and remain open to new ideas
Juan Perez, CIO at UPS, says executives must tell people when they’re wrong, regardless of level. At the same time, Perez says relaying this information is a sensitive task. “The worst thing that can happen is that you come across as someone that is not respecting and valuing their opinions and views,” he says.

More of the ZDNet article from Mark Samuels

CIO Strategy / IT Staff Retention / IT Strategy / Technical Debt — Comments Off
02
Nov 17

Fast Company – Survey: one in four IT workers are worried that their skills could become obsolete

For the most part, IT workers like their jobs: 79% claim they are satisfied with their positions (up from 73% in 2015) and a whopping 45% are “very satisfied,” according to the new industry report “Evaluating IT Workforce Needs.” However, there is one looming concern among these workers. One in four are worried that their skills could become obsolete, which probably includes anyone who fears automation (read: everyone) and anyone working in programming languages like Visual Basic, Flash, or even Ruby.

Continuity Central – PwC survey highlights massive corporate planning failures when it comes to cyber security

44 percent of the 9,500 executives in 122 countries surveyed say they do not have an overall information security strategy; 48 percent do not have an employee security awareness training programme, and 54 percent don’t have an incident response process.

PwC has published its 2018 Global State of Information Security Survey (GSISS).

Executives worldwide acknowledge the increasingly high stakes of cyber insecurity. 40 percent of survey respondents cite the disruption of operations as the biggest consequence of a cyber attack; 39 percent cite the compromise of sensitive data; 32 percent cite harm to product quality, and 22 percent cite threat to human life.

Yet despite this awareness, many companies at risk of cyber attacks remain unprepared to deal with them. 44 percent say they do not have an overall information security strategy. 48 percent say they do not have an employee security awareness training programme, and 54 percent say they do not have an incident response process.

ZDNet – DIY-IT guide to disaster preparedness: Because it’s always something

2017 has been an extremely difficult year for much of North America. We were hit with hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Mary in the southeast, and wildfires through much of the west. Other regions suffered their own disasters and challenges, as well.

Hurricane risk blankets the southern and eastern coasts. Landslides occur anywhere the ground is too soft with too many rainstorms. Even in areas not normally subject to coastal hurricanes, heavy rains can cause catastrophic flooding. High winds and atmospheric conditions cause tornadoes, particularly through the middle states. Tectonic fault lines slice through the core of of our nation, causing small and devastating earthquakes.

More of the ZDNet article from David Gerwitz

Business continuity / IT Strategy — Comments Off
30
Oct 17

Continuity Central – Future business continuity: how technology and strategy improvements will impact the profession

The business world is facing a period of rapid change with various emerging technologies, especially artificial intelligence and machine learning, expected to fundamentally change the structure of organizations and society. How might these developments impact the business continuity profession? Charles Boffin makes some suggestions…

Everyone agrees that business continuity will be changing over the next few years and into the foreseeable future; but, as with any other changing landscape, the future is never a specific of finely shaped object: it is a vision. For business continuity, the end vision is a fully resilient environment which means that things don’t fail and, if they do, they are resolved immediately with no loss of service. This general view of the future of our profession is fine as we build our technological credentials and capabilities, but there are three prime movers involved, and each requires a different response:

1. External factors that can be forecasted

This covers issues such bad weather, demonstrations and civil unrest, economic factors, viruses (human!) and other aspects where we can see events unfolding or likely to happen in a given place. In these cases, responses can be planned and contingencies created.

ZDNet – Time to move on from DevOps and continuous delivery, says Google advocate

Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) and DevOps may be on many peoples’ minds these days, but there’s nothing particularly new about the concept — software shops should have put these concepts into action years ago. Instead, technology leaders should be now worrying about the futures of their businesses.

building-observation-deck-world-trade-center-one-photo-by-joe-mckendrick.jpg
Photo: Joe McKendrick
That’s the view of Kelsey Hightower, staff developer advocate at Google Cloud Platform, who says too many IT leaders are debating how to manage IT operations and workflows, when their businesses are being hit with unprecedented disruption. “CI/CD is a done deal — like 10 years ago it was a done deal,” he said in a recent podcast with CTO Advisor’s Keith Townsend. “There is nothing to figure out in that domain. A lot of people talk about DevOps, and there may be some culture changes, in number of people who can do it or are allowed to do it. For me, that is the table stakes. CI/CD, DevOps; we have to say, listen, figure it out, or go work with another team outside this company to figure it out.”

More of the ZDNet article from Joe McKendrick

Bi-Modal IT / CIO Strategy / Cloud Computing / Cloud infrastructure / Digital Transformation / Get Better / IT Governance / IT Security / IT Strategy — Comments Off
27
Oct 17

HBR – How to Spot a Machine Learning Opportunity, Even If You Aren’t a Data Scientist

Artificial intelligence is no longer just a niche subfield of computer science. Tech giants have been using AI for years: Machine learning algorithms power Amazon product recommendations, Google Maps, and the content that Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter display in social media feeds. But William Gibson’s adage applies well to AI adoption: The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.

The average company faces many challenges in getting started with machine learning, including a shortage of data scientists. But just as important is a shortage of executives and nontechnical employees able to spot AI opportunities. And spotting those opportunities doesn’t require a PhD in statistics or even the ability to write code. (It will, spoiler alert, require a brief trip back to high school algebra.)

More of the Harvard Business Review article from Kathryn Hume

Business continuity / CIO Strategy / Data Center / Disaster Recovery / IT Security / IT Strategy — Comments Off
26
Oct 17

Continuity Central – Key trends in business continuity invocations

ach year Sungard AS publishes a summary of its business continuity service invocations, providing useful insights into incident trends. Here Daren Howell presents four key trends from the most recent data.

It’s easy to take for granted or forget the extent to which our lives now rely upon technology that is always on. Every now and again, however, something happens to remind us of this reliance and it’s often an uncomfortable situation for everyone involved. As IT environments become increasingly complex, unfortunately these types of incidents are only going to increase.

Over the past few years, there has been a steady uptick in the number of instances that businesses have required recovery services, reversing what was a long-established downward trend. Businesses are facing an evolving threat landscape, with the increase in malicious cyber attacks, alongside changing working habits that have seen more flexible approaches to the workplace environment and the infiltration of different and more complex technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things. It’s perhaps, therefore, unsurprising that the need for recovery support is on the rise, however it is not always for the reasons you would expect.

Baseline – Why We Should Encourage More Women to Work in IT

A significantly larger number of women tech professionals than men believe that their gender is underrepresented in the IT industry, according to a recent survey from Harvey Nash, an IT recruiting, outsourcing/offshoring and executive search firm, and ARA, an organization that seeks to attract, retain and advance women in technology. The resulting report, “2017 Women in Technology: Overcoming Obstacles and Unlocking Potential,” indicates that much of the issue takes shape at an early age for future tech workers: More men than women said they first grew interested in IT as a potential career in elementary or middle school.

Men are also more likely to focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) classes in college. It should come as no surprise, then, that a majority of survey respondents feel that it’s key to encourage more girls to pursue tech subjects in school. “The visibility and value of a STEM education has skyrocketed in the last decade, but we’re not yet seeing the full impact translate to the IT workplace,” said Bob Miano, USA president and CEO of Harvey Nash.

The Register – Survey: Tech workers are terrified they will be sacked for being too old

Almost half of tech workers in the US, like Hollywood stars, live in constant fear that age will end their careers, according to a new poll.

Job website Indeed.com surveyed more than 1,000 employed tech workers and found that 43 per cent of respondents expressed concern about losing their job due to age. And 18 per cent said they worried about this “all the time.”

The survey falls short of a revelation. Rather, it’s a reaffirmation of an issue that has troubled tech employees for years and has prompted lawsuits such as the one brought by Robert Heath against Google in 2015, since joined by at least 269 aggrieved elders.

Heath’s lawsuit should not to be confused with the age discrimination lawsuit brought by Brian Reid that Google settled for an undisclosed sum in 2011.

More of The Register article from Thomas Claburn

Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.