Doug Theis - Leave your comfort zone.

CIO.com – 7 signs you’re suffering from burnout — and what to do about it

When you absolutely, positively no longer give a damn about your work, it’s time to stop and recharge. Your soul, colleagues and family will thank you.

Suddenly, after years of planning, managing, exceeding goals and conquering challenges, you realize that you no longer really care very much about your work. Formerly exciting activities, such as leading, influencing and innovating, don’t matter much anymore. These days, your biggest work-related thrill is playing the games you find on Slack.

More of the CIO.com article from John Edwards

CIO Strategy / IT Governance / IT Leadership / IT Staff Retention / IT Strategy — Comments Off
29
Oct 18

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

Business continuity / CIO Strategy / Cloud Computing / Disaster Recovery / IT Strategy / Risk Management / Technical Debt — Comments Off
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

Business continuity / CIO Strategy / IT Governance / IT Leadership / IT Security / Risk Management — Comments Off
22
Oct 18

Information Week – Why IT Should Care About Legal Holds

When it’s time to preserve company data and communications relating to pending legal matters, the IT and legal groups have to work together.
When litigation looms, a corporation has a duty to identify and preserve relevant documents and other data that may be important to the legal matter. The goal is to avoid the intentional or inadvertent destruction of relevant evidence that might be used at trial. This process is called a “legal hold.”

While a legal hold sounds like it falls squarely into the realm of the legal department, lawyers rely heavily on IT to execute many of the activities associated with a legal hold. This puts a burden on IT and can put legal, IT or the organization at risk if legal obligations aren’t met

More of the Information Week article from John Tredennick

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

Get Better / IT Security / Risk Management — Comments Off
18
Oct 18

Fast Company – Seriously, stop using these 25 terrible passwords

With news that hackers can now crack pacemakers and voting machines, it’s hard not to be a little concerned about internet security. The best line of defense, of course, is a strong password, and frankly, if you still use “password” as your password at this point, you kind of deserve to be hacked.

FrontNet has put together a list of the 25 worst passwords on the internet, and if you happen to recognize a few of them, it might be time to invest in a password management app to keep your online accounts secure–and make sure you never have to *shudder* think again.

More of the Fast Company article from Melissa Locker

Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.