Doug Theis - Leave your comfort zone.

CIO.com – Why IT-business alignment still fails

With the push for digital transformation, relations between business and IT seemed to be improving, then they took a left turn. Here’s what’s worth addressing to improve alignment in your organization.

Do your company’s IT leaders and top business executives have the same understanding of IT’s role within the organization? Back in 2012, researchers at Capgemini asked this question of more than 1,300 senior executives. Sixty-five percent of them answered yes.

Perhaps a number closer to 100 percent would have been ideal, but the fact that nearly two thirds of companies surveyed believed business and IT were on the same page was very good news. It represented enormous and hard-won progress from the bad old days when business executives saw technology professionals as pointy-headed geeks, and technology professionals saw business executives as soulless and money-obsessed.

More of the CIO.com post from Minda Zetlin

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01
Oct 18

InformationWeek – How to Drill DevOps into Your Organizational Culture

Establishing the right culture will get your DevOps initiative off on the right foot.
These days, software applications are not your classic installable Windows apps, but instead exist in the cloud, delivered on the Internet and offered as a service to end users. This has ushered in the era of modern, web-based apps that require seamless internal operations throughout development, testing and quality assurance in order to deliver an experience that satisfies (and even goes beyond) user expectation for reliability, uptime, and quality.

This paradigm shift has resulted in the rise of DevOps, and launched initiatives that reframe the way developers and engineers work on a day-to-day basis. Enterprises must innovate smarter and adapt faster to outpace competitors and scale the business. DevOps strategies not only support technological advancements that benefit the consumer, but set benchmarks for entire industries.

More of the InformationWeek article from Christian Beedgen

CIO Strategy / Cloud Computing / Cloud infrastructure / Data Center / DevOps / Digital Transformation / IaaS / Internet of Things / IT Governance / IT Security / IT Staff Retention / IT Strategy — Comments Off
28
Sep 18

CIO.com – 8 CIO archetypes: What kind of IT leader are you?

From order taker to business leader, CIO responsibilities vary widely. Learn what role you currently play and how to break that mold in service of improved business value and career growth.

Global business disruption is quickening the evolutionary timeline of the CIO role. Market dynamicsare forcing IT leaders to extend beyond taking orders and delivering sustainable IT systems to massaging digital strategies and driving business outcomes.

More of the CIO.com slideshow from Clint Bouton

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27
Sep 18

TechTarget – Too many tools hobble network management design

‘Measure twice, cut once’ doesn’t work for network management. It’s time for the industry to consider a new way to coordinate network management design tools.

Carpenters always remember one simple piece of advice when they are working on a job: Measure twice, cut once. It’s a little different in networking, though. In our industry, my advice is the following: Measure many times, but never cut.

Take your typical network. Ask five different administrators and outside consultants about the tools they use to determine how the network is performing or to troubleshoot problems, and you’ll get six different answers — maybe more — about their network management design strategies.

More of the TechTarget article from Russ White

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26
Sep 18

CIO.com – Agility and architecture

Agile practices are still maturing. To scale, they require an enterprise and business architecture framework in their organizations.

I seriously doubt that agile initiatives can have success in the long run if they are not supported by an enterprise and business architecture framework that can be reused and enhanced from one project to the next. Digital transformation is not about a one-time change project or about spontaneous business activities. Digitization is more about transforming many dimensions of an organization with a structured approach involving business and enterprise architecture. This article will demonstrate how architecture can ensure success of agile digital transformation initiatives.

Agile practices in organizations

Agile practices are increasingly used for the digitization of today’s organizations because business environment demands sound decision making and quick follow through to address global competition treats and rapid market disturbances. According to a 2018 survey entitled How Agile and DevOps Enable Digital Readiness and Transformation, about 80% of surveyed organizations have committed to adopting agile practices in their software development.

More of the CIO.com article from Daniel Lambert

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25
Sep 18

TechTarget – What is multi-access edge computing, and how has it evolved?

Multi-access edge computing provides the processing capacity needed to support the increase of ‘things’ at the network edge. But for all its promise, MEC has challenges to face.

Multi-access edge computing is based on the principle that processing capacity at the edge of the network will provide significant application benefits in terms of responsiveness, reliability and security. Despite the increasing number of vendor options, multi-access edge computing is in its early stages, with many potential buyers in the investigation or pilot phases of deployment.

Multi-access edge computing (MEC) is a network architecture that supports compute and storage capacity at the network edge, rather than in a central data center or cloud location.

More of the TechTarget article from Lee Doyle

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24
Sep 18

Forrester – Beyond Moore’s Law: How Exponential Technology Will Drive Disruption

I’ve been thinking a lot about exponential technology and asking myself: “Is disruptive change due to ‘Moore’s Law’ done?” Newsweek recently proclaimed, “The Future Is Uncertain As Moore’s Law Comes To An End.” However, while most experts agree that silicon transistors will stop shrinking around 2021, this doesn’t mean Moore’s Law is dead in spirit — even though, technically, it might be.

Chip makers have to find another way to increase power. For example, there are Germanium and III-V technologies — and, at some point, carbon Nano-tubes — that provide new ways of increasing power. There is also “gate-all-around” transistor design, extreme-ultraviolet and self-directed assembly techniques, and so on. But how will more powerful CPUs drive future disruptions? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect not as much as other exponential trends and the technologies that exploit them. Here is what I’m thinking:

More of the Forrester blog post from Brian Hopkins

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23
Jul 18

Cloud Computing News – The data centre of tomorrow: How the cloud impacts on data centre architectures

Enterprises that are not efficient in how they manage their infrastructure will be at a perpetual competitive disadvantage to those companies that have adopted cloud practices to drive their business.

As the enterprise world continues speeding towards complete digitization, technologies like cloud and multi-cloud are leading the charge. Yes, cloud offerings like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud are changing the way enterprises consume IT resources. Having cloud-grade infrastructure at an enterprise’s fingertips opens up opportunities that simply did not exist before.

But are the effects of cloud limited to a collection of somewhat ephemeral infrastructure residing in someone else’s data centre? Or does cloud carry with it the power to change owned infrastructure as well?

More of the Cloud Computing News post from Mike Bushong

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08
Jun 18

CIO.com – 8 IT management productivity killers

From neglecting to prioritize key strategic initiatives to failing to adjust project estimates, weak IT management practices are threatening IT’s ability to get the job done.

There are two types of productivity killers in the modern workplace: small distractions that sap your focus and big productivity killers that push you into applying time and effort in all the wrong places. Like it or not, weak IT management practices are what cause the more significant productivity killers.

Following is a look at eight such practices that are derailing your IT department — and how to adjust for success.

1. Neglecting to prioritize strategic projects
IT has to put out fires on occasion. When the online banking servers go down, it’s an emergency. But panic situations tend to be rare. Instead, the steady stream of ad hoc questions and change requests from users are the more significant problem. Making users happy is a worthy goal, but you can easily fall victim to short-term thinking.

More of the CIO.com article from Bruce Harpham

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07
Jun 18

InformationWeek – Why IT Costs Keep Rising (and How to Resist the Climb)

It will take a multi-pronged approach for IT organizations to stop the escalation of IT costs.

IT departments have gone through several fundamental changes over the past couple of decades. Today’s technology seems space-aged compared to what was available just 10 years ago, and IT professionals everywhere are just trying to keep up.

Many businesses are seeing their IT expenses, or costs, rise. They’re being forced to invest more in their technological infrastructure and, in many cases, the growing demand of superior technology is driving budgets through the roof. IT costs are expected to maintain this upward trajectory for years to come, and for businesses with already-tight budgets, this seems like an insurmountable challenge.

So why is it that IT costs keep climbing, and what can you do to resist those increases?

More of the InformationWeek article from Larry Alton

Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.