Tag Archives: cio

IBM: CIO Success Hinges on Leveraging Technology

Posted on by gregl

“CIOs increasingly help their organizations cope with complexity by simplifying operations, business processes, products and services,” according to the most recent CIO Midmarket Perspectives report from IBM, which involved interviews with 622 CIOs in growing and mature markets.

“To increase competitiveness, 83 percent of Midmarket CIOs have visionary plans that include business intelligence and analytics, followed by mobility solutions (72 percent) and virtualization (67 percent),” the report states.

“Perhaps the most useful insight to emerge from this study, however, is not what makes CIOs the same, but what makes them different,” it continues. “The primary differences among the CIOs we spoke with lie in their organizations’ business needs and goals, and how CIOs can achieve those goals by leveraging business and information technology.”

For a copy of “The Essential CIO: Insights from the Global Chief Information Officer Study,” click here.

Talking ‘Same Language’ Is Key for the CIO

Posted on by gregl

IT has the potential to create real competitive advantages in many businesses — if IT can only get “a seat at the table,” meaning the venue of true strategic decisions.

Patrick Gray, founder and president of Prevoyance Group, believes a CIO’s price of admission to these discussions is to have the utility aspect of IT running flawlessly—no network downtime, no email hiccups. If you’re already there, then …

“If you want a seat at the table, you need to talk in the same language as the other parties currently there,” Gray advises. “Look at areas where IT has solved some business problem, which usually results in revenue gains or impressive cost cuts. Talk about the financial returns or cost savings with your peers rather than the impressive technology that was implemented or the novel tools used. Focus on projects that let something happen cheaper or faster. Avoid goofy, vendor-advocated gimmicks like awkward ROI calculations and TCO gymnastics, and focus on a business result.”

Gray lists other requirements that’ll pave the way, then adds: “Like most good advice, this is conceptually simple but may take months or years of diligent effort to apply.”

For Gray’s other tips toward being heard, click here.

Most CFOs Aren’t Too Keen on their CIOs

Posted on by gregl

More Chief Information Officers are reporting to Chief Financial Officers than ever before – perhaps because Chief Executive Officers tend to find much of IT to be less than comprehensible – yet CFOs aren’t especially impressed with CIOs.

That’s a formula for trouble in the C Suite if ever there was one.

Gartner researchers – in conjunction with Financial Executives International – recently surveyed about 350 CFOs and found:

  • Only 25% of the CFOs regard CIOs as capable of helping determine business strategy.
  • Less than 25% of the CFOs felt IT provides a sufficient level of technology innovation.
  • Less than 20% of the CFOs believe IT meets or exceeds business expectations.

The CFOs surveyed all were from North America, in the manufacturing, financial services, energy, health care and transportation sectors.

Successful CIOs Blend Innovative with Pragmatic

Posted on by gregl

In a new paper pitching the benefits of its service-management software, IBM analysts came up with a fairly succinct responsibilities profile of today’s successful CIO.

“Rather than being content as consummate IT experts, today’s CIOs of high-growth companies told us they are business leaders who not only provide sound IT services but also assume leadership roles to tackle strategic, non-technological issues within the company,” the paper states. “In fact, CIOs said they spend an impressive 55 percent of their time on activities that spur innovation: Helping to set business strategy, or using IT to enable business flexibility, for example.

 “The remaining 45 percent of their time is spent on essential, more traditional CIO tasks related to managing the ongoing technology environment,” the paper states. “It is this dual focus — on the innovative and the pragmatic — that is shaping the goals of successful CIOs.”

Ownership Can Trump Cost-Effectiveness

Posted on by gregl

Recent corporate organizational trends have more CIOs reporting to CFOs, which means CFOs are more involved in IT decisions, which means CIOs have more explaining to do. Especially when it comes to things like the cost-effectiveness of cloud computing.

“One challenge for CIOs has been to overcome the CEO/CFO’s question of why the company’s own IT resources are not as cost effective as those of AWS (Amazon Web Services), for example,” says Frost & Sullivan industry analyst Vanessa Alvarez. “There is a misguided expectation that an internal IT resource should be just as inexpensive as public cloud services.”

The issue, of course, is heightened as cloud computing becomes more pervasive and executives ponder whether they want to continue with internal resources or with outsourced and public options.

 “While the cost of infrastructure is certainly coming down, there is still the fact that internal resources are still ‘owned’ by the enterprise,” Alvarez explains on CIO.com. “The organization is still absorbing that capital expenditure. Obviously, with AWS and like services, this is not the case, and therefore, AWS will always be less expensive to some extent.”

Costs and People Remain Reasons for Data Center Outsourcing

Posted on by Karen Karger

Though it’s a couple of years old now, a survey of data centers conducted by Enterprise Systems and SourcingMag.com explored reasons why companies outsource their data centers. Like good wine, the reasons may be even more pertinent today.

The number one reason – reported by 44 percent of respondents – was to reduce costs. “Colocation and dedicated server hosting can eliminate large-scale data center investments,” according to the survey findings. “Colocation enables CIOs to expand their data center footprint only on an as-needed basis rather than invest in an entire expansion up front.”

The second and third top reasons involve people resources. Thirty-four percent of respondents said they were outsourcing their data center to gain outside IT resources. “CIOs can get access to very experienced data center staff that are shared across a ‘multi-tenant’ data center environment without needing to hire their own full-time experts in networking, security, cooling, power and data center services,” the survey stated.

In the process, internal IT people are freed up, which is what 31 percent of respondents were seeking. “By reducing the day-to-day maintenance chores, the in-house IT team can concentrate on core applications and deliverables and leave the data center operations to the colocation or dedicated server hosting operator,” according to the survey findings.

Want to Cut Power Costs? Have the CIO Pay the Bill

Posted on by gregl

Talk about cause and effect! When CIOs become responsible for paying a company’s power bills, energy use in the data center can drop dramatically.

That’s the message from Dean Nelson, the senior director of global data center services at eBay, to a group of IT managers at the recent Uptime Institute Symposium in New York. “When CIOs are paying the power bill, they really understand the impact of the decisions being made,” he stressed.

While most CIOs don’t see their companies’ power bills, eBay includes them with regular IT expenses and, as a result, has witnessed a “very aggressive” drop in power consumption. The drop has been so profound that eBay was able to pay for its newest data center – a $287 million facility in Salt Lake City – through savings achieved in lowered power costs over the past two years, Nelson explained.

As a result, eBay now considers its IT department to be “self-funding” due to greater efficiencies in power spending, Nelson said.

The Big Ifs of IT Leadership

Posted on by Karen Karger

CIO Insights editor, Doug Moran, lists 16 attributes of a leader, which he calls the “16 Ifs.” The “If” part he attributes to a Rudyard Kipling poem of the same name, which describes for Doug, “a leadership path that I have chosen to follow.” Doug says the first two lines might have been written for today’s CIOs:

“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;”

Here are Doug’s 16 attributes of a leader:

  • Composure ― The Power to Keep Your Head
  • Character ― The Wisdom to Know and Trust Yourself
  • Patience ― The Strength to Endure
  • Selflessness ― The Ability to Put Your Cause and Beliefs Ahead of Yourself
  • Vision ―The Power of Having and Sharing a Dream
  • Self-Efficacy ― The Confidence to Gain from Triumph and Disaster
  • Integrity ― The Wisdom to Know the Truth and the Strength to Defend It
  • Resilience ― The Ability to Bounce Back from Adversity
  • Boldness ― The Ability to See and Seize Opportunities
  • Accountability ― The Will to Take Ownership Regardless of the Outcome
  • Courage ― The Ability to Face the Dangers When They Become Real
  • Stamina ― The Will to Hold On When You Have Nothing Left
  • Authenticity ― The Resolve Always to Be Yourself
  • Inspiration ― The Ability to Connect With and Motivate Friends and Foes
  • Enthusiasm ― The Energy to Fill Every Minute
  • Ambition ― The Will to Make the World What You Want It to Be

To read the entire CIO Insights article, click here.

IT Jobs Outlook for 2010

Posted on by Karen Karger

Want to know what the IT staffing/jobs outlook is for 2010? Well, the good news, according to a new Robert Half Technology report — there’s “more than enough work to go around.” In answer to the question, “How would you describe the staffing level of your IT department in relation to current workloads?,” CIOs responded:

  • Very understaffed 10%
  • Somewhat understaffed 33%
  • At the appropriate staff level 53%
  • Somewhat overstaffed 3%
  • Don’t know/no answer 1%

 The report further found that 7% of CIOs plan to add IT staff in the first quarter of 2010, while 4% expect workforce reductions. (The net 3% increase is the strongest forecast since the first quarter of 2009.)

This CIO Update article cautions that executives are “taking a slow and steady approach to hiring,” however. So what types of IT professionals are they looking to hire? Generalists and specialists it seems.

 On one hand, companies are looking for jack-of-all-trades candidates, so these folks can work in many capacities and help with the overall IT workload.

 Demand for certain specialties is strong for applications and database developers, network admins and help desk and support staff.

How Does Your IT Budget Look for 2010?

Posted on by Karen Karger

The Society for Information Management recently polled CIOs about their IT spending priorities and plans for dollar allocation in the coming year. An overview of the results is presented in this slide show on CIO Insight. It’s hard to visualize from the slides so I created these two pie charts to represent their findings about 2009 versus 2010 budgets. It looks like the news is better in the coming year— roughly half of the CIOs surveyed said their 2010 budgets would remain the same.

In 2009, 50% of CIO said their budgets would be lower than in 2008.

50% of CIOs said their budgets would be lower in 2009.

 

45% of CIOs said their budgets would be the same in 2010.

45% of CIOs said their budgets would be the same in 2010.