Tag Archives: Technology

Cloud computing: Top CIO tips for dealing with the next stage

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On-demand technology continues to rise in popularity. Here’s a feature for silicon.com, where I talk to IT leaders about what’s coming next in cloud computing and how to deal with the changes.

Utility computing has switched quickly from hype to reality, with increasing numbers of organisations moving infrastructures, platforms and even applications to the cloud.

What will be some of the next frontiers for on-demand technology and how can IT leaders prepare for the inevitable shift to cloud computing? Here, IT leaders discuss the future shape of the cloud and present their top tips for dealing with the next generation of on-demand IT.

Tip 1. Niche providers will fill the gaps - easyJet CIO Trevor Didcock is already making use of the cloud. He expects relationships with third parties to develop in the future, particularly with specialist providers that will help CIOs safely make the most of on-demand computing.

To read the rest of the feature, please click here.

Autumn 2010 edition of CIO Connect magazine

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The autumn edition of CIO Connect magazine has been out for a couple of weeks now and we’ve been receiving some great feedback from members and non-members.

It’s a bumper edition, which features profiles of London Olympics CIO Gerry Pennell and BBC CIO Tiffany Hall. There’s also exclusive content from CIO Connect’s recently held annual conference, ‘Business as Unusual’, and the first part of our annual Horizons research, which explores the future of the CIO role. As ever, thanks to all interviewees and contributors. A full list of featured CIOs and business leaders is provided below:

  • Gerry Pennell, CIO at London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games
  • Mark Foulsham, head of IT at esure
  • Tiffany Hall, CIO at BBC
  • Rajiv Hingoo, chief operating officer at CLSA
  • Jon Curry, director of HR and ICT at The Eden Project
  • Poornima Kirloskar-Saini, head of IT at Women Like Us 
  • Neil Brooks, CTO at Business Monitor International
  • Bill Brindle, CIO at Hogg Robinson
  • Toby Clarke, group IT director at Abbey Protection Group
  • Tim Fillingham, chief operating officer at Torus Insurance group
  • Neil Pamment, IT director at Denton Wilde Sapte LLP
  • Chris Miller, CIO at Avanade
  • David Felstead, CIO at the Forestry Commission
  • Vincent Kelly, CIO at Orange Business Services
  • Stuart Curley, chief technology architect at the Royal Mail
  • Mark Quartermaine, managing director of BT Global Services in the UK
  • David Bradshaw, research manager at IDC
  • Barry Jennings, solicitor in the commercial department at Bird & Bird LLP
  • Ganesh Ayyar, chief executive at MphasiS
  • Srikrishna Ramakarthikeyan, vice president at HCL
  • Vin Murria, chief executive at ACS
  • Nathan Marke. CTO at e2e
  • Dominic Batchelor, partner at Ashurst LLP
  • Inbali Iserles, professional development lawyer at Ashurst LLP
  • Danièle Tyler, solicitor at Ashurst LLP
  • Nick Kirkland, chief executive at CIO Connect
  • Nisha Pillai, BBC World News anchor
  • René Carayol, leadership guru
  • Chris Hadfield, executive coach
  • Ellis Watson, chief executive of Syco Entertainment
  • Roger Camrass, general manager for Europe at Wipro Consulting
  • David Smith, economy editor at The Sunday Times
  • Trae Chancellor, vice president of enterprise strategy at Salesforce.com
  • Jeremy Vincent, CIO at Jaguar Land Rover
  • Tom Herbich, director of business applications and information governance at Deutsche Bank
  • Margot Katz, executive coach
  • Nigel Moulton, director of product and solutions marketing for EMEA at Avaya
  • Chris Barrow, EMEA solutions marketing executive at Avaya
  • John Lawler, deputy director of information systems services at Trinity College Dublin
  • David Valentine, general manager for UK and Ireland at Micro Focus

Is the CTO the new CIO?

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Here’s another article I’ve produced for silicon.com – this time it’s about whether an entirely new type of leader is starting to emerge. With all the emphasis on understanding the business, is there a danger that IT leaders are losing their focus on technology itself?

Much is made of the suggestion that IT leaders must understand the needs of the business. It’s a reasonable suggestion – any technology chief knows success is dependent on engagement with the demands of senior executives. But in this push to comprehend the requirements of the business, have we started to ignore the importance of technology?

It’s a pertinent question, given that most commentators recognise that IT is now the key building block for organisational success. From on-demand computing to social media and mobile technology, IT chiefs will be expected to give quick answers to crucial investment questions.

While such answers will depend on the requirements of the business, the board will first call on an IT chief for their understanding of technology rather than other operational considerations.

For the full feature, click here.

Dark side of the cloud

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A quick update to my article list for silicon.com – an article explaining why the shift to cloud computing may take longer than CIOs think. Along with the familiar barriers to cloud adoption, such as security and vendor lock-in, there are a number of less obvious challenges giving some CIOs pause for thought:

Listen to the vendors and on-demand computing is presented as an unstoppable force that is set to change technology provision quickly and irrevocably.

Check the research and that representation certainly appears credible, with analyst house IDC estimating that companies spend £10.7bn a year on cloud IT services worldwide and that the market will be worth £27bn by 2013. But while the numbers might sound impressive, IT leaders wishing to transfer services to the cloud face significant challenges.

Executives rapidly discover a dark side to the cloud, where concepts of on-demand technology are confused, trust is constrained and understanding is limited. “I find the whole debate about cloud as interesting as the debate about service-oriented architecture,” says Stuart Curley, chief technology architect at the Royal Mail. “It doesn’t keep me awake at night but it does send me to sleep.”

For the rest of the feature, click here.

What CEOs expect to get from a top-performing CIO

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What type of skills does the CEO want from his or her CIO? My latest feature for silicon.com draws on the experiences of a group of senior executives to discuss the leadership traits that will make a CIO stand out from their peers:

The starting point, says Jardine Lloyd Thompson CIO Ian Cohen, is to understand your personal attributes or strengths and those of your team. Rather than worrying about potential weaknesses, an outstanding leader will focus on their strengths – and those within their teams – and look to exploit them.

“We spend way too much time trying to turn people into something they are not and fix their weaknesses,” he says. “It’s complete nonsense to think that fixing something bad will create something great. If you take ‘bad’ and just invert it – you get ‘not bad’, which is light years away from ‘great’. Find the activities that strengthen you personally, and the people you lead, and look to do those activities more often.”

When it comes to personal capabilities, Cohen is well aware of his own strengths. He says he happens to be good at technology because of the chronology of his career and an employment path that has included senior IT positions at media giants Associated Newspapers and the Financial Times.

To read the full article, please click here.

CISOs: Does your firm need a security tsar?

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Here’s another piece I’ve recently had published on silicon.com, this time about the importance of data security and the potential requirement for a chief information security officer:

Mike Newman is an IT leader who is one step ahead of some of his executive peers. The CIO of Towergate, Europe’s largest independently-owned insurance intermediary, appointed a full-time head of IT security 18 months ago as part of a higher-level strategy to prioritise the integrity of information.

“Data security simply has to be fundamental,” says Newman of the decision to hire a head of information security. “As a services-based organisation, the key asset is your customer – you have a real duty to look after your assets. We need smart security guys to stop the potential exposure of data and to make sure that the corporate use of information follows best practice.”

The good news is that, for the most part, technology workers recognise the importance of employing a dedicated security leader. As many as 62 per cent of IT professionals believe the most valuable governance measure an organisation can undertake with regards to data security is the appointment of a chief information security officer (CISO) or other high-level security leader, according to research from the Ponemon Institute.

To read the full article, please click here.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube: But where’s the social CIO?

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I’ve been on holiday for the past week. Well, I say holiday – I live in London and we visited Leigh-on-Sea for a few hours one day. The main point is that I haven’t been at work. And during that time away from my desk, a piece I wrote on the social CIO for silicon.com was published. The piece suggests that not enough IT chiefs are championing social media and collaboration:

The media consensus would have us believe that we are on the cusp of an information revolution, where everyone across the world is using Facebook to poke their peers and Twitter to tweet their views. As ever, an element of caution is required. Change is occurring but the revolution is patchy at best.

There might be 500 million Facebook users around the globe but that still leaves almost six and a half billion non-users. What lies behind such figures is a broader socio-economic change. The number of people using Facebook has doubled year-on-year and the up-and-coming cadre ofyounger employees expect to use social technologies in the workplace.

Such expectations create significant challenges for the executive team. The CIO, as the individual with responsibility for organisational IT, should be at the apex of that challenge. That, however, is not necessarily the case.

To read the full article, please click here.

Deloitte UK CIO Mary Hensher talks about people and security

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Summer’s recently released CIO Connect magazine featured a profile interview with Deloitte UK partner and CIO Mary Hensher, a people person with a passion for the potential of IT to change business. The feature covered the following areas:

  1. Deloitte UK CIO Mary Hensher is only too aware of the fact that she remains a scarcity amongst the rarefied air of UK business leadership; a woman with a responsibility for technology at a leading firm.
  2. There is hope that the balance will once again shift towards women, and that hope comes in the form of social media: “Technology used to be anti-social; now it’s social,” says Hensher, referring to the increasing prevalence of collaborative technology.
  3. “You need pioneers to prove that new models of working are possible,” says Hensher. “Part-time employment will not work in every job but IT should be more accommodating. Employees need to be as flexible as they can. A good working relationship can make new models work.”
  4. Information is everything. It is crucial that a central core of IT experts are retained in-house to ensure that client data is secure: “We can’t afford ignorance and managing secure data is essential,” says Hensher.
  5. Hensher says issues of security and mobility come together and create concerns around connectivity: “The challenge is to connect your people effectively,” she says.

To read the full article please, click here.

Better supplier relations and smarter deals for CIOs

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CIOs say a principal part of their role is developing strong partnerships with external suppliers and internal colleagues. But what makes a good relationship and how do you maximise its effectiveness? My latest feature for silicon.com investigates:

Read the marketing bumf from most technology vendors and you would be forgiven for thinking that just about any technology system is a potential cure-all for the business’s ills.

Words such as ‘solution’ are allied to terms like ‘leverage’ to suggest a meaningful – but actually, meaningless – route to IT-enabled operations. If only IT could deliver everything that supplier’s promise. In most cases, it simply cannot.

“The industry’s not as bad as it was but there’s still an issue of over-promising,” says Neil Pamment, a technology veteran and IT director at legal firm Denton Wilde Sapte. With previous experience of working with vendors across various sectors, including manufacturing and healthcare, Pamment says over-zealous marketing assertions can create issues for CIOs.

For the full feature, click here.

Why there should be no such thing as an IT project

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Silicon has just published my analysis piece which suggests there should be no such thing as an IT project. The article quotes a number of CIOs and a link to the full article can be found beneath the following introduction:

“IT projects never really work,” says Mike Day, CIO at fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger. That seems like negative talk from a technology chief but there is sound method in the apparent madness.

More technology chiefs are waking up to the need for IT projects to be sponsored by the business. In cost-constrained times, CIOs are trying to avoid driving into a technology cul-de-sac. So rather than simply implementing IT projects, many CIOs are aiming to understand what executives need from the outset and meet agreed outcomes.

“The best ideas are sponsored by the business,” says Day. “Technology is now so pervasive through the organisation; it’s end-to-end. The CIO has to communicate to the business what is possible and why.”

For the full feature, click here.