Newsfeed for Chief Technology Officers (CTO)

A chief technical officer or chief technology officer (abbreviated as CTO), is an executive position whose holder is focused on scientific and technical issues within an organization. Essentially, a CTO is responsible for the transformation of capital - be it monetary, intellectual, or political - into technology in furtherance of the company's objectives.

The title is typically found in organizations which significantly develop or exploit information technology

Contrast with Chief Information Officer

The CTO may be contrasted with that of a CIO in that, a CIO is predisposed to solve problems by acquiring and adapting ready-made technologies, a CTO is predisposed to solve problems by developing new technologies. In practice, each will typically blend both approaches.

In an enterprise whose primary technology concerns are addressable by ready-made technologies, a CIO might be the primary representative of technology issues at the executive level. In an enterprise whose primary technology concerns are addressed by developing (and perhaps productizing) new technologies, or the general strategic exploitation of intellectual property held by the company, a CTO might be the primary representative of these concerns at the executive level.

A CTO is focused on technology needed for products and technology sold to clients where a CIO is an internal facing job focused on technology to run the company and maintaining the platform to run services to sell to clients

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You can get the full news feed by going to
http://cto-toolkits.com/cto.xml.

Below are the latest the items from that feed.

CIOs and Lawyers Must Communicate

08/25/2010

IT chiefs and lawyers must learn to speak the same language if they are to work together to help organisations avoid risk. And although responsibility for IT risk management, the careful balancing act of businesses benefit against liability,must not begin and end with the IT department, it is important to run any policies past the techies.

It is vital the IT crowd is consulted, agrees with and has ownership of any policies that directly affect them, and technical teams must make the effort to try and communicate with legal eagles in a language other than IT speak. It is better to have a legal team which will tell the IT department what we need to be doing. But lawyers being lawyers, it is very difficult to work with them to understand what we want and if they could talk to us in an IT language life would be much easier.

If you express risk in the different languages make sure things are transparent and everyone does understand who is responsible for what.
- more info

Factors to Consider in a Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity Plan

08/25/2010

The Janco Disaster Recovery Plan & Business Continuity Template takes into consideration all of the items related to various layers of operations that most enterprises need to consider if they want to continue after a disaster occurs. These include:

Strategy - Items related to the strategies used by the business to complete day-to-day activities while enabling continuous operations. Examples include financial, manufacturing and disaster recovery strategies.

Organization - Items related to the structure, skills, communications and responsibilities of your employees. Examples include human resources, training, and internal and external communications.

Applications and data - Items related to the software necessary which enable business operations, as well as the method used to develop that software. Examples include customer relationship management (CRM) applications, enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, databases and transaction processors.

Processes - Items related to the critical business processes necessary to run the business, as well as the IT processes used to ensure smooth operations. Examples include accounts receivable, accounts payable, change management and problem management.

Technology - Items related to the systems, network and industry-specific technology necessary to enable your applications and data. Examples include host systems, workstations and Internet Protocol (IP) networks.

Facilities- Items related to the buildings, factories and offices necessary to house your organization and your production or service technologies. Examples include data centers, office buildings and physical security operations.
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Where CIOs spend their time

08/18/2010

In a survey of CIOs, it was found that they spend most of their time:

Aligning IT with enterprise goals

Cultivating the IT and enterprise relationship

Improving IT operations and system performance

Leading change efforts

Implementing new systems and architecture

Driving business innovation

Redesigning business processes

Controlling IT costs

Developing the business strategy

Looking for a competitive advantage

Managing IT crises

Managing security

Selecting and negotiating with vendors

Developing customer market strategies and technologies

Studying and understanding market trends and customer needs
- more info

Some improvement in the job market

08/13/2010

A technology job board is seeing a steady uptick in technology jobs for the financial industry. After the economys meltdown in 2008 and 2009, its taken some time to see recovery in this segment. If you have technology experience in the industry, there are jobs to be had.

Programming skills are way up in terms of demand, especially the C languages with C# being the skill most sought after right now, along with skills in C and C++. In New York City and the metropolitan area, financial technology positions garner 20 percent higher salaries than the general technology population.

There is good news on the technology jobs front if you have prior banking or financial industry experience. Salaries are higher than the average tech job, especially on Wall Street.
- more info

New Policy Templates Can be Customized

08/09/2010

Documenting a clear set of IT policies is a resource-intensive process for IT managers, due to the research and writing time involved. And once policies are created, the next step is to communicate and gain acceptance for those policies throughout the organization. Wouldn't it be nice to start with boiler-plate templates that require only minor customization?

Janco Associates is offering you CIO IT Infrastructure Policy Bundle. This updated, time-saving package will provide you with a stocked library of over 200 pages of policy templates. Plus, you get the tools, techniques and advice you need to successfully apply these policies in your company.
- more info

CIO continue to run with tight budgets

08/02/2010

Overall server spending in enterprises remains weak in 2010 as companies continue to look for ways to save money following the economic downturn, according to research firm TheInfoPro.

According to the survey, which gathered data from 252 decision makers at Fortune 1000 companies, 38 percent plan to reduce server budgets this year compared to 2009, while 25 percent plan to spend more.

Though demand for server hardware has picked up, spending has flattened due to growing trends like virtualization, which helps manage a larger number of tasks on fewer servers.
- more info

What is the Chief Technology Officer's (CTO) Role

07/24/2010

The Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is responsible for overall direction of all technology functions associated within the enterprise. This includes Information Technology applications, communications (voice, data, and wireless), and computing services within the enterprise that impact the both the enterprise, its products and its customers. As the top technical architect of the enterprise he or she provides a vision of how technology can be applied. These areas include product design, customer interactions with the enterprise, IT operating systems, communications (voice, data, and wireless), transaction processing and database administration, compliance with all mandated requirements, the information center, personal computers, electronic and optical storage, and multimedia applications.

You can get more by getting the Internet and Information Technology Position Descriptions Handiguide - 2010 version.
- more info

Virtualization improves disaster planning and change control

07/13/2010

IT has been reported that organizations implementing virtualization often experience less server downtime than organizations not deploying virtualization, and many have taken steps to provide better disaster recovery than they could have in an unvirtualized environment. Several surveys show that virtualized environments experience between 35% to 40% fewer server outage hours per year than unvirtualized environments.

The reasons often given are:

Simplification - Virtualization allows more OS workloads and more applications per server. This results in fewer servers and more standardization, which results in easier provisioning of new or redeployed applications.

Independence - Since the OS/application workload does not tie to a specific physical server, IT Management can migrate their workload from server to server thus becoming free a particular server. This facilitates the ability to dynamically migrate applications from an overused or failing server to a healthy server, avoiding outage.

Flexibility - Virtualization simplifies the process of initiating an OS/application. This enables IT management to have options for locating the OS/application on a particular physical server. In that way IT Managers can easily suspend, relocate, and restart applications that are degrading on a server.

Better Change Management - Virtualization makes it easier for system administrators to set up a replicate test OS image, which makes it easier to fully regression test new configurations (new application releases, new software versions, etc.). Fuller regression testing of new configurations results in fewer defects encountered in production.
- more info

I.T. hiring picks up

06/22/2010

Salaries and hiring are both on the rise, Janco reports.

The I.T. jobs outlook is strongest among large companies, where many chief information officers have received the go-ahead to fulfill I.T. positions that were left unfulfilled last year, Janco Associates Inc., a management consulting firm specializing in information systems technology, says in its Mid-Year 2010 IT Salary Survey report.

In contrast, technology executives at smaller companies are being more cautious about hiring out of concern that the economic recovery will not be strong enough to support increased I.T. spending, the survey found.

Nonetheless, most chief information officers who participated in the survey said in post-survey interviews that theyre planning for 2011 with the assumption that the economy will improve early next year. If that holds true, I.T. hiring and compensation should rise for more companies, Janco says
- more info

Consequences of too much social networking

06/21/2010

Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites make it easy to share information with friends. If you are not utilizing safety features and precautions, however, you are also sharing that information with strangers. Posting too much information on your profile can have consequences that reach all the way from your bank account to your future employment prospects.

According to Consumer Reports, in the last year 9 percent of social network users experienced some form of abuse, such as malware infections, scams, identity theft, or harassment. Many of these incidents are preventable, if you educate yourself about what to do and what not to do on social networking sites.

Similarly, an increasing number of prospective employers are turning to social networking sites to research applicants. Does your profile represent you the same way you would represent yourself in an interview?
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Challenges CIOs face

06/18/2010

CIOs are now challenged more than any time in the past with the economic earthquake around the globe CIOs have to be smarter, creative and innovative. The only way for CIOs to survive the world economic reset in a knowledge age is to capitalize on our human capital, put their staffs creativity to work, stoke our innovative furnace. There are many ways to fuel the creative fires - from management techniques, to team building, and effectively leveraging existing and emerging technological investments. However, the key is infrastructure. CIOs that have a one that address metrics, change management, version control, system development methodology, service management, and human resources have a better chance to make it through these tough times.
- more info

Preventing Data Breaches

06/10/2010

It is critical that organizations are proactive in their approach to mitigating insider threats. Week-after week there are disturbing, déjà vu-like stories of significant data breaches, arrests connected to insider attacks, or investigation reports emphasizing the necessity to control privileged accounts that hold highly sensitive data. With no safeguards in place, insider attacks are often very difficult to detect and block, largely because of excessive privileges granted to users, users sharing common log-ins and accounts, and privileged users such as testers, developers and even DBAs having access to sensitive data.

This Security Manual for the Internet and Information Technology is over 220 pages in length. All versions of the Security Manual template include both the Business & IT Impact Questionnaire and the Threat & Vulnerability Assessment Tool (both were redesigned to address Sarbanes Oxley compliance). In addition, the Security Manual Template PREMIUM Edition contains 16 detail job descriptions that apply specifically to security and Sarbanes Oxley, ISO 27000, PCI DSS, and HIPAA.
- more info

Reasons why CIOs and CTOs get Fired

05/27/2010

Top ten list of things that fired CIOs do

1.       Do not have a disaster recovery and business continuity plan integrated with a backup/archiving program.

2.       Ignore warning signs

3.       Do not document changes

4.       Do not use logging processes

5.       Do not install updates

6.       Save money by not purchasing upgrades

7.       Do not manage passwords well

8.       Never say no to anyone

9.       Never say yes to anyone

10.   Do not train a replacement
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Project Managers are paid well

05/12/2010

Companies seem willing to provide solid compensation for project maagers. According to a CIO.com article reporting results of the Project Management Institute's (PMI) 2009 Project Management Salary Survey, the median base salary for a project management professional in the United States is $100,000. Three-quarters of survey respondents take home more than $84,000 a year.

Even during the recession, between fall 2008 and fall 2009, 53 percent of American project managers got a raise. Thirty-four percent had salaries frozen, and 14 percent experienced a pay cut. And project management pros have an optimistic outlook for 2010. Sixty-seven percent of respondents believe their salaries will grow this year, while just 4 percent think their salaries will drop.

You have several options to obtain this study. You can get a summary for free if you participate by providing more than ten (10) data points or you have several option on how to purchase the data.

Summary Results and Changes in Demand for IT Jobs 2010

The Janco Associates, Inc. salary survey draws on data collected throughout the year by extensive internet-based and completed survey forms sent to businesses throughout the United States and Canada. Over 300 companies participate in the survey
- more info

CIO and IT departments are blamed for user shortfalls

05/04/2010

Now the CIO not only must be politically correct, but he must also be clairvoyant and understand what can go wrong, be misused, or be abused. The IT Infrastructure must be robust to address this.

When systems are abused the easiest scapegoat is the IT Department. In the recent school webcam case at the Pennsylvania school district the IT department was blamed because they not only failed to inform school officials and administrators of the tracking capabilities of the software, but argued that telling students about the software's ability to remotely trigger notebook Webcams would "defeat its purpose" as a way to recover lost or stolen computers.
- more info