Newsfeed for Chief Technology Officers (CTO) on IT Infrastructure
With the explosion of technology into every facet of the day-to-day business environment there is a need to define an effective infrastructure to support operating environment; have a strategy for the deployment and technology; and clearly define responsibilities and accountabilities for the use and application of 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
You can get the full news feed by going to
http://www.itproductivity.org/news/itpc.xml.
Below are the latest the items from that feed.
Cloud Process Benefits Defined
09/01/2010
The benefits that that come from Cloud Processing and the associated infrastructure transformation include:
- Improvement in application performance
- Hardware reduction
- Reduce system administration overhead
- Reduce carbon footprint
- Power savings
- Savings in software licenses
- Faster job submissions
- Downtime avoidance
- Reduce compliance and ISO 9001 validation time
- Single path to support
- Warranty savings
Janco also points to other less tangible advantages that cloud processing achieves, such as: higher employee productivity, better performance across its infrastructure and avoided costs of outages. Additional savings and efficiencies, such as from virtualization, casn be expected as the cloud process continues to expand.
- more info
Firefox releases 4.0 Beta
08/25/2010
Mozilla has launched the fourth beta of Firefox 4, adding bookmark and password synchronization, and revamping how people wrestle tabs.
The latest build supports the first attempt at accelerating Firefox 4's page rendering by tapping the graphics processor. The hardware acceleration, available only in Windows Vista and Windows 7, is disabled by default.
Trends in Browser Market Share
Firefox 4 Beta 4's most visible addition is "Panorama," a new name for what Mozilla had been calling "Tab Candy." Largely driven by the work of Aza Raskin, creative lead of Firefox, Panorama lets users collect tabs into sets, graphically displays those sets, and when users open a tab, shows only those tabs within the group.
Mozilla, which calls Panorama a tab manager, has argued that it's the next step in the evolution of tabs.
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Windows 7 takes off
08/18/2010
Windows 7 is success
A major finding in the report is that Microsoft's new Operating System, Windows 7 has 17.39% of the OS market less than 13 months after its availability. That is a major factor in Microsoft's improved record earnings. Janulaitis said, "The last time that an OS was accepted as quickly the market was XP. Vista's market share has peaked and is in the process of being decommissioned in most enterprises."
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New IT Metrics Program and Benchmark Program
08/09/2010
Most IT Managers understand the importance of collecting, reporting and acting on performance metrics, but few put this knowledge into action in a meaningful way. Our partners at Janco Associates' recommend that all IT organizations develop and maintain a metrics program by focusing on simple metrics that address specific business issues like spending and staffing justification or performance improvement.
To help you identify and launch a metrics program that is meaningful to your specific business, Info-Tech has assembled the Metrics for the Internet, Information Technology, and Service Management HandiGuide. It is a collection of metric reports and tools designed to get your IT team's metrics program up and running quickly and easily. You will be given simple steps to creating a metrics program including the most important step: How to act on the results and improve IT performance to better serve the business.
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Mainframes and server farms are sources of productivity improvements
08/05/2010
In the post-recession environment, the demand and supply mismatch between IT departments and the businesses they serve is growing. Business demands on IT are increasing while IT budgets have been cut.
The needs that IT can't address as a supplier, it can address through other means. CIO can be a facilitators connecting the business units to the services they need, whether internally or externally, such as from a cloud or software-as-a-service provider.
IT is becoming more responsive, not because it can do more, but because it can acknowledge and help the business with more of their operationals needs. Productivity levels have improved
The path to value is taking some familiar and some new directions while also running into age-old issues.
Company have saved millions, mostly in cost savings, by putting new applications into a mainframe and on stand-alone servers environmens. The savings came from the smaller physical footprint, reduced cooling and power needs, and reductions in networking and systems administration work.
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Social networks hinder productivity
08/02/2010
Social networks had already surpassed e-mail use among American Internet users. But according to a Nielsen Co. survey, online gaming is now also more popular that e-mail.
According to the Nielsen survey, Americans today are spending nearly a quarter of their online time posting comments, pictures and video on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, making it the most popular online activity among Americans.
Online gaming is the second most popular online activity, accounting for 10% of online use, while e-mail ranks third at 8.3%. In a survey completed in June, 2009, e-mail was the second most popular online activity, accounting for 11.5% of Inernet activity.
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Workforce mobility a productivity issue for CIOs
07/31/2010
Part of the CIO's job is to support maximum productivity by choosing appropriate infrastructure for laptops and other devices to meet the individualized needs of
- more info
- Outstanding security and network accessibility
- Simple, intuitive systems and data management tools
- A streamlined process for backing up critical data
- Smooth transitions when changing hardware or software
Good metrics improve performance
07/28/2010
When valid metrics are used, performance improves. Janco has found that these six rules need to be followed.
- more info
- Select metrics that relate directly to the factor that you want performance improved on
- Have at least four but not more than six metrics that are focused on a particular performance factor
- Set minimums and maximum values for each metric before you start
- Base metrics on at least two months of trend data
- Have metrics that are both leading and lagging indicators
- Set targets where actions will be taken when those thresholds are crossed
Service-Oriented Architecture and IT Service Management Are Keys To Success in the Recovery
07/24/2010
SOA and ITSM drive success and productivity
One bad customer experience can cost you that customer for life. Hospitality, travel, retail, healthcare, and financial services are especially prone to losing customers who have a negative experience. It does not take much for a customer to decide that you and your company are not worth his time, effort, or money.
Customers like to feel loved, and they are turned off very quickly when they sense that you do not care about the pain they are feeling. Even if you cannot help them because the situation is beyond your control, acknowledge that you understand both the situation and their frustration.
No customer wants the person serving her to be distracted or preoccupied. Ever go to the local mall and try to get help from a teenager focused more on texting her friends than helping you find what youre looking for? On the other hand, being too focused can be a bad thing. Have you ever asked an innocent question out of curiosity and then found yourself stuck for an eternity while a customer support person hunts endlessly for an answer? This person is likely so focused on getting the answer that he does not realize that you really do not care that much about it and would rather not wait for an answer to an inessential question. Be sure your people understand the degree of focus required for the job.
Even if the employee has the right skill set and experience, his odds of being successful and remaining on the job are low if his core behaviors and tendencies do not line up with those needed for success in that particular role. This is especially true for customer-facing roles in which your frontline employees act as extensions of your brand and heavily influence the customer experience.
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IT Service Management drives customer satisfaction
07/13/2010
Industry estimates peg the costs of acquiring new customers as being about five times more than the costs incurred to satisfy existing customers. IT Service Management and change control are keys to this process.
Customer retention and satisfaction also drive profits. According to some experts*, a 2 percent increase in customer retention can have the same effect on profits as cutting costs by 10 percent. And a 5 percent reduction in customer defection rate can increase profits by up to 25 to 125 percent, depending on the industry.
Additionally, existing customers are the ones who are most likely to be future purchasers. Theyve already shown they want and like your products or services and are willing to pay for them. And in many cases, customer profitability tends to increase over the life of a retained customer.
So whats the key to retaining customers? Keeping customers happy has always been a cornerstone of good business practice. But with today's economic conditions, delivering good service to ensure satisfaction has become critical to any companys success.
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Security of wireless networks compromised by Google
06/22/2010
Security of wireless networks is a concern of Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal who is heading up a 30-state investigation into Google's Wi-Fi data gathering scandal.
Blumenthal's investigation adds to the legal headaches for Google caused by the revelation that its Street View cars were collecting wireless "payload" data in addition to geolocation data from unsecured wireless hot spots. Ever since Google revealed the extent of its data gathering a month ago in response to inquiries from German regulators, lawyers and politicians have been lining up to express their outrage.
"Consumers have a right and a need to know what personal information--which could include e-mails, Web browsing, and passwords--Google may have collected, how, and why," Blumenthal said in a statement posted on his Web site. "Google must come clean, explaining how and why it intercepted and saved private information broadcast over personal and business wireless networks."
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Record mangement key to information goverance
06/18/2010
Effective record management and information governance provides a foundation for addressing the various challenges faced with electronic information, including:
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Recovery Point and Recovery Time Metrics
06/10/2010
- more infoRecovery point objective (RPO) refers to the amount of data loss a customer can tolerate, specifically the point in time to which your enterprise must be able to recover the data. Some enterprises require an RPO of ZERO. That means the enterprise cannot lose a single committed transaction in the event of a site failure; they must be able to recover the data back to the zero minute of the time of the disaster. There are implications to setting up an RPO of zero. The replication solution will require synchronous replication (explained in detail later in this section) and may impact performance of the application being replicated.
An RPO of greater than zero, for example 30 minutes, can be handled differently. An RPO of 30 minutes means the customer can tolerate losing the last 30 minutes of transactions in the event of a site failure. If the disaster occurrs at 12:00, the customer must be able to recover the data to at least 11:30 (30 minutes prior to the disaster). This can most likely be accomplished with asynchronous replication with minimal performance impact to the application. In this situation, careful planning and monitoring of the write-history log is essential to support the expected RPO.
A RPO can only be determined by their business rules and other governances of their environment. The customer must weigh the risk of data loss in a higher RPO against the cost and performance impact of a zero RPO.
Recovery time objective (RTO) refers to the amount of time it takes a customer to get their backup site up and running after a complete failure at the primary site. Most customers have an RTO of anywhere from 15 minutes to 8 hours, though the average is about 2 hours. This includes the time to failover the replicated LUNs (logical Unit Number) to the backup EVA (Enterprise Virtural Array) , recover the backup database and bring it online, and redirect any applications to the backup database server. A faster RTO can usually be accomplished by prestaging the backup site to the greatest extent possible.
Most Common Security Weaknesses - Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance
05/27/2010
Security Manual Template has a solution for each of these weaknesses.
1. Improper account provisioning with segregation of duties
2. Insufficient controls for change management
3. A general lack of understanding around key system configurations
4. Audit logs not being reviewed (or that review itself not being logged)
5. Abnormal transactions not identified in a timely manner be considered abnormal or a violation of a security policy within the network.go to http://www.itproductivity.org/Security.htm
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Risk management starts with risk assessment
05/20/2010
There have been lessons learned from the current financial crisis in wasy to address perceived weaknesses in risk identification, assessment and management. The direction that CEOs and CIOs need to taker are:
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- Risk management must be given greater authority
- Senior executives must lead risk management from the top
- Management needs to review the level of risk expertise in their organisation, particularly at the
highest levels- Managers should pay more attention to the data that populate risk models, and must combine
this output with human judgment- Stress testing and scenario planning can arm executives with an appropriate response to events
Incentive systems must be constructed so that they reward long-term stability, not short-term
profit- Risk factors should be consolidated across all the business operations
- Managers should ensure that they do not rely too heavily on data from external providers
- A careful balance must be struck between the centralisation and decentralisation of risk
- Risk management systems should be adaptive rather than static
