| April 8, 2008 | A while back, I wrote a piece about the underrepresentation of women in IT. A recent study on the perceptions of angry men and women in the workplace has me back speaking my mind again.
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| March 25, 2008 | The purchaser of a car can easily compare options. As a result, the buyer can spend as little as possible to get the capabilities needed (even though many abandon reason). The same ability to compare alternatives should be available to IT managers making storage, server, or PC decisions. |
| March 11, 2008 | Never underestimate the power of literature. Old stories are often the most informative stories. For example, IT managers can learn from the story of a tired fisherman and a big fish. The trick is to substitute a tired project manager for the fisherman and a large IT upgrade for the marlin. |
| February 26, 2008 | The prognosis for the North American economies for 2008 looks quite gloomy. IT managers must actively prepare for tougher times. Uncertain corporate sales and profit forecasts have historically led to tighter controls on IT spending and, in some cases, cuts to approved budgets. Government agencies also delay new initiatives in response to potentially weaker economic performance and shrinking tax revenues. An organization’s financial performance does not have to deteriorate before senior management imposes belt-tightening. It is enough that forecasts are pessimistic. |
| December 18, 2007 | Virtualization of x86 hardware has enormous potential for server consolidation, energy savings, availability/recoverability, and generally doing more stuff with fewer boxes. Here’s something virtualization won’t do: It won’t forestall the need to move from the ad hoc to more sophisticated management processes. In fact, virtualization forces the issue on smaller enterprises sooner than would happen otherwise. |
| November 6, 2007 | IT managers, take heed: Challenging new metrics designed to scrutinize the power consumption of your data center are coming. Data center energy use has hit the radar of governments and IT vendors alike. Recent evidence demonstrates the data center’s vociferous yet seldom-noticed thirst for power. However, you can relax a little; the regulations intended to optimize and reduce this appetite for kilowatts remain on the horizon, so you can prepare to meet them. |
| October 23, 2007 | People often invest large amounts of time, money, and career in specific areas. When these are challenged, for whatever reason, the reaction can be one of immediate defensiveness: “The product does a great job for me, so how can anyone say anything bad about it?” |
| September 25, 2007 | Web 2.0 is a big deal. So big, in fact, that it’s becoming difficult to write about it without sounding cliché. A catchall for everything beyond static HTML, Web 2.0 is a business model, a set of applications, a development platform, a software delivery mechanism, and an ideology. |
| September 11, 2007 | We watch too many movies. Hollywood has warped our perceptions of reality. Look at how we view competing technologies, such as iSCSI and Fibre Channel networked storage. This is a showdown, we are told. It is high noon. One will bite the dust. The other will holster its six-shooter and stride with clinking spurs back into the saloon. The townsfolk will come out of hiding. The real world doesn’t work this way. There is no final act. No neat and tidy ending. |
| August 14, 2007 | Increasing compliance and security demands are creating an enterprise need for a new role to encompass and assume responsibility for risk management. Although most organizations handle risk management on an ad hoc basis, it may be time to make risk management a dedicated position. |
| July 31, 2007 | The days of a purely technical CIO role are numbered. As a term, “alignment” is not likely to go away. But real success requires more than aligning separate perspectives. It requires adopting a mindset of integration and acting, thinking, and planning as a business leader who happens to have IT responsibility, not an IT leader who is trying to align IT to the business. |
| July 3, 2007 | You’ve seen it on television. “Learn how to create your own viral videos at the Fleece-um Institute.” Turn on any local morning television show and you’ll see a “viral video” segment, where the host plays YouTube videos that his buddies e-mailed him – well, at least the ones that pass broadcast obscenity guidelines. Search Amazon.com books for “viral” and half of the top ten results have nothing to do with life sciences. |
| June 19, 2007 | The release of Windows Vista has opened a recurring question for enterprise IT staff; when do you migrate to new technology? When is the time right for change and what are some of the factors that impact the decision to migrate? Often it is younger employees that drive change from the bottom up. |
| June 5, 2007 | Return on investment, or ROI, is the bane of IT management. ROI is supposed to guide decision makers toward optimal technology choices. But in finding "best," ROI often overlooks "good enough." The most damning failure of ROI, however, is its inability to address those pesky senior management questions about how various technology options really compare. |
| May 22, 2007 | The great DST (daylight saving time) software update of 2007 is over. In the post-mortem, it turns out that the patching wasn't much of an issue: It was the crisis around rebasing Exchange calendars. |
| May 8, 2007 | "Green" has solidified itself as the new buzz word for 2007. The data center is no exception. While data centers have been one of the last places you'd expect to see a green label applied, this time there's a significant motivator: money. |
| April 24, 2007 | The big daylight-saving time 2007 freakout has come and gone, and in its wake I can't help but wonder if we forgot our sense of history in the process. |
| April 10, 2007 | You can tell a lot about a company's mobile security strategy by watching its senior executives actually use – or misuse – the technology. I learned this stark truth years ago when I worked for a large financial services organization and witnessed first-hand how little one of its leaders understood about mobility, security, and the risks faced when employees took their data-laden devices out of the office. |
| March 27, 2007 | Companies of all sizes are getting larger returns and shorter implementation times with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) than they are with the traditional on-premises model. However, many IT departments still don't consider SaaS as an option to meet their company's business needs. In doing so, they are wasting the opportunity to impress senior management by delivering quick responses to important business challenges. |
| March 13, 2007 | |
| February 27, 2007 | What was once a disturbing observation has become an issue as the proportion of women in IT continues to drop. IT organizations that fail to make necessary changes to attract and retain qualified women risk losing sales and jeopardize their ability to remain competitive. |
| February 13, 2007 | Virtualization is hot right now. More precisely, x86 processor virtualization is hot because a lot of enterprises have gotten serious about server consolidation. One obstacle to virtualization has proved to be more political than technical. So-called "server huggers" need to get their heads around a new layer of computing abstraction. |
| January 30, 2007 | Worlds are colliding. The lines are blurring between personal time and time spent "at work." The growth of wireless connectivity and mobile computing is making working from home or while on the road a reality for many employees. |
| January 16, 2007 | There's a problem with IT projects. They are rarely on budget or on time. They chew up project teams and cause sleepless nights. Here's a modest proposal: Improve projects by changing the name of the project management process. Focus on something that's respected by many IT professionals – beer. |
| January 2, 2007 | This technology-driven myth still haunts headlines and marketing brochures. Paper isn't going anywhere. It's a fundamental part of all modern enterprises, and no new application or appliance will replace it – despite promises from companies such as Microsoft and EMC. The trick for managers is to separate the corporate and personal functions of paper and to manage them separately. |
| December 12, 2006 | The recent scandal surrounding HP highlights a disconnect in the way in which we hold firms accountable. It's very easy to chide HP for allowing an unethical tactic known as pretexting to be used on its behalf. However, also at fault are AT&T, Cingular, T-Mobile, and Sprint Nextel because they released personal information during the course of the probe into the activities of HP board members and reporters from CNET News.com. |
| November 28, 2006 | Those of us who missed Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS, when it was called Application Service Provider, or ASP, will be enthralled by the song and dance surrounding this market. To those who have been there before, it's just the same ol' SaaS. |
| November 14, 2006 | A lack of business perspective on the part of IT decision makers is arguably the main reason why technology initiatives fail to deliver business value. IT projects must not be about technology but instead about creating business value through technology. IT managers who focus too much on technology can only expect minimal or even negative returns from their IT investments. |
| October 31, 2006 | IT is the memory of the enterprise. Documents, diagrams, and standard operating procedures represent only one type of memory. They can be categorized as "explicit memory"—those things that can be locked up in an archive. IT departments have developed tremendous competencies for managing this type of memory through usage policies, database topologies, and metadata schemas. |
| October 17, 2006 | As IT continues to evaluate beta versions of Microsoft Office 2007, it's easy to get swept away by the radically new interface. Avoid the temptation. The big news is found under the covers in the new open standards-based file format. IT would do well to start planning the migration now. |
| October 3, 2006 | As in home renovation, software renovation requires above average skills and often more patience and perseverance than new construction. In most enterprises only 20 to 50% of the development budget is earmarked for new development with the rest for maintaining existing software assets. |
| September 19, 2006 | Big Four auditors and risk consultants are making out like bandits in the lucrative compliance trade. The number one reason: laws and regulations are too vague and non-technology-specific. I've been griping about this since 2002. |
| September 5, 2006 | When rolling out new client-facing services, enterprises that over-promise and under-deliver risk upsetting customers. Deploy your complex client applications with care, or risk paying the price. |
| August 22, 2006 | Itanium is the oat bran of computer processors. Like oat bran, it was once hailed as the one big thing that was going to save your life. Now it is being repositioned as a very good thing in limited doses. You were expecting more? Don't be misled by "media hype." |
| August 8, 2006 | Leave it to the IT world to take a good thing, distort it beyond all recognition, and make it into something bad. This is what is happening to SOA (service-oriented architecture). The promise of this framework remains unfulfilled because vendors are making SOA in their image, and IT professionals are yielding to the temptation of making SOA all about technology. |
| July 25, 2006 | Penetration testing is a process that can be used to determine whether or not the IT security infrastructure that protects the corporate network is set up and working correctly. It can reveal valuable information. It can also cause both short and long term damage – everything from crashed systems to corrupted data. |
| July 11, 2006 | When it comes to implementing applications to resolve business problems, most companies reinvent the wheel by adapting software to their "different business processes." In most cases, this is a bad way of using technology. Companies should only start from scratch for processes that clearly provide an advantage in the marketplace. |
| June 27, 2006 | I like pie: cherry, apple, and particularly strawberry rhubarb. Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, has different tastes. His goal is to get as much of the enterprise IT spending pie as possible. Oracle's recent acquisition of two open-source vendors has driven a number of pundits — myself included — to spill a great deal of ink in explicating the technological implications. In truth, Oracle's strategy is not about technology, it's about pie. |
| June 13, 2006 | Portable devices based on Microsoft's UMPC (Ultra-Mobile PC) form factor are starting to hit store shelves. These handhelds, formerly code-named Origami, run a tweaked version of Windows XP and fall somewhere between PDAs and notebooks. For now, their cost and limited battery life render them a nonstarter for the enterprise. |
| May 30, 2006 | This is the story of an enthusiastic software manager who heard that business analysts and requirements waste project time and money. She said to her boss, "There's a better way. Our business analysts are, well, dogmatic. Our developers are good. They can work directly with the business. Our projects will be faster and cheaper." Her boss, constantly under pressure to deliver, agreed. |
| May 16, 2006 | Open-source software is a viable and attractive option for many organizations. It can also lead to disaster if the open-source decision is made for the wrong reasons. |
| May 2, 2006 | You heard it here first: Apple's decision to switch to Intel processors for its Mac computers signals the beginning of the end of the operating system as we know it. I can spend all day explaining that it's the iPod's fault that Apple has forgotten how to be a computer company, but it goes deeper than that. |
| April 18, 2006 | The current buzz about x86 processor virtualization has given me a sense of déjà vu. Similar to Netscape in its heyday, VMware is a dominant vendor in a market that it pretty much invented. But Netscape didn't stay on top, and as virtual partitioning of servers and PCs matures, VMware could also fall behind as its key product is commoditized. |
| April 4, 2006 | Microsoft licenses are not commodity products; various options exist, each suitable for a different type of company. By leaving key licensing decisions up to resellers, many companies are paying more than they need to for Microsoft software. Resellers don't always have their clients' best interests at heart and should not be given the power to determine a company's licensing strategy. |
| March 21, 2006 | Palm's inability to build on its early lead in the handheld space is a perfect lesson for what innovators must do to survive. |
| March 7, 2006 | "Patent trolls" scoop up patents and then lie quietly in wait until a real company brings real product to market. Then they pounce. It's a business model that doesn't exactly merit top billing in business school but nevertheless seems to have recently gained an alarming level of popularity. |
| February 21, 2006 | Microsoft CRM 3.0 offers little new functionality to veterans of the Customer Relationship Management game. What's new is the down-market focus of the product and its deep integration with the rest of Microsoft's enterprise stack. |
| February 7, 2006 | When the gladiator goes into the arena to do battle, it's a good idea that he bring along a sword and a shield. So, too, the IT gladiator needs his or her sword and shield. The shield is infrastructure and operations best practices. The sword is focused strategy. |
| January 24, 2006 | Vendors like Cisco must become more upfront about disclosing flaws as they become apparent. Waiting to do so makes customers more vulnerable because it widens the window within which these flaws can be exploited. |
| January 10, 2006 | BI (business intelligence) is hot. Or is it? For the past year, vendors and press alike have been calling it a home run. But how many implementation success stories in the midsized market have there been? Our research shows not many. |
| December 13, 2005 | The recent purchase of IP telephony vendor Skype by online auction powerhouse eBay underscores just how fundamentally the rules in the technology sector are changing. |
| November 29, 2005 | The ongoing drama of technology acquisition recently added two new acts: Oracle acquired Siebel for $5.8 billion, and eBay acquired Skype for $2.6 billion. eBay made a very savvy move. The reason: basic economics. |
| November 15, 2005 | A commodity is any homogenous item that can be sold or bought. This is hardly a new or frightening concept. But put the word "commodity" in the context of IT investment, and you get years of heated debate and plenty of fear and loathing among IT managers. |
| November 1, 2005 | If Windows Vista is supposed to open up exciting new views of our desktop and online world, please forgive me if I don't find the view as exciting as Microsoft hopes. |
| October 18, 2005 | Finding companies that are implementing VoIP without undertaking network convergence is as easy as finding companies migrating to IPv6. Although these companies are apparent oddities, the fact remains that VoIP is possible without network convergence. |
| September 20, 2005 | The recent debacle involving a number of credit card companies underscores just how damaging a lax attitude toward business partners can be. If IT could be as careful with its own operations as our parents were with us when we were little kids, technology would be a lot more secure. |
| September 6, 2005 | There’s a fine line between evangelism and preaching. Successful CIOs adopt the evangelist angle and leave the preaching to the clergy. |
| August 23, 2005 | In late May the Securities and Exchange Commission, which governs Sarbox compliance for publicly traded companies, failed an internal audit of its financial controls. Say what? Sarbox regulators failing their own test? |
| August 9, 2005 | Like most people, I'm of the mind that technology should simplify my life, not add complexity. It's one of the reasons that I admire Apple Computer. Its entire product line is based on a "less is more" philosophy. |
| July 26, 2005 | Knowledge Management (KM) is a cultural issue, and you cannot resolve a cultural issue with a purely technological solution. Failure to fully realize this has resulted in the demise of many KM initiatives. |
| July 12, 2005 | IT departments that hang their hats on Microsoft's Longhorn to build their long-term strategic plan are selling themselves short. |
| June 28, 2005 | Tomorrow's apps will need more headroom, which largely explains why the IT world once again finds itself at a numeric crossroads as 32-bit OSes, apps, and hardware begin to give way to 64-bit alternatives. |
| June 14, 2005 | The top three reasons for projects falling short of expectations are unrealistic time frames, lack of staff, and poorly defined project scope. Our take is that alignment of business and IT is still a long way from being accomplished in many mid-sized organizations. |
| May 31, 2005 | If you're one of the majority who believes that hardware innovation is dead, you may want to rethink your position as Chinese manufacturer Lenovo gets set to take over IBM's PC operations. |
| May 17, 2005 | The American technology sector is at a crossroads. While all evidence indicates that the U.S. is systematically auctioning off its leading position as global technical innovator to the lowest bidder, it's not too late to reverse the trend. |
| May 3, 2005 | It recently occurred to me that RFID is a lot like Web services, iSCSI, and nuclear cold fusion: always just a year away from taking the world by storm. |
| April 19, 2005 | I've never been cuffed in the back of a cruiser, but sometimes when I click my personal Web log's publish button, I wonder if my words will come back to haunt me when I return to the office the next day. |
| April 5, 2005 | Here's a news flash for everybody who got excited last summer when Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser lost market share for the first time in years: The "browser wars" are over; they have been over for a long time. |
| March 22, 2005 | When it comes to the law, IT professionals are expected to be half security god, half lawyer, and half clairvoyant. That's three halves, I know, but you see my point. |
| March 8, 2005 | If you listen carefully, you can hear privacy zealots everywhere whining. They're ticked with Amazon.com because it dared to include a rich set of personalization tools in the release of its A9 search engine. |
| February 22, 2005 | For spam to end, various corporate and industry groups will need and get over their self-interest and do what is best for everybody. The trouble is that pushing a bit of the cost of spam on every e-mail user is relatively easy. Collectively pushing back is exceedingly difficult. |
| February 8, 2005 | Technology giveth. It also taketh away. And guess which one happens more often? When I first installed instant messaging software on my computer about six or seven years ago, I was blown away by its apparent utility. Because of its immediacy, it was like email on steroids. |
| January 25, 2005 | Should Linux replace Microsoft Windows on corporate PC desktops? It can be done, but most likely won't because those who would like to see Microsoft Windows displaced are like the gang that couldn't shoot straight. |
| January 11, 2005 | In recent months, I've spent a lot of time focused on security. This has led me to what I think are a few indisputable truths. First, security policy should always be the driver behind security purchases. Second, companies without strong security policies often end up making truly awful purchasing decisions at some point. Hopefully, I can steer you in the right direction with this column. |
| November 30, 2004 | Jakob Nielsen is a Web usability guru. In the late 1990s, he made a name for himself as the champion of minimalist design and Web site ease of use. As a guru, Nielsen mostly occupies himself sitting atop his mountain and handing out antiquated design advice to his enlightened congregation. I, for one, am a heathen - a disbeliever of the Nielsen way. |
| September 21, 2004 | Jonathan Swift wrote "Gulliver's Travels" almost 300 years ago. But despite its age, this classic novel can teach valuable lessons to business and IT alike. |
| September 7, 2004 | The issue isn't IT ownership, but IT stewardship. The company owns the technology and everybody - from employees and managers to executives and board members - has stewardship responsibility for the technology. IT governance is a critical expression of stewardship. |
| August 24, 2004 | Let's face it: security is 20 percent technology and 80 percent policy. Policy defines everything you do in IT security, whether it's managing patches, determining when and how your firewall should be updated, or establishing guidelines for remote working. No matter what your security initiative, somebody somewhere will have to sit down and write a policy. |
| July 28, 2004 | The reasons for replacing old PCs are obvious. Modern equipment allows companies to run new applications, improve user productivity, and reduce service costs. Making this business case is relatively straightforward. Trying to convince decision-makers that they also need to spend money just to get rid of old PCs is decidedly more difficult. Failing to do this; however, can be an expensive and environmentally damaging mistake. |
| July 13, 2004 | You are a techno-geek. Your belt bristles with the latest mobile wireless technology known to humankind. You can send e-mail from a mountaintop. You work on huge office files while sipping lattes at Starbucks. But all is not perfect in your world: those miracle mobile machines of yours may be fun to play with, but they don't make you any more productive. Oh, and they're a huge waste of money, too. |
| June 9, 2004 | Think about the sheer number of acronyms used in information technology today. It's hard enough keeping up with technology itself, let alone having to worry about decoding acronyms. Why are we so quick to assign acronyms to strategies, technologies, and software? |
| May 26, 2004 | Technology is so good at so many things that it's easy to forget how horribly deficient it can be when we don't use it properly. And when bad turns to worse - like when Instant Messaging exchanges with your colleague in the next cubicle start to replace actual conversation - it's time to consider tossing the technology and getting back to basics. |
| May 12, 2004 | We're so very tired of hearing about all the lawsuits, many of which verge on the frivolous. In fact, some of the more recent, heavily-publicized suits seem to plough forward knowing full well that victory is near impossible - SCO's lawsuit against IBM over the Unix source code comes to mind. Regardless of anyone's stance on the Microsoft/Linux über-debate, this whole SCO thing smells a little fishy. On second thought, it smells more like an open-air seafood market under a hot Louisiana sun. |
| April 28, 2004 | Corporate relocation is no small task. It is, in fact, a massive undertaking, even for a small- or mid-sized company. So what is the key to relocation success? There are three: planning, preparation, and then more planning. Without these, things can go very badly very quickly at the new facility. |
| April 14, 2004 | Some of the smartest and most creative people in your organization work in the Information Technology department. This is a good thing, but as a practical management issue, it can be a real pain. Like cat herding or bailing the Titanic with a teacup, managing the smart, creative types can be an exercise in Sisyphean frustration. |
| March 31, 2004 | Computer vendors are no different than those in other sectors when they try to convince us to abandon our perfectly usable products for newer or better ones. But when we buy technology for the sake of technology and we forget the underlying business reason for doing so, something needs to change. |
| March 17, 2004 | Poorly-conceived initiatives aimed at "doing more with less" have effectively reduced staff morale in overworked departments, stifled innovation, jeopardized the next generation of IT talent, increased our dependence on offshore labor, and transformed entire executive boards into cost-cutting thrift junkies looking to shave costs, regardless of the consequences. Next time you hear about a "smart" initiative to do more with less, think twice. |
| March 3, 2004 | The days of free wheeling, shoot-from-the-hip IT spending are over, and believe it or not, that is probably a good thing for IT managers. Focus on properly evaluating IT investment returns to help both your department and the entire organization succeed. |
