CIOs: How to survive the recession, and position for growth
I had a chat with Shvetank Shah, executive director of the IT practice at the Corporate Executive Board, about what CIOs can do to cope with the recession. I asked him for practical, realistic steps, not the consultant-blather we...
The 10 best jobs: Two of them are in IT
A study by Careercast.com identifies the best and worst jobs, based on salary and outlook, as well as factors such as working conditions, physical demands and stress (check out the methodology). Software engineer and computer systems...
U.S. falling behind in broadband: a Sputnik moment
Once considered "the fertile crescent of Internet innovation," the U.S. is trailing the world in broadband Internet, according to a report by Strategy Analytics Inc.The market research firm calls this a "Sputnik moment" for the...
Cloud computing: Gauging the benefits, barriers, hype and reality
Research firm IDC says cloud computing will "cross the chasm" -- move from early adopters to mainstream -- over the next three years. IDC surveyed 244 enterprise users and here's a high-level summary of what they found....Top...
Coping with economic calamity
Shvetank Shah, executive director of the IT practice at the Corporate Executive Board, is in continuous contact with hundreds of CIOs and IT vice presidents. So I took the opportunity to ask him how CIOs have been reacting to the...
Are some outsourcing advisors too cozy with vendors?
Phil Fersht, an outsourcing analyst at AMR Research, has an interesting blog post in which he wonders aloud: Are third-party outsourcing advisory firms too cozy with certain outsourcing vendors?The advisory firms (the major firms are...
Health care is a bright spot in the IT budget gloom
IT budgets will obviously be under great stress in this economic climate, but not necessarily in every vertical industry. Analysts at Datamonitor say the health care industry is a rare bright spot. While the retail and manufacturing...
The top outsourcing vendors, based on client satisfaction
HP is No.1 and EDS is No.5 in this study by consultancy Brown-Wilson Group. Of course, since the survey was completed, HP and EDS have merged -- and now plan an amazingly large number of layoffs. Next year we'll find out whether that...
Future CIO role: chief intelligence officer
My colleague Julia King has an interesting interview with Accenture chief scientist Kishore Swaminathan, who envisions a new role for CIOs as chief intelligence officers. "This new breed of IT executive will...
BPO: Cuts costs, but hurts innovation
Sending finance and other back-office tasks offshore to India -- i.e., business process optimization (BPO) -- will "continue to see strong growth over the next three years," according to a new study by The Hackett Group Inc., a...
Gartner says businesses should monitor social trends -- well, no duh
Gartner Inc. has issued a press release with the headline "Gartner Says Enterprises Must Anticipate How Societal Trends Will Impact Their Business and Customers."Wow, do you think? Hope it didn't take too many analyst meetings to...
Online travel sites lack personal touch
Fewer leisure travelers are booking online, because they're frustrated by online travel reservation sites, according to e-commerce research by eMarketer."The fact that fewer travelers are booking online is not due to economic ...
Are you supposed to get overtime pay?
In my experience, the most controversial IT career topics are (in this order): offshoring, H-1B visas, age discrimination and overtime pay. Regarding the latter, there's a natural and human tendency to think that if you can be yanked...
Cities with the most 'digital savvy' consumers
"Digital savvy" consumers are those who engage in Web 2.0 behaviors (such as blogging, watching YouTube and downloading music), and use leading-edge cellular device features (such as text messaging), according to Scarborough...
'Slurping' and other cyberspying expected at Olympics
U.S. intelligence and security officials are concerned that spies in China will be targeting U.S. corporate and government officials at the Beijing Olympics, according to a Wall Street Journal report (17 July 2008)."[S]o many people...
The most recession-proof IT jobs
A study by Jobfox (a job-matching site) lists the 20 most recession-proof jobs in the U.S. (.pdf), based on job demand over the past eight months. Sales representatives, software developers and nurses top the list for being able to...
Where Web sites fail
Bruce Temkin, in his "Customer Experience Matters" blog, cites a Forrester Research study showing that Web sites fall down on the following criteria:(A score of -2 was total failure.) Is text legible? [-2.0]Is the task flow...
To get funded, IT projects will need a high and fast ROI
In this sluggish economy, many CIOs are limiting their IT spending to projects with "a high and fast ROI," according to the latest report from Goldman Sachs analysts. The July 7 report is based on a survey of 100 IT decision-makers...
'Managed print services' can rein in printer/copier costs
Are printing and copying really strategic, really "core competencies" that must be managed in-house? No? Maybe that imaging-on-paper thing is a candidate for outsourcing. It's called "managed print services."This is an area ripe for...
Three questions CEOs ask CIOs
IT management consultant Harwell Thrasher notes that the higher you move in the IT organization, "the less the job is about technology." At the very top of the IT organization in the CIO role, the focus isnt on IT at all its on...
Top Blog Posts
