Dell LED Strategy for Energy Efficiency

Dell implements transition to LED laptop displays which will impact energy consumption as equipment is replaced. ...

... "Dell's 15-inch LED displays consume an average of 43 percent less power at maximum brightness, resulting in extraordinary cost and carbon savings. The company estimates customer savings of approximately $20 million and 220 million kilowatt-hours in 2010 and 2011 combined, the equivalent of annual CO2 emissions resulting from energy use of more than 10,000 homes1. Dell also estimates that at least 80 percent of its total laptop volume will be delivered with LED as a standard back-lit display by the end of 2009 and 100 percent in 2010. " ...

Via Dell: Energy-Efficient LED Displays

Microsoft Texas Data Center Builds on Lessons Learned

Microsoft opens new data center as it executes on its cloud-computing strategy, incorporating energy efficiency into the design and operation of the facility. ...

... "The San Antonio facility is the most power-efficient data center we’ve built to date. The facility will use 602,000 gallons of recycled waste water (from San Antonio’s waste water system) a day to cool the facility during peak cooling months or approximately 8 million gallons of water a month. " ...

Via Microsoft: Microsoft San Antonio data center

IT Education Recognition

Government training ground is recognized for its contribution to information technology education. ...

... "Dr. Robert Childs, IRM College senior director, used the occasion to recognize the college’s faculty for developing programs for CIOs, and on information assurance, IT project management and enterprise architecture. " ...

Via GCN: IRM College

Service Desk Defined

A good, yet challenging, definition of the service, or help, desk. ...

... "Service Desk Definition:

- resolves 60% or more of incoming incidents and requests without any escalation

- improves customer satisfaction significantly, when first level resolution is at 50% or more

- reduces costs and time to fix incidents

- keeps businesses running efficiently " ...

Via Service Desk Institute: SDI's Service Desk Definition

Information On-Demand, a Long Term Perspective

IBM's executive, Ambuj Goyal, provides insights into IBM's long-term plan for the concept of information on-demand. IBM is assembling the pieces of its strategy, including its acquisition of Cognos, to enable the use of information to optimize the enterprise. ...

... "But the journey of optimization has just begun. It will take us in ways we don't understand, even today. We are going after information on demand in real time. " ...

Via InfoWorld: Information on Demand

Info Security Risks Still Elevated

Firewalls secure. Virus software up to date. Feeling secure. Think again. The information security battle rages on. ...

... "According to Stewart, information security is no longer just a battle against a virus or spam attack. There are oftentimes legal, identity-based and geopolitical factors involved. As examples, he points to identity theft at major retailers and a recent distributed denial-of-service attack allegedly launched by politically motivated hackers within Russia on its neighbor Estonia this spring. The cyber attack, which reportedly stemmed from outrage over Estonian authorities' decision to move a Soviet-era war memorial from a park, shut down many of the country's government Web sites. " ...

Via Cisco: Inaugural Report on Global Security Landscape

Dysfunctional IT

Watch out for this. Prevent it or stop it. ...

... "I'm talking about the type of tyranny that occurs when agency headquarters IT organizations impose poorly designed systems, counterproductive policies, and cookie-cutter solutions ... " ...

Via GCN: Tyranny

Commoditization of IT

In case, you hadn't noticed, salesforce.com is offering the platform for business applications as a service. ...

... "Force.com provides the building blocks necessary to create any kind of business app—simple or sophisticated—and automatically deploy them as a service to small teams or huge enterprises. " ...

Via Salesforce.com: Business Application Platform

Perform to Schedule

Performance to schedule is critical to manufacturing processes. This same discipline needs to extend to project schedules. However, not all projects and tasks are as repeatable as manufacturing steps. And, people aren't machines. ...

... "At the manufacturing level, processes are expected to be adhered to with clockwork precision to meet defined deadlines. With over 6 lakh cars a year from three assembly lines in Gurgaon and 1 lakh from a plant in Manesar, the shop floors need to produce exactly to a plan. " ...

Via InfoWorld Nederland: IT on wheels

Build IT 2.0 Strategy

Advice on incorporating Web2.0 concepts into today's IT strategy. ...

... "Incorporate user-generated feedback into your IT strategy to help make IT decisions more transparent - offer comment sections, forums and content-tagging. " ...

Via National Computing Centre: IT 2.0

Project Enables Olympic Collaboration

Information technology at the London Olympics will engage the public in the games. ...

... "London Organising Committee is taking its IT plans much further. They are considering a range of interactive web 2.0-based projects which will allow people to share, access and participate in the games. " ...

Via Platinax: London 2012 Olympics

Green IT Strategy Increasing

Financial firm sees IT's contribution to sustainability. ...

... "The bank is launching trials of new technology, benchmarking data centre energy consumption and reviewing the environmental credentials of its suppliers. " ...

Via VNUnet: Green Approach to Information Technology

Methods to Value IT

Insights on valuing IT and its investments range from tracking benefits, articulating the intangible benefits, and beating benchmarks. Traditional measures are shifting to options valuation. And, portfolio management could benefit from program management. ... All interesting perspectives. ...

... "In other words, looking at relative IT spending does not tell you whether a bank is an advanced or an inefficient consumer of IT. That's the economic theory. " ...

Via CIO Asia: IT Value

Return on Data

Traditional financial analyses, such as ROI, NPV, are challenging for IT projects. Better information does lead to more informed decision making and ultimately to a better performing business. ...

... "By and large, these are effective in analysing the hoped-for returns from a project or capital asset and for comparing one project with another. But they have little to say about what is probably the most valuable part of an IT project, namely the data. " ...

Via Computer Weekly: Profiting From Technology

Strategic Execution

Should a role be dedicated to realizing the benefits of digitized business processes? Should this fall to the Chief Operating Officer, COO, if one exists? Ultimately, the role needs to drive adoption and ensure that business leaders are engaged. ...

... "Problems arise not so much from the technology as from the management challenges of driving the business-process changes once systems are in place. Installing and using companywide information-technology business processes requires cooperation and sharing of resources across businesses, regions and functions. " ...

Via WSJ: Role of SEO

Challenge IT Talent Poaching With Development Strategy

The battle for IT talent rages and is particularly acute in Asia. Consider exciting training programs, career path tracks, and other soft incentives, such as telecommuting to provide some work-life balance. The enterprise that masters talent development is sure to succeed in the future and have fun doing it. ...

... "To provide a continuous supply of IT staff and retain existing IT talent, the company started to establish various initiatives on staff development. " ...

Via MIS: The Asia IT Talent Challenge

IT Strategy Is On Board-Room Back-Burner

Deloitte survey provides insights into boardroom perspectives on IT strategy. While boards don't have more time to focus on IT strategy, the limited time available should be used effectively. ...

... "But they don't plan to work toward improving the strategy: 52 percent said their board won't spend any more time on IT over the next three years than it does now. " ...

Via CIO: Board Perspectives on IT

New CIO Role: Enhance Customer Experience

San Francisco Giants' CIO creates new role for himself. ...

... "Schlough's role, he says, is not to maintain operations but rather to help make the customer experience memorable. " ...

Via CIO: Customer Leadership From IT

HR and IT Collaborate For Successful Change Management

HR and IT have areas of synergy that contribute to successful projects. The workforce and key talent have a special role in embracing organizational change. ...

... "If successful, the plan will produce a community of people who understand the reasons behind the change, the impact on their roles, and their role in the success of the transition. " ...

Via SMBedge: HR and IT Collaborative Success

IT Roles in Sustainability Initiatives

The I in information technology gets emphasized when sustainability is considered. ...

... "For example, IT is charged with creating databases to track environmental activity - measuring our emissions, tracking the safety and performance of our carriers, and managing our contractors. IT not only manages the information but it serves as a watchdog. " ...

Via CIO Asia: The Green Information Technology Role

SaaS Empowers Business Use of IT

SaaS could revive business interest in IT as the threshold for projects is lowered through a pay-by-the-drink approach to systems implementation. ...

... "With SaaS, line-of-business heads, ranging from the vice president of sales to the director of human resources (HR), can single-handedly own the purchase decision by taking advantage of free trial offers on Web sites to evaluate solutions and paying a monthly or quarterly rate low enough to stay off the corporate radar screen for requiring approvals. " ...

Via Supply and Demand Chain Executive: SaaS

Need to Shape Up For Summer: Try IT Project Management

Weight Watcher's IT managers shares his perspective on IT and projects in Australasia region. ...

... "What is the most exciting IT project or implementation you have been involved in? My first major installation at Weight Watchers was a VPN across every branch in Australasia. Having just arrived in Australia this was an exciting journey especially since I was the only person on the project. " ...

Via Computerworld: Weight Watchers IT Manager

IT Talent: Women Professionals Needed

NYT shares insights on negative trend for women undergraduate computer science majors. This is a trend that we cannot afford. The IT profession needs the capabilities that come naturally to women: communication, simplicity, relationship-building, caring, nurturing, etc. ...

... "there is one area in which their presence relative to men is static or even shrinking: computer science. " ...

Via New York Times: Female Computer Science Gap

Procurement in IT: Model Curriculum

OGC, sponsors procurement education for government. As vendor management becomes increasingly important to IT, this education trend is one to watch. ...

... "The government has been under pressure to improve the quality of procurement by its central departments, with costly major IT schemes highlighting weaknesses on the buying side. " ...

Via Computerworld UK: OGC Sponsors Procurement Education ...

Operational Efficiency at Citigroup

Citigroup plans to eliminate thousands of positions in effort to streamline operations. Its list of information technology actions can have a significant impact. They seem late to the party with leveraging these efficient IT enablers - regionalized data centers, virtualization to increase capacity utilization, and a standard enterprise architecture. ...

... "Continue to rationalize operational spending on technology. Simplification and standardization of Citi's information technology platform will be critical to increase efficiency and drive lower costs as well as decrease time to market. Examples of this are: consolidation of data centers; improved capacity utilization of technical assets and optimizing global voice and data networks; standardizing how the company develops, deploys and runs applications; and maximizing value by limiting the number of software vendors to operate at scale. " ...

Via Citigroup: Citi Announces Actions to Streamline Organization, Reduce Expense Growth and Drive Future Expansion

Science Project: Catalog All Species

Project strives to make the world's biodiversity data on specimens available scientific databases all around the world. An interoperable network of the appropriate biodiversity databases and information technology tools is being developed. ...

... "The project, involving some 3,000 biologists, is led by Prof Orrell and Prof Frank Bisby, of the University of Reading. According to Prof Bisby, several thousand new species are discovered every year. " ...

Via Scotsman: Million Organisms Identified

Who Should Manage IT Projects?

Who should manage the big projects? Professional project managers and management methods are a step in the right direction. We need to make this happen and embrace this specialization. ...

... "IT professionals should not be allowed to manage these projects. Traditionally, the IT professionals have come up through the ranks ... Leave the task of running one of these huge projects to specialists, just like everything else we do these days. " ...

Via Computerworld: Action

Stay Visible and Relevant

Raise expectations, market your capabilities, and educate the organization to stay visible and relevant to your enterprise. ...

... "The limited expectations CEOs have of IT leadership threaten to stunt IT's contributions, resulting in an IT organization that may be averse to taking risks or even rising to the level of visibility. " ...

Via Computerworld: Expectations of IT

IT Challenge: Do More With Less Schizophrenia

Firm publishes report on insights into the current IT challenge - do more with less while outsourcing parts of the organization and continually looking at new technologies for competitive advantage. ...

... "The information systems (IS) function is under threat. They are increasingly being asked to do more with less and to improve their efficiency. At the same time, they are also being asked to look at increasingly disruptive technology from the consumer markets, to identify which elements of that technology can deliver genuine business value, and to find ways of introducing it into business. Fundamentally, this is a schizophrenic situation. " ...

IT Torn Apart

Project Management Makes Hot IT Skills List

IT organizations need project managers now, according to recent survey. ...

... "Forrester's November 2006 survey of about 280 IT decision-makers revealed that project management is a missing skill set in some 55 percent of respondents' IT organizations. " ...

Via Computerworld: IT Hot Skills

CIO Disconnect: Internal Focus Puts Growth at Risk

Recent Gartner CIO survey shows CIOs are distracted by internal focus and risking IT credibility by not investing in growth enablers. ...

... "However, CIO near-term priorities remain internally focused on IT services, according to a worldwide survey of more than 1,400 CIOs by Gartner Executive Programs (EXP). Gartner analysts warn that this disconnect will place CIOs and IT at risk. " ...

Gartner CIO Survey

MS/Project is Dead: Long Live MS/Project

As reported in Computerworld and discussed here, Microsoft has announced MS/Project 2007, a new version that offers some usability and performance enhancements.

Perhaps the bigger news is that Project Portfolio Server 2007 has been announced, leveraging UMT's technology (which Microsoft acquired last year). It has the requisite bubble charts, strategy alignment tools, and what-if simulations. It even includes governance workflow, something long missing from the Microsoft suite. This should give the other big EPM tools a run for their money.

One thing worth noting about the Computerworld article (below) is the 20 million user base for MS/Project. Considering that the most frequently used project management tool is still MS/Excel, and that there are plenty of other project managers using non-Microsoft products, it gives a sense of how many project managers there are in the world. The last estimate I had heard several years ago was 16 million. That number is most likely quite a bit higher now, perhaps double.

Microsoft Looks to Boost Project Software’s Appeal

Digital Lifestyle: Cavs Lead The Way

Cavaliers push limit of paperless, digital customer experience for ticketing in sports events. Of course, some resistance is inevitable. ...

... "While some major league baseball teams have introduced electronic ticketing, the Cavaliers have taken it a step further, providing a completely paperless transaction. " ...

Via Yahoo! News: E-ticketing

Technology Investment: Time Is Ripe

Implementation of IT strategy requires fresh approach: New standards of performance and greater accountability for achievement. C Davis Fogg discusses actions needed to emphasize a bias for action and points out the potential of IT to innovate. ...

... "IT is such an underutilised power in the marketplace, I would expect right now is a very good time to be thinking about powerful investments to improve market position and efficiency. Particularly if you have cash and your competitors don't. " ...

Via CIO Australia: Implementation of IT Strategy

IT Architecture: Cross-Over Potential

Computer architecture principles are applied to treatment of ADHD and dyslexia with positive results. IT strategist contributes to advancement of our understanding of these disabilities. ...

... "Eugen Oetringer is an infrastructure consultant in the information technology industry. His areas of expertise include capacity management, information management, storage management, IT architecture, IT strategies, processes and complexity. He is the main inventor and author of The IT Strategy Management Process, which describes a simple way to manage important information in the midst of information overload. " ...

Root Cause Proposal for ADHD, Dyslexia, Headaches and other Conditions – Public Request for Research

Technology Strategy Roadmap for Small Business Evolution

Cisco creates technology strategy roadmap that supports small business evolution as the enterprise matures. The roadmap defines three phases of evolution for small businesses: Foundation, Growth, and Optimized. Small companies in foundation phase seek to communicate, provide access to, and share information with employees, customers, and suppliers. Growth phase businesses focus on efficiency and cost-effective solutions to enable mobility and real-time information sharing. In the optimized phase, businesses focus on differentiating themselves in their market through optimizing interaction with customers, suppliers, and employees and have integrated technology into the fabric of the business. ...

... "The Cisco Smart Business Roadmap provides a structured, planned evolution path to help businesses keep pace with change and make informed technology purchases. This roadmap shows how Cisco technology solutions can optimize businesses by effectively addressing current challenges and evolving to take on new challenges. " ...

Via Cisco: The Cisco Smart Business Roadmap (PDF) ...

Asset Management: Secure, Track Your Laptops

A number of interesting experiences and lessons are at play here for Starbucks ... The need for better security of private employee data. Traceability of its information technology assets. In this case, the company is not even sure that the assets are out of its possession. And, finally, transparency. Starbucks is being pretty open about the situation, as embarrassing as it is. They'll learn and improve from the experience. ...

... "Starbucks Corporation announced that four retired (no longer in regular use) laptops have been identified as missing from the Starbucks Corporate Support Center in Seattle. Two of the laptops contained the private information, including names and social security numbers, of nearly 60,000 United States partners (employees) and less than 80 Canadian partners and contractors at all levels employed across the organization prior to Dec.31, 2003. At this time, there is no indication that the private information in question has been misused or that the devices are in the hands of someone intending to misuse the information. These laptops may still be in the possession of Starbucks, however we cannot currently locate them. In accordance with Starbucks standards for information security, the laptops were password protected. " ...

Via Starbucks: Link

Strategic Portfolio: High Value Differentiated ...

Chevron has created a governance framework for actively managing its high-value enterprise-level projects, differentiating from its volume of small projects. The high-value portfolio is also where most of the investment is aligned. ...

... "it's a strategic framework for the company's biggest and most important IT projects. It's intended to ensure that the projects with the biggest benefit to the company as a whole get the right funding at the right time, and that they get special management attention. " ...

Via Computerworld: Chevron: Where Size Is Opportunity

SOX IT Compliance: Verizon Exemplar ...

Verizon honored as an exemplar in IT SOX compliance. The company was noted for their use of work process and systems to enable the high-level of performance through its SOX program office. Best practices cited: strong finance dept partnership, leadership committment, and proactive auditing. ...

... "Verizon Business strives to be a role model in IT governance and compliance, said Judy Spitz, Verizon Business chief information officer. Spitz heads the company's Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Program Office, which is responsible for maintaining and improving IT controls and monitors more than 30 of the company's largest revenue and transaction volume applications. " ...

Via Verizon Business: Verizon Business Honored With Prestigious Technology Managers Forum Award ...