10
Jan 19

CIO.com – What’s driving IT budgets for 2019

Technology leaders weigh in on where IT spend will shift, with many companies focusing on infrastructure, security, and user experience.

he majority of IT leaders expect their 2019 IT budgets to increase or remain unchanged, driven largely by the need to upgrade aging infrastructure, accelerate a shift to the cloud or improve the employee experience of what IT offers.

More of the CIO.com article from Sharon Florentine


08
Jan 19

Continuity Central – Gartner highlights ‘digital twins’ as an emerging organizational resilience tool

In its latest ‘Hype Cycle for IT in GCC’ Gartner identifies various technologies that will reach mainstream adoption in five to 10 years. Of these one in particular – ‘digital twins’ – has strong potential for assisting organizations improve their organizational resilience.

Gartner says that a digital twin is a virtual representation of a real object that is designed to optimize the operation of assets. The primary short-term use is to lower maintenance costs and increase asset uptime.

Digital twins use artificial intelligence and machine learning alongside other techniques to create digital avatars that change and develop alongside the physical aspect being modelled. They can be used to harden existing systems and design new, more resilient, ones; they can also be used to identify hidden vulnerabilities.

More of the Continuity Central post


07
Jan 19

Forbes.com – Seven Remarkable Takeaways From Massive Kubernetes Conference

The 8,000 attendees attending the Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s (CNCF) KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Kubernetes conference this week in Seattle demonstrated the exponential growth in interest in this complex, technical combination of open source technologies.

Kubernetes is container orchestration software – essentially, plumbing for running enterprise-class software in the cloud. Not the kind of nuts-and-bolts tech that you might think would generate such enthusiasm.

More of the Forbes article from Jason Bloomberg


04
Jan 19

InformationWeek- Debunking Three Common Cloud Misconceptions

Combatting the misconceptions surrounding cloud computing requires continuous exploration of new opportunities emerging today because of ongoing cloud technology innovations.


Each organization’s digital transformation is different, based on internal operational goals, desired business outcomes and unique customer needs. Despite specific requirements of individual businesses, there’s an important common denominator in our digital era: the need for increased agility. The speed at which organizations need to perform and transform continues to accelerate – the ability to adjust course in real-time to best serve internal and external audiences is paramount, and best enabled with open cloud platforms.

More of the InformationWeek post from Jeff Canter


03
Jan 19

CIO.com – 4 KPIs IT should ditch (and what to measure instead)

Everything about your job has changed. It’s time your metrics did too.

Craig Williams, CIO of telecommunications networking company Ciena, knows exactly how his IT team will be evaluated by the company’s leaders in 2019. They will look at a wide range of metrics that include things like talent management (days to fill open position, number of employees completing management development), profit participation (revenue per IT employee), and change management (rate of adoption for new social media, data, and collaboration tools).

More of the CIO.com article from Minda Zetlin


02
Jan 19

ComputerWorld – How Microsoft Lost the Web

Microsoft’s announcement earlier this month that it was dumping its own browser technology for Google’s – turning Edge into a Chrome clone – was a stunning acknowledgement that the company had lost its decades-long battle for browser supremacy.

“We intend to adopt the Chromium open-source project … to create better web compatibility for our customers and less fragmentation of the web for all web developers,” Joe Belfiore, a corporate vice president in the Windows group, wrote in a Dec. 6 post to a company blog. But while Belfiore blew the open-source horn, he didn’t bother to recap how Microsoft reached this point when earlier in the century, it was the dominant browser maker, accounting for more than 90% of all usage after it laid waste to Netscape Navigator.

More of the ComputerWorld article from Gregg Keizer


01
Jan 19

Continuity Central – Business continuity trends and challenges 2019: interim survey results

For the past five years Continuity Central has conducted an online survey asking business continuity professionals about their expectations for the year ahead. We are repeating the survey again this year and the interim results are now available. They are as follows…

Initial demographics
So far, the majority of respondents (76.5 percent) are from business continuity professionals operating in large organizations. 9.5 percent are from medium sized and 14 percent are from small sized organizations. The top responding country so far is the United States, where 39 percent of respondents are located; followed by the UK (22.5 percent) and Australia (6 percent).

Interim results
The interim results from each question are as follows:

What level of changes do you expect to see in the way your organization manages business continuity during 2019?

More of the Continuity Central post


31
Dec 18

WSJ – CIOs Share Their Favorite Books of 2018

We asked CIOs to nominate their favorite books of 2018 and what we discovered is that the work never stops. When chief information officers have time to crack open a book, they want answers. This year’s favorites include guides to building better teams, creating the right culture and survival tips for a post-apocalyptic earth.

The Four by Scott GallowayPicked by Mark Sims, CIO, Scotts Miracle-Gro Company”I’ve recommended The Four by Scott Galloway to at least a dozen people and bought multiple copies for colleagues. Galloway’s characterization of Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple as the four horsemen of the Apocalypse is a really enjoyable read. I don’t buy all of his arguments, but he definitely takes positions that make you think – all in a writing style that is informal, humorous and engaging.”

More of the Wall Street Journal article


28
Dec 18

InformationWeek – After 60 Years, IT’s Time for a Name Change

After 60 years, it’s time to reexamine how we label and think about information technology, and to give the profession a fresh start.

The term “information technology,” was coined 60 years ago in November 1958 by Harold J. Leavitt and Thomas L. Whisler in their Harvard Business Review article “Management in the 1980’s,” which speculated about what would happen to the American managerial structure with the coming wave of technology. 

Not only did they name it, it stuck. Now, 60 years later, those of us with wide-ranging jobs in technology, from DevOps to network architect to chief innovation officer are referred to by the irksome catch-all: “IT”. 

More of the InformationWeek article from Timonth Wenhold


27
Dec 18

CIO.com – IT Risk Management – Part 2: The Move Towards Dynamic Technology Risk

In Part 1 of our two-part blog series on today’s technology risk landscape, we discussed the results of KPMG’s 2017 inaugural tech risk survey.

In Part 1 of our two-part blog series on today’s technology risk landscape, we discussed the results of KPMG’s 2017 inaugural tech risk survey — which found that despite the rising profile of the technology risk function across the 1st and 2nd line of defense, the organization still does not actively manage risks and show its value to the larger business. Instead, many remain stuck in traditional, compliance-focused approaches to technology risk.

More of the CIO.com article