New Economist survey on cloud computing. Interesting read - good data.
What continues to surprise me is how few corporate IT departments are taking this whole shift to the cloud seriously. I continue to see some IT leaders that "get it" and use SaaS platforms. Most however remain blissfully unaware of the threats/opportuntities.
What are you seeing with your clients? Are IT departments planning for this shift?
Mckinsey Quaterly has just released an article on the role of CIOs in the form of interviews with CIOs at some major companies.
Two of the articles are new (interviews with the 'CIO' at P&G and the CIO of NetApp). The others are older (~2006). Some quotes:
"You never want IT to show up in a quarterly report as the reason the company didn’t meet its revenue numbers"
"We found that when people have process design and operational responsibilities, they’re more successful in delivering business process improvements."
"For standard functions...we buy rather than build. For areas where we can gain competitive differentiation, I believe in custom solutions..."
Worth a quick read.
Over the last couple of weeks I had two people urge me to go and read Groundswell. So I did. If you haven't already, I would recommend it.
In summary, it's probably the closest thing to a road map for implementing Enterprise 2.0 in companies (although to their credit, they don't call it that).
It's chock full of data (some of which will surprise you) and case studies. It also makes concrete recommendations how to evaluate what's the best strategy for a company (should we do a blog, an open forum or a video on You Tube). And best of all, the language the use (for the most part) is clear (focussed on business value not technology) and practical (always refreshing).
Continue reading "Groundswell: A game plan for Enterprise 2.0?" »
It's always interesting to see how much companies are spending on the race to enable cloud computing. The Economist, in its latest edition, reports on the race to build out data centers and its implications on the enviornment. Some highlights:
More here.
Mckinsey has highlighted eight interesting business/technology trends to watch. (You may need to register). The abstracts are really short and give only a passing introduction to the subjects, although they do have some neat examples that I had not seen before. To their credit, however, they do provide pointers for further reading. The article got me thinking on how an IT organization could profit from them.
Continue reading "Eight business / technology trends from Mckinsey" »
Xobni (Inbox spelled backwards) is a neat little tool that leverages data / connections (some would call it spam) that all of us have in our inboxes and turns that into useful information. (This really belongs in a blog on personal productivity but it thought it may be interesting to people here that are drowning in email.)
Some of the features in Xobni (such as search) can be found in either Google Desktop or in Microsoft search (which is now integrated with Outlook 2007), but I really like the insights that it provides. What especially caught my eye was the graph that shows when your contacts send emails, the ‘email deficit’ between you and your contact and the ability to quickly find attachments. Can’t wait to try this out. Thanks to Don Dodge for pointing this out.
Nicholas Carr's first book "Does IT Matter" (rightly) raised a ruckus. I hope his new book, "The Big Switch" is as provocative as his first. Early indications are that it is.
From what I can tell, it describes the evolution of IT from in house operations to a utility. Companies that have been leading us up the SaaS path (SalesForce, Google et al) are likely to benefit, while the incumbents need to think hard and come up with a compelling strategy to stay relavent.
Interesting discussion caused by an article in the WSJ about the decision of ASU's chief technology officer to forgo full testing in an ERP implementation. How did he do that? Well, he just took a page book out of all the Web 2.0 startups and released the software in beta (That's a polite way of saying the product/service is not fully finished/tested.).
So who tests the application? Well, the poor users of course. And this is what has caused a firestorm. There have been cases of employees not getting paid, or in some cases overpaid. The CTO's justification for not fully testing? He's apparently managed to save over half the original $70m estimated price tag and reduced the time taken to bring the application to its users. Very impressive. But is this a strategy that other CIOs should follow?
When I think of IBM, I think of hardware, software and consulting services - I don't think of it as a lender. Yes, that's exactly what IBM has got approval to do.
" IBM Lender Business Process Services, or LBPS, received clearance to provide mortgage origination services for federally insured Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans.
When it announced the unit’s launch in March, IBM said the unit would fill a void in the lending space, particularly for small and midsize lenders.
The Charlotte-based unit will allow mortgage lenders to replace the fixed costs that are associated with typical loan fulfillment operations with a variable-cost framework. This in turn will free up lenders to provide better service and support to consumers, IBM says.
LBPS will offer a variety of lending services, including loan application, underwriting, processing, vendor management, document preparations, and loan closing."
While this may not seem like a significant announcement, I think there's more here than meets the eye. This is really IBM introducing LaaS (Lending as a Service) to the market.
Interesting blog on the recently held 'CIO Agenda' event centered around Enterprise 2.0. Some titbits:
~"Keeping operations up an running is just table stakes" - Doug Schwinn, CIO, Hasbro
~ Interest level in Vista seems low; interest level in virtualization, open source and Web 2.0 seems high.
~ All the CIOs on the panel predicted an increase in their IT spend.
More here.
