Tag: CIOs

Cloud becomes less nebulous

Posted on January 30, 2015 by - News

Clouds in Oxford: pic Mike MageeA survey of 125 UK based IT managers and chief information officers (CIOs) has revealed that cloud apps are more widely used than often thought.
Centrix Software hired market research firm Vanson Bourne to undertake the survey.
Even though 90 percent of the organisations surveyed have cloud based apps, the IT folk are concerned about managing cloud apps and about duplication of app features.
The survey showed that over three quarters of organisations have a plan for leveraging the cloud this year.
Over a third were however worried about the growing cost of cloud subscriptions.
The top feature the IT managers are interested in is office productivity – only two percent thought marketing automation was of much use.
Financial services and government are lagging behind in adopting cloud apps – 20 percent said they had no cloud based apps and 24 percent in the financial sector said they had no plans for cloud apps at all this year.

 

CIOs need vision, not control

Posted on November 12, 2014 by - News

edisonApparently 76 percent of chief information officers (CIOs) in Europe have to develop vision and stop being control freaks.

A Gartner survey, according to VP Dave Aron shows that “command control leadership doesn’t suit this digital world. It can be an obstacle. Vision and inspiration are typically the most powerful attributes of digital leaders.”

Aron doesn’t say just how a CIO wedded to control can flip to being a visionary. Vision is generally innate rather than being a learned attribute.

A survey of thousands of CIOs worldwide, controlling over $397 billion in IT budgets, show that the average CIO spends five percent more time a month running the IT department.

Gartner recommends that CIOs turn over humdrum tasks to a deputy or deputies to run the “whole IT shop”.

CIOs also need to be aware of upcoming dital trends and should eschew backward looking reporting to forward looking experimentation.

Aron said: “To fully grasp the digital opportunity, businesses and CIOs need to flip long held behaviours and beliefs.”

CIOs need to get actively involved

Posted on September 23, 2014 by - News

lightbulbsThe days when IT was an afterthought are over and done and chief information officers (CIOs) need to become actively involved in business processes.

That’s the conclusion of a report from Gartner. Cassio Dreyfuss, research vice president said: “Over time, IT has graduated from being a support tool to being a business enabling and a business creation tool. Under that much broader and inclusive perspective, it makes more sense to talk about IT-related expenditures in each and every business initiative and respective budget. In this way, the CIO is challenged to adopt a higher profile and actively engage in opportunities to influence IT decisions in business budgets.”

While each organisation has its own set of processes, the CIO has a unique contribution for organisations of all sizes but must have a handle on the business challenges and style of each organisation.

A CIO needs to get “intensely” involved with budget decisions and can bring several skills to these discussions.

He or she needs extensive knowledge of the information used in an organisation and who uses what information, when, how and with what objective.  It’s also important to understand the business processes and master how all that information as well as having a comprehensive and educated perspective on technology of all types.

Governments need to go cloud busting

Posted on December 17, 2013 by - News

cloudbustA report from Gartner said that by 2017 public cloud offerings will account for over 25 percent of government business services, not counting defence and security.

But CIOs need to get themselves into the debate on public cloud sourcing, and kick of sourcing strategies with politicos.

By 2017, predicted Gartner, 35 percent of government shared service organisations will be managed by private sector companies. Public private partnerships are already embracing infrastructure as a service but governments will move to integration and software as a service.

And, Gartner predicts, by 2017 as many as 60 percent plus of government open data programmes that do not use open data internally will be discontinued.

And if you’ve a job in government software development, mind your back, because at least 25 percent of such jobs will be axed while governments hire data analysts from outside.  Data analysis is now a high priority.

Business failing to see mobility value

Posted on December 5, 2013 by - News

Matt Bancroft, Mobile HelixA survey of 300 IT decision makers in the UK and the US has revealed that 86 percent of their companies fail to use mobility to change their businesses and make more money.

Matt Bancroft, president of Mobile Helix, which commissioned the survey said that while widespread enterprise mobility is “still its infancy” making good choices today will increase revenues.

“Mobility has the potential to disrupt business in much the same way as the internet, but at the moment, cost and complexity challenges lead people to frequently ignore the enormous possibilities available,” he said. He sees the value of mobility as consisting of three stages – turning existing enterprise apps into mobile apps, adding mobile capabilities to existing apps and making new mobile apps as where necessary.

The survey shows that 87 percent of the CIOs think most employees will gain from increased access to CRM, ERP and SharePoint on mobile devices.  But 66 percent of CIOs think it is too complicated while 72 percent say it’s too expensive to integrate mobile into legacy applications.

The CIOs are also concerned about development, support and security.

Three quarters of companies open to BYOD

Posted on September 10, 2013 by - News

coffee-deskIt appears that three quarters of British companies have given in to tech promiscuity in the form of BYOD. A total of 76 percent of CIOs surveyed by Robert Half Technology are now reporting that their companies allow employees to bring their own gear to work.

Although smartphones and tablets are usually associated with BYOD, laptops still lead the way as the most popular BYOD option, at 65 percent. Smartphones rank second with 56 percent, memory sticks are third at 51 percent, while tablets and external hard drives rank fourth and fifth, 38 and 27 percent respectively.

Oddly enough, there are some huge differences depending in BYOD attitudes throughout the country. For example, use of BYOD smartphones is really big in the Midlands and London, at 73 and 69 percent respectively. However, in Wales and Scotland the figures are just 46 and 36 percent.

“There are a number of factors leading to the growth of BYOD, from company cost savings to employee preferences for using their own device. Only 24 percent of IT directors in our survey said that they do not currently allow employee owned devices into the workplace, so the tide has clearly turned in favour of BYOD,” said Phil Sheridan, Managing Director, Robert Half Technology. “Companies need to consider a well thought out BYOD strategy if they want to attract the best candidates – especially IT professionals. Almost half of CIOs reported that allowing employee-owned devices into the company improved productivity, while 37 percent said that they improved employee retention/satisfaction.”

However, although BYOD toys can keep the worker bees happy, Sheridan warns that organizations still need to take security concerns raised by CIOs seriously. There are some financial implications as well, as more money has to be burned on upgrading IT infrastructure and providing BYOD related training. On the other hand, 30 percent of organisations surveyed said BYOD helped them control capital costs, while 22 percent said it helped control contract costs.

IT departments lead the way in BYOD adoption, which makes perfect sense, as they can work out the kinks before the rest of the workforce joins the trend.