CIO Symmetry
Recent Posts
-
Around the blogs: Release date of Windows 8 and losing talent
- TechTarget 30 May 2011 -
The Windows 8 operating system: Is it time to move on?
- Editorial Director 26 May 2011 -
Failed promotion for Amazon cloud storage affects consumer confidence
- TechTarget 24 May 2011
We've scoured the Web and compiled a crib sheet for the best and most interesting tidbits from around the IT blogosphere last week, including thoughts on the release date of Windows 8, the risks to ...
It was customary during the Bill Gates era at Microsoft to surreptitiously dis the previous version of Windows when the next generation came out. "It's the best Windows operating system we've ever ...
It's one of those things that looks fantastic on paper: Introduce your cloud service to the consumer market by packaging it with a super-cheap, eagerly anticipated superstar's new album. Amazon did ...
-
Technology conferences can still deliver for IT pros
- Editorial Director 17 May 2011 -
The sky’s the limit for cloud-enabled applications
- Editorial Director 10 May 2011 -
CIO innovation is about getting ahead of the problems
- Editorial Director 03 May 2011 -
PlayStation Network breach is Sony's shameful nadir
- Editorial Director 28 Apr 2011 -
Cisco killed the Flip camera and other surprises
- Editorial Director 19 Apr 2011 -
CIOs and facilities managers need to be BFFs with green IT practices
- TechTarget 15 Apr 2011 -
What have we learned from the Epsilon security breach?
- Editorial Director 12 Apr 2011
I attended the "last" Comdex show -- the last great one, that is -- in the year 2000, right before 9/11 and the dot-com bust turned it into a shell of its former self, along with a lot of other ...
Back in the day, the must-have feature for technology products was "Internet-enabled." (Remember when Windows became Internet-enabled? It meant sticking the browser in.) It got kind of sickening to ...
My colleagues and I in the CIO/IT Strategy Media Group have spent much of the first half of 2011 talking with CIOs about innovation. So much time that I think I might go crazy asking another ...
Another week, another major hack. It seems these things go in cycles. There was a major breach at email provider Epsilon earlier this month. But the recent attack on the PlayStation Network is ...
The news last week that Cisco killed the Flip mini-camcorder -- or, as Cisco put it, restructured its consumer products division -- is full of surprises. First, I have to admit, even as a Cisco ...
Green IT practices are a no-brainer, but is your company's effort thwarting your IT strategy? Your connectivity problems may be inside your walls.
My wife and I started getting the emails April 4. Best Buy. Our bank. Other e-commerce sites we had shopped. The impact of the Epsilon security breach was far and wide. My first thought was that at ...
-
Mobile technology in health care now the answer instead of the problem
- Editorial Director 08 Apr 2011 -
Are the Mozilla Firefox 4 and IE9 releases wreaking havoc on your old apps?
- TechTarget 05 Apr 2011 -
Does your executive networking strategy include Twitter?
- TechTarget 24 Mar 2011 -
Why aren't more women in executive careers in IT?
- TechTarget 11 Mar 2011 -
What would an Internet kill switch really mean?
- Editorial Director 01 Mar 2011 -
Get cloud computing security in line with enterprise practices
- Editorial Director 22 Feb 2011 -
Effects of the Egypt Internet shutdown
- Editorial Director 10 Feb 2011 -
Software tools can be basis for successful ITIL strategy
- Editorial Director 08 Feb 2011 -
Is there an iPhone business app for that?
03 Feb 2011 -
IT innovation is just a matter of time
- Editorial Director 01 Feb 2011 -
IT salary survey numbers may obscure still struggling economy
- Editorial Director 25 Jan 2011 -
Get started on XP migration to Windows 7 by 2012
21 Jan 2011 -
IT salaries creeping up in 2011, mood mostly positive
13 Jan 2011 -
Data center transformation: Evolution or revolution?
- Editorial Director 13 Jan 2011 -
CIO resumes: Passing the eyeball test and the black ink test
- Editorial Director 07 Jan 2011 -
Forget virtual machine management -- go to the cloud
16 Dec 2010 -
How do you know if your SaaS provider is healthy? Here's the scoop
- Industry Editor -- CIO/IT Strategy 02 Dec 2010 -
Political underpinnings of data governance
11 Nov 2010 -
Agile adoption basics, and basic mistakes
28 Oct 2010 -
Where’s the love for Microsoft technologies?
21 Oct 2010 -
Virtual data center: A panacea for governance
14 Oct 2010 -
Mobile workforce will soon demand iPad-type tablets
- Editorial Director 12 Oct 2010 -
CIOs feverishly working on mobile strategy
11 Oct 2010 -
Social media may not be a revolution, but it's in your enterprise
- Editorial Director 05 Oct 2010 -
Supporting cloud services is a quandary for IT
16 Sep 2010 -
Improving business services management, one vehicle at a time
- Editorial Director 07 Sep 2010 -
Mobile application development made easy … eventually
02 Sep 2010 -
Hair-raising approaches to data backups
26 Aug 2010 -
Trade promotion management: A missing opportunity?
- Editorial Director 24 Aug 2010 -
Midsized companies migrating to Windows 7 find the payback worthwhile
- Freelancer 17 Aug 2010 -
Top five free Microsoft downloads
11 Aug 2010 -
The end of online anonymity, part 2
- Editorial Director 10 Aug 2010 -
Agile best practices applied to business problems
05 Aug 2010 -
A world without legacy systems
- TechTarget 30 Jul 2010 -
Taking notations on agile data modeling
29 Jul 2010 -
IT consolidation for business innovation
14 Jul 2010 -
Is mobile video conferencing worth considering in the midmarket?
- TechTarget 08 Jul 2010 -
Think lean before you start agile projects
08 Jul 2010 -
New England GiveCamp: One NERD and multiple IT project success stories
- TechTarget 17 Jun 2010 -
When it comes to an agile model, failure is an option
10 Jun 2010 -
Is the new CIO role of today cultivating CEOs of the future?
- TechTarget 27 May 2010 -
USB memory sticks spark concern -- but still prove hard to pass up
- TechTarget 20 May 2010 -
Why using Microsoft Excel in SMB IT makes sense
- TechTarget 18 May 2010 -
More colleges move to cloud email like Gmail, ditch in-house email
- TechTarget 15 Apr 2010 -
Microsoft business intelligence tools here in May
02 Apr 2010 -
Gaga for Google Fiber? We're all a bit crazy when it comes to tech
- TechTarget 25 Mar 2010 -
IT execs weigh in on cloud computing and IT business transformation
19 Mar 2010 -
Top IT certifications: Do they matter to you?
- TechTarget 18 Mar 2010 -
Why one IT guy found Windows 7 to be too user-friendly
- TechTarget 11 Mar 2010 -
Reasons to adopt desktop virtualization
04 Mar 2010 -
Social Connector ushers Microsoft into social networking tool fray
- TechTarget 19 Feb 2010 -
SharePoint 2010 good, Enterprise 2.0 tools may be better
- TechTarget 29 Jan 2010 -
Migrating from XP to Windows 7: When, why and how?
- TechTarget 15 Jan 2010 -
Paying the price for server uptime
- Editor 11 Dec 2009 -
Salesforce.com's Chatter: A collaboration tool worth talking about
- TechTarget 20 Nov 2009 -
What is transparency, and how can Agile practices help?
- Editor 13 Nov 2009 -
The challenge of managing risk when IT budgets tighten
- Industry Editor -- CIO/IT Strategy 09 Oct 2009 -
Beware of rising server room temperatures
- Editor 21 Aug 2009 -
With PPM software, don't always throw in the kitchen sink
- TechTarget 17 Jul 2009 -
Five key questions about cloud computing
12 Jun 2009 -
Don't be like GM: How a BPM strategy can help you avoid bankruptcy
- TechTarget 02 Jun 2009 -
Open source cloud computing: The future midmarket sweet spot?
- TechTarget 08 May 2009 -
Is cloud computing a platform or a stage?
- Senior Vice President of Editorial 16 Apr 2009 -
Qualities of a good leader: Avoid layoffs at all cost?
- TechTarget 20 Feb 2009 -
The Super Bowl and server virtualization: Don’t drop the ball!
- TechTarget 30 Jan 2009 -
Vendor gifts: Holiday cheer or ethical dilemma?
- TechTarget 19 Dec 2008 -
Recent FBI vishing scam warning an old issue
- TechTarget 09 Dec 2008 -
The Web 2.0/social media revolution inches along
- TechTarget 14 Nov 2008 -
Google Chrome: How secure is your information?
- TechTarget 06 Nov 2008 -
Gmail apps: Text your contacts
- TechTarget 31 Oct 2008 -
I’m a PC, and I don’t necessarily like Microsoft
- TechTarget 29 Sep 2008 -
Are we all too busy?
- TechTarget 25 Sep 2008 -
Don't ignore internal security (and don't write passwords on Post-it's)
- TechTarget 05 Sep 2008 -
Joe Biden: RIAA stooge
26 Aug 2008 -
Seinfeld vs. Justin Long? Please, let's get someone with some funny.
21 Aug 2008 -
Google Reader has my vote
- TechTarget 21 Aug 2008 -
Press releases as prose
12 Aug 2008 -
Save the data! How safe is our personal information?
- TechTarget 08 Aug 2008 -
Forrester: No room for cowboy culture in IT
04 Aug 2008 -
Weekly wrapup
24 Jul 2008 -
Fighting for a Vista rebate. Because somebody has to.
21 Jul 2008 -
Big green HP scheme
- TechTarget 21 Jul 2008 -
Calling FedEx out
12 Jun 2008 -
Sarah Lacy says Facebook doesn't need my best friend. He doesn't seem to care.
23 May 2008 -
Will a Chief Blogging Officer get a Golden Parachute?
- Barker Implement 07 May 2008 -
Justifying IT expenditures: Outsourcing isn’t always the answer
- Barker Implement 22 Apr 2008
The first "mobile computing device" that I used was a 30-pound IBM "luggable" PC. It cost more than $4,000 and boasted the Intel 8088 microprocessor running at a blazing 4.77 MHz and ran off of two ...
Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 and Mozilla Firefox 4 dropped within a week of each other, and now that the dust has settled, Internet users are finding that there are pieces of their daily lives ...
This week marks Twitter's fifth birthday. It's a precocious 5-year-old, in that it has done in half a decade what most companies need 20 years to accomplish: become an integral part of our everyday ...
Tuesday was International Women's Day. The United Nations' theme for 2011: "Equal access to education, training and science and technology." Last week at the FusionCIO conference in Madison, Wis., ...
The Internet shutdown in Eqypt last month raised questions regarding whether the U.S. would be able to do the same with a so-called Internet kill switch bill. This is not the first time such a bill ...
You have been reading a lot about cloud computing on SearchCIO.com and SearchCIO-Midmarket.com lately. With good reason: The cloud is the latest game-changer in corporate IT. Sure, there's ...
It's a sign of how dependent our lives have become on the Internet, or more accurately, of "being connected." News of Egypt cutting off Internet and cellular service for five days this week shocked ...
The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) can be a useful tool -- for those who have ventured into it. Just 40% of 169 IT managers at midmarket firms surveyed by SearchCIO-Midmarket.com last year ...
I’ve had an iPhone 4 for a few months now and I haven’t even begun to tap all the things I can do, and I’m nowhere near taking advantage of all the iPhone business apps. I know this because the ...
Innovation is a popular topic among IT professionals and media. It's also one of the more misunderstood concepts. If you ask 10 CIOs what IT innovation means to them or to their companies, you will ...
Reader Jim Dries offered me another point of view on the SearchCIO.com salary and careers survey, which was completed late last year. In our 2010 IT salary survey, all signs point to increased ...
I remember talking to an IT manager about his XP migration plans to Vista, and he said that he was going to hold on to XP come hell or high water. Mainstream support for XP had ended and extended ...
The average IT salary in 2010 for senior IT executives, mid-level IT executives and IT managers was $121,797, according to our annual CIO Salary and Careers Survey, taken in November. This is a ...
As we continue to chronicle the "disappearing" data center, we have to consider the ongoing transformation of the enterprise application. Software as a Service, Web-based applications, cloud ...
Judging character and qualifications is a tough thing. The annual debate over the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame voting is going on, following the announcement of the two newest members, ...
There are still many IT shops that have not virtualized the majority of their servers. Many still haven’t moved virtual machines (VMs) to a production environment yet. In fact, some may sidestep ...
How do you know if your SaaS provider is a good choice? A session at the recent MIT Sloan CFO Summit provided some insight that might prove useful the next time you're vetting a SaaS provider. The ...
I asked Gwen Thomas, founder of the Data Governance Institute, how businesses’ data management plans were changing , and she started to explain why “The Tragedy of the Commons” summed up the ...
I came across a helpful post on the Edge of Chaos/Agile development blog on the 10 most common mistakes for agile adoption. No. 1: Don’t start with a tool. Choosing a tool will only slow down agile ...
Remember when Microsoft’s marketing machine could make up a word like goodness to describe a new software feature, and people would eat it up like, well, chocolate? The ooohs and aaahs at shows -- ...
Virtualization, to me, is in many ways like vitamin supplements: Whether you want to save money, pool resources or make employees more productive, there’s a virtualization pill for that. What I ...
If ever there was a no-brainer reason to get an iPad, or some kind of equivalent thin tablet computer that will be coming soon from HP or Dell, it's as a journalist covering a remote assignment. ...
It seemed no matter how a conversation started out with IT executives at this year’s Society of Information Management national event in Atlanta this week, it somehow wound its way back to ...
The social media multiverse is all a Twitter about the fact that one of today's most popular intellectuals has written an article saying that the revolution will not be tweeted. You should read his ...
A CIO was recently approached by a business line manager about a problem with a cloud service. The manager asked if the CIO could help resolve the issue, and the CIO gave him a flat-out “No.” It is ...
It's funny the places where you can gain some insight about business services management. Last week, I spent two hours waiting at my local Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles to exchange a ...
A while back, I checked in with a few IT managers about their mobile application development plans. I was wondering if business intelligence applications were making their way on to their users’ ...
We are smack dab in the middle of hurricane season, but SMBs should be keeping an eye on well-intentioned employees in addition to the local forecast. Like the intern who was hired to perform daily ...
If you read Linda Tucci's recent story on the efforts of Tasty Baking Co. to find a workable solution for trade promotion management, you may have been struck, as I was, about why TPM can be such a ...
If the sagging economy has forced midsized companies to delay hiring more IT staff, maybe migrating to Windows 7 can move them off that dime. In a recent report by IDC, an impressive number of ...
Every once in a while I like to check out what Microsoft admins are downloading these days. I sometimes do a search on Google, but to get a feel for the work being done in Microsoft shops, I always ...
Google CEO Eric Schmidt's statement last week about the end of online anonymity recalls similar words by one of his former colleagues, Scott McNealy of Sun, more than a decade ago. McNealy caused a ...
In the past few years, Ross Pettit, client principal at Chicago-based ThoughtWorks Inc., has seen a shift in client requests. The agile software development consulting firm’s projects are still ...
How frustrating is it to be one of the little guys without the resources to bear for big projects. Well, those frustrations may actually be easier to deal with than the alternative: Being a large ...
You can’t talk about agile data modeling without mentioning Scott Ambler, whom many consider the authority if not founder of agile data modeling. In this tip, Ambler takes readers through an ...
I’ve been touching base with IT folks and analysts lately to get a feel for the projects people are working on these days, and the phrases that keep coming up are IT consolidation, modernization ...
You share, collaborate and inform via email, phone, instant message and more -- all because face-to-face time can be difficult to pull off in our increasingly busy schedules. And while some ...
In the past few weeks I’ve been writing about agile projects, Scrum vs. waterfall or using the two project approaches together, and a theme that keeps coming up when I talk to project managers is ...
A lot of projects fail. If business requirements aren't clear or gathered effectively, or if the scope of the project is inaccurate, failure happens. But this past weekend, at New England GiveCamp ...
It’s OK to fail when taking an agile approach to a business service or software development project, but if you fail, fail fast. As one expert explained to me, if you don’t fail, you don’t really ...
The CIO role is changing -- there's no doubt about that -- but the question remains: What does the new CIO role comprise? During her keynote presentation at the Forrester IT Forum in Las Vegas this ...
"Is this safe?" seemed to be the first question out of everyone's mouth when a colleague of mine was handing out USB memory sticks at the recent MIT Sloan CIO Symposium. The tiny memory sticks did ...
It's no surprise that many organizations are using Microsoft Excel. Evolving from more than just a simple spreadsheet application, Excel is used for everything from simple project management to ...
Colleges across the country have started turning to cloud email services such as Gmail in an effort to cut costs. It's not entirely surprising, either: IT shops have been toying with the idea of ...
I just got word from Microsoft that they plan to release Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 -- with the new Microsoft business intelligence (BI) features -- on May 12. To back up a bit, we wrote about ...
The Google Fiber for communities deadline is right around the corner. In an effort to test out its plans for high-speed broadband and fiber-to-the-home connections, Google has asked interested ...
I was at a Boston Society for Information Management (SIM) event the other day on transformation: how CIOs are transforming the business and the role of IT, but what struck me is how little a role ...
How important are IT certifications today? As organizations start to hire again (there were 58,229 available tech jobs on Dice.com this month), IT certifications could help potential candidates ...
There has been a lot of Windows 7 coverage on SearchCIO-Midmarket.com -- everything from planning your migration strategy to making it your last operating system. Part of the appeal of the new OS ...
Desktop virtualization is not the slam dunk that server virtualization is in terms of cost savings. In a recent article, I talked to experts about how the cost of desktop PCs was replaced by even ...
Twitter, schwitter: We've all been overexposed to social networking tools and news. But good, bad or ugly, Microsoft's inclusion of LinkedIn as an officially supported plug-in for Outlook is a ...
If you've missed the SharePoint boat, now might not be the best time to buy your ticket. While Microsoft unveiled some new features in SharePoint 2010, new users might not find them compelling ...
I've recently spoken with a lot of IT managers about Windows 7 in preparation for upcoming coverage. Overall, everyone wants to know when they should migrate from XP to Windows 7 and why they would ...
What’s the price for server uptime? How much would you be willing to invest to maintain five 9s of availability on your mission-critical line of business applications? With limited budgets and ...
Salesforce.com has announced that it has developed a collaboration platform that brings social networking into the enterprise -- Salesforce Chatter. And for the more than 60,000 Salesforce.com ...
As I was interviewing experts and practitioners this week on the uses of Agile practices, the term transparency kept popping up in comments about the benefits of using this type of software ...
I see an interesting sea change when it comes to risk: Thanks to the recession, as IT risk management is constrained by tightening IT budgets, the risk of doing business goes up. As part of my ...
When you’re cranking the A/C during these final hot days of summer, don’t forget about data center cooling as well. The consequences for not monitoring server room temperatures could burn you well ...
Project and portfolio management (PPM) software is definitely not overlooked in the midmarket. According to a recent SearchCIO-Midmarket.com survey, 17% use some form of PPM software. But how many ...
It seems every time I ask someone what they think about cloud computing, I’m asked five or more questions in return: Isn’t what cloud providers offer pretty cookie cutter? Translate that as, “They ...
Midmarket CIOs who think of a business process management (BPM) strategy in its basic form as a tool for putting processes around purchase orders, claims or employee onboarding and offboarding ...
What happens when open source and cloud computing collide? Cost savings, flexibility and (at least one open source vendor hopes) midmarket CIOs checking it out. Open source CRM provider SugarCRM ...
Cloud computing is at that early stage where there’s much discussion of taxonomy: Is it infrastructure? Is it Software as a Service? Is it a platform? All well and good, but little discussed so far ...
An article on our sister site, SearchCIO.com, this week highlighted the qualities of a good leader during a recession, culling advice from leadership experts and CIOs. The list includes qualities ...
Are you ready for some server virtualization? This year, the Super Bowl will be running on one of IBM's smallest systems, the BladeCenter S. The system will support security and credentialing for ...
Twas the night before deadline and all through the office, we worked with our heads down, appeasing our bosses. But what to my weary eyes should appear? The USPS delivery, bringing vendor-purchased ...
Last Friday, the FBI issued a warning about a security vulnerability that could be used by cybercriminals to make vishing telephone scams. Vishing (combining phishing and voice) uses Voice over IP ...
More evidence this week that the Web 2.0/social media revolution may be advancing, but it ain’t here yet: Instant messaging hasn’t become the preferred method of communication among IT staff; nor ...
Google is growing. From Chrome to G1, it’s not just for searching anymore. As the Google giant is creating new breeds of consumers (“cross-consumers,” I call them -- spanning email, news, mobile ...
Google Gmail users now have the option to send text messages to mobile phones. The experimental app, found in Gmail Labs, was made available to all users Thursday night. The feature is very similar ...
After the annoyingly strange Jerry Seinfeld/Bill Gates commercials promoting Microsoft, a new batch of adverts surfaced featuring the slogan “I’m a PC.” It goes something like this: Microsoft ...
Do your users pay attention to dialog box pop-ups? If you’re thinking, “yes, of course,” read on. A recent study by members of the psychology department at North Carolina State University shows ...
Last year 8% of the IT budget went towards security. This year? 10%. Khalid Kark, principal analyst at Forrester Research, Inc., presented security statistics at Forrester’s Security Forum 2008. ...
Joe Biden, huh? Talk about strike three. 2000: Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Lieberman “loses” election. Flash forward to 2008 and this stuffy jerk – who spent part of his career going ...
Can we all agree that Jerry Seinfeld was never the funny one? For all his quirks and humorous relationships, Jerry was always the straight man to his consistently hilarious compatriots. Good at ...
You may have noticed the new feature on the Google homepage. It reads: “New! Read what Barack Obama and John McCain are reading with Google Reader.” Yes, now you too can see what Senator John ...
I don’t doubt that writing a press release that catches the eye is a tough job. But this is just dumb: “Dear Zach, “Will Shakespeare sure didn’t have to wrestle with the issues IT managers’ face ...
The search for the missing Registered Traveler laptop is finally over. The laptop, belonging to Verified Identity Pass Inc.(VIP), was reported missing from a locked office in the San Francisco ...
Just like Toby Keith, I should have been a cowboy. Alas, I went into journalism and never did get the hang of a lasso. If you’re in IT, a new Forrester report says, you should let those cattle ...
I think the “things that tick us off” theme of this blog is rubbing off on one of our contributors. Just yesterday, The Real Niel gave us a killer column about how bad your business will look if ...
Some people suffer the insufferable for piece of mind and for the good of all of us who want to live safe, comfortable lives. The mysterious uncle_benji is one of those people. Ben, as I’ll call ...
With polar bears balancing on ice cubes in the Arctic Circle and gas prices skyrocketing, we are all looking to be a bit more ‘green’ in our everyday lifestyle choices. Right? Well, we’re trying. ...
Sometimes you hear something and think: “Hey, that can’t be true.” Take this statement from FedEx Corp. CIO Rob Carter at his Enterprise 2.0 Conference keynote this week. “There's also a cool new ...
Sarah Lacy, author of Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0, has blogged about me blogging about her book. So I feel compelled to respond. ...
Excellent little news blurb on HealthLeaders Media this morning: “Chief Blogging Officer title catching on with corporations.” Chief Blogging Officer. Ok, one more time: Chief Blogging Officer. ...
Accountability, budget constraints and cost of provisioning services – these are all issues that CIOs hear about when presenting IT budget numbers. “Why does this cost what it costs?” and “Can’t we ...