CIO

26 posts

A toy shopping cart, illustrating buying cloud services

How To Buy The Cloud

Next month – all being well – the UK Cabinet Office will lift the lid on what form the UK public sector Cloud Computing strategy will take. Notably absent from the national ICT strategy announced back in April, Cloud has not been forgotten, but the grandiose plans for an over-arching G-Cloud that were being formulated under the New Labour administration have been scaled down. Exactly what form the revised Cloud thinking will take remains to […]

Several white arrows pointing upwards on a wooden wall, illustrating how cloud computing will change IT

How Cloud Computing Will Change IT

If you came here for the article with the title, “How Cloud Computing Will Change IT”, unfortunately, it has been removed at the request of the publisher of the website from which it was obtained. Asking me to remove it was within their rights, but I believe it was a shortsighted decision based on old media ideas about the copyright “protection” of assets and the imagined potential loss of ad revenue. I am not competing […]

Hands holding tax forms with calculator and laptop, illustrating H&R Block's thin client virtualization

H&R Block Shifts to Virtualized Thin Clients

H&R Block’s virtualization project is putting thin clients in the tax preparer’s thousands of retail stores in an effort to simplify its operating environment and cut expenses. The change should also help it to better compete with chains such as Jackson Hewitt, as well as with independent tax preparers and software-only rivals such as TurboTax and Intuit (INTU). “Typical of any mature company, the competitive landscape is tough. You’re continually looking at ways to optimize,” […]

Stressed woman with head in hands at laptop, illustrating the coming crisis of IT management

The Coming Crisis of IT Management

A quick look at the trends facing most CIOs should send anyone with a large IT budget into a state of worry. In every dimension, CIOs are facing an increased pace of change at the same time they are losing control over the computing environment. The number of assets they must manage is exploding. Consumerization, virtualization, cloud computing, software as a service, mobility are all increasing the complexity of the job of managing IT by […]

Overlooking view of mountains and sunrise, illustrating cloud computing poised for a breakthrough

Cloud Computing Poised For Major Breakthrough

A new IBM study of more than 3,000 global CIOs shows that 60 per cent of organisations are ready to embrace cloud computing over the next five years as a means of growing their businesses and achieving competitive advantage. That’s nearly double the number of CIOs who said they would utilise cloud in IBM’s 2009 CIO study. As demand for ever-growing amounts of information continues to increase, companies are seeking simple and direct access to […]

A close up of a computer in a dark room, illustrating federal data center consolidation

US Government Eyes 100 Data Centers for Move to Cloud Computing This Year

According to reports issued over the weekend, the US federal government has chosen 100 data centers to close over the course of this year, part of a larger overall government plan to reduce IT spending, in large part through outsourcing operations to hosting service providers. The government’s plan involves moving resources to “cloud computing” environments, which in a lot of old school IT organizations (and as US organization go, the federal government is pretty old-school) […]

2 white dices on blue surface, illustrating risk management in cloud computing

Risk Management in Cloud Computing

In a troubled economy, cloud computing seems like a great cost saving alternative and it is. Whether in good times or bad, any pragmatic cost saving measure is a ‘good’ measure. Google, Microsoft, IBM and all other known and unknown cloud providers offer today’s CIO an array of major cost saving alternatives to the traditional data center and IT department. The temptation to put things on/in the cloud and sit back can be extremely compelling. […]

A close up of a small green plant in dirt, illustrating how cloud computing helps a business grow

How Cloud Computing Helps a Business Grow

If you came here for the article with the title, “How Cloud Computing Helps a Business Grow”, unfortunately, it has been removed at the request of the publisher of the website from which it was obtained. Asking me to remove it was within their rights, but I believe it was a shortsighted decision based on old media ideas about the copyright “protection” of assets and the imagined potential loss of ad revenue. I am not […]

Social media app icons on a smartphone screen with a textured grey background, illustrating a mobile, social, cloud world

It’s a Mobile, Social, Cloudy, Insecure World

About 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies surveyed recently said they expect 15 percent or more of their applications to move to the cloud in the near future, Sarah Friar, managing director at Goldman Sachs, said Wednesday at ITSEF. That shift has even affected Goldman Sachs, “where we’re probably the most paranoid about letting go of these things,” she said. Cloud computing, mobile computing and social networking are reshaping the face of the information security […]

Brown fountain pen on notebook, illustrating Accenture CIO lessons on cloud computing

Five Things Accenture’s CIO Has Learned About Cloud Computing

Frank Modruson has a thing for better, faster, cheaper. As CIO of business and IT service provider Accenture, that’s what he wants to deliver to his internal customers and what they in turn promise to their clients. “I’m a big believer in technology and a big believer that technology helps the business in a lot of ways,” Modruson says. “But it needs to be better, faster or cheaper. If you hit all three, it starts […]