Tag Archives: CIO
How Is Cloud Computing Changing The Role of IT?
It seems that the debate between centralized and decentralized IT organizations is once again picking up steam. At one point it seemed like monolithic suites and enterprise standardization had swung the pendulum firmly toward centralized IT. But now the disruptive impact of cloud computing, and more specifically software as a service (SaaS), is fueling the decentralization fire. Two recent articles on the topic got my attention. (more…)
Why Applications Don’t Matter
Nicholas Carr infamously penned “Why IT Doesn’t Matter” back in 2003, and many in the IT world howled their indignity at the idea. Many proved over and over that IT did matter in many businesses. IT did provide competitive advantage.
But part of what he stated does resonate now. Business applications used to be the epitome of how IT helped differentiate an enterprise. American Airlines invented the yield management system for allocating and pricing airline seats, revolutionizing the industry and generating an estimated $1.4 billion in additional revenues over three years. MCI won five points of market share from AT&T in the 1990s with its Friends and Family plan, enabled by its uniquely flexible billing application. Bank of America cemented customer relationships and leapfrogged competitors by providing state-of-the-art electronic bill pay capabilities. (more…)
Cloud Integration Drives CRM And Sales Success
Today Informatica announced that Bay & Bay Transportation has used Informatica Cloud Services to achieve a six month project payback on their total Salesforce.com investment and a 900 percent return on their critical data integration project.
Bay & Bay is using the turnkey, on-demand Informatica Cloud Services to provide robust, bi-directional synchronization between its logistics management databases and applications with Salesforce CRM. Using an intuitive web based integration wizard, the company automatically maps source and target fields, configures powerful data transformations, and sets automated synchronization schedules. And being a true multi-tenant cloud-based service, there is no hardware, software, or infrastructure for them to install, manage, or maintain.
Embracing Cloud Computing As A Business Strategy
I am a technology opportunist. I stay away from unproven segments when they are overhyped with no sustainable business model, or too amorphous with definitions and segmentations debated at every turn. But I like to get in early enough so that we have the opportunity to reshape and redefine the requirements to lead the segment. So I made a point to visit the Dreamforce Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco this year to hear directly from the customers and partners to assess the maturity of cloud computing. The timing was good as Informatica had just released Informatica Cloud 9 (Learn more about the Informatica Cloud Platform).
At the show, I had a chance to catch up with John Bair, CTO of Launchpoint. Launchpoint offers cloud-based information management services. (more…)
What Components Are Required To Be Information Driven?
Being information driven is as much an organizational commitment as it is a technology commitment. The following outlines the major components required to be information driven.
Data Governance (DG) – DG is the overarching program for a data driven company. In my last blog, I defined DG as the practice of managing data as a corporate asset across the enterprise. It involves the processes, policies, standards, organization, and technologies required to manage and ensure the availability, accessibility, quality, consistency, auditability, and security of data in a company or institution.
Who should own DG? In most things we do, we look for the single point of accountability. In this instance, I recommend a collective structure of senior business managers who are accountable for the data subjects that drive your business. Additionally, I suggest a senior member of IT who can drive change across IT systems. (more…)
What’s The Relevance Of Data For Global CIOs?
I recently had the opportunity to travel the globe, meeting with CIOs in Brazil, South Africa and Hong Kong. During my meetings, we had the opportunity to discuss the relevance of data within their organizations and a strong thread emerged.
First stop, Brazil – While in Brazil, I was able to meet with senior. IT people from multiple industries who were all very receptive to meeting with me. I was hesitant at first given that I work for a software vendor. I found this experience to be different from the US, where CIOs tend to be more skeptical of anyone associated with a vendor.
I found that there was a high degree of interest in becoming information driven. For example, a telecom provider I met with had the understanding that at one level, the products they provide are at parity with the competition. The realization they came to was that they would need to use data to create unique and differentiated products – quickly to remain competitive. The net result would be to use data to create a sustainable competitive advantage.
My takeaways from Brazil? A mature IT market with a strong desire to push the IT envelope. (more…)
Data Integration’s Role in Combinatorial Innovation
About a year ago, I wrote a whitepaper entitled CIO’s Guide to Achieving Information Management Excellence. Back then, the US economy was somewhat shaky but we had no clue as to the impending major shift about to face the global economy. Fast-forward to 2009. According to the March International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast, global activity is expected to decline by around ½ to 1 percent in 2009. Gartner and IDC also revised their IT spending forecast down to reflect the changes from last year.
So I asked myself, “Do I also need to revisit the paper from the information management perspective?” I sought the counsel of our clients and partners. The answer was, no. The proven practices and methods are still valid, and even more crucial for organizations leading the next chapter of innovation.
There is a greater force at play in IT distinct from the financial restructuring currently taking place. It is the technological maturation making innovation possible for the masses, not just for the elite few. Google’s Chief Economist Hal Varian put it this way: (more…)
Data Quality For The First US CIO
InfoWorld recently published an article by Paul Venezia entitled “10 IT agenda items for the first US CIO.” In reading through the article, I thought that some of the recommendations that Venezia makes could be more effective if a data quality strategy were also included as a part of the agenda.
For instance, the first suggested agenda item calls for “Mandatory restitution for customer data leaks.” Although this is primarily focused on data breaches and the impact to consumers, my recommendation is that this agenda item should be expanded to include requiring a data quality firewall.
By doing so, any data coming into or leaving an organization would have standard data quality processes enforced. Since data manipulation continues to move to more of a real-time process, having sufficient checks of the data, including standardizing key fields and looking for duplicates, is a way to ensure data integrity is maintained both at the source as well as throughout the data movement process. (more…)