Is IT Alignment Sooo 2008?

Is it possible that the holy grail of IT, getting our act together with the rest of the business, is no longer what we should be working on? A survey that was done by the consulting firm Bain & Co. sure seems to be saying this. Before anyone goes crazy on me, let’s first make … Read more

Secrets Revealed: How To Get The Most From Your IT $$$

Every firm spends loads of money on IT, why do only some (Walmart, FedEx) get a clear advantage from the money that they spend? A team of researchers lead by Dr. Gautam Ray talked with 104 insurance firms in order to get to the bottom of this question. Here’s what they found: the key to … Read more

Secrets Revealed: Where Is All Of That IT $$$ Going?

Where’s the money going? Everyone knows that spending on IT departments and projects has been going through the roof for the last 10 years or so. Umm, does anyone know if the company has been getting any benefit from all of this increased spending? Blame all of this discussion on Nicholas Carr‘s article “IT Doesn’t … Read more

Where Is Your Next CIO Coming From?

So here’s the scenario: a previously unknown meteor comes streaking down to earth and somehow lands squarely on top of your CIO squashing him/her instantly. What do you do next? Where would your replacement CIO come from and do you know who that would be? A study conducted by the equipment supply firm CDW has … Read more

Who Gets To Make Decisions In Your IT Shop?

A recent study of 89 senior IT executives in a wide range of industries was done in order to get the answer to a seemingly simple question: who’s in charge here? In these days of reigned in IT spending, decisions about how much to spend and what to spend it on seem to have migrated … Read more

Getting & Keeping IT Top Management’s Attention

In my humble opinion, one of the key contributors to why so many IT projects fail is because of simple neglect. I guess the best analogy is if you were starting to drive down a highway road. When you started driving, you’d keep your hands on the steering wheel and make sure that the car … Read more

How Can You Make Your IT Department Strategic?

Isn’t that the goal of every IT department – to move from being viewed as a support organization to somehow becoming part of the company’s strategic core? Although we all know that this is what we want, for some reason it sure seems to be very hard to do. Good news – the folks over … Read more

3 Ways To Fix An IT Department (Suggestions From Europe)

  Kuppinger Cole + Partner (KCP) is a European consulting firm that specializes in identity management. So it goes without saying that they spend their time in and out of multiple IT departments on a daily basis. They know all of our dirty little secrets. One of their founders, Martin Kuppinger has been doing some … Read more

Welcome To 2009: Does IT Matter This Year?

I’m not sure if you remember, but way back in 2003 Nicholas Carr wrote a piece for the Harvard Business Review called “IT Doesn’t Matter“. Man o Man did this set off a firestorm in the IT community – it was sorta like someone calling your sister ugly. However, time has passed since then and … Read more

Can We Make IT Any More Complex Than It Is?

One of the reasons that the rest of the company doesn’t seem to really like those of us in the IT department is because we seem to make everything so much more complex when we get involved. First it was our networking issues (Frame Relay, ATM, Ethernet), then it was our server issues (multicore, Intel … Read more