10 Ways That IT Can Solve Real-World Business Problems

My favorite word is “alignment”. This describes the situation that happens when an IT department gets it act together and focuses on solving problems for the business. This is actually different from what an IT department normally spends its time doing: keeping the network up and providing help desk support for end users. The folks … Read more

Cha-Cha Change Coming To IT In The Form Of Outsourcing?

I just happened to run across an interesting article in Baseline magazine awhile back that pointed out a very interesting trend in IT that just might impact all of us. The good folks over at Royal Dutch Shell (the world’s 3rd biggest oil company) have just announced a massive outsourcing deal with EDS/HP. They appear … Read more

Ethics Is SOOO Boring – Until You Are Going To Jail

I don’t know about you, but my eyes start to roll up into my head anytime I see an article with the word “ethics” in its title or if a speaker makes the mistake of saying “… let’s talk about ethics…”. Yeah, yeah I know that this is the wrong attitude and that if I’m … Read more

A Geek’s Guide To The Financial Melt-Down

Man – what a mess! I’m almost afraid to unwrap the paper each morning because the font size of the headlines seems to be getting bigger and bigger as the financial news gets worse and worse. Stock trading firms are going belly up, others are getting bought. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (who are they?) … Read more

Wicked Ways Of Managing Wicked IT Problems

Wicked IT problems can frustrate even the best of us – by their very nature, wicked IT problems have no solution (that’s why we call them “wicked” and not just “hard”). As we talked about last time, although you may not have the tools to solve these types of problems, you do have the tools … Read more

Managing Wicked IT Problems

So we’ve chatted about Wicked IT Strategy problems – these are the ones that you really can’t solve. Given that, you’ve got a couple of different things that you can do. The easiest is to throw your arms up in the air, say “this can’t be solved”, and then work very hard at getting promoted … Read more

Wicked, Wicked IT Strategy Problems

Some problems just can’t be solved. As an IT guy with an engineering background, I find this hard to believe – it goes against my grain. I mean, back in school I encountered lots of problems that at first blush appeared to be impossible to solve. However, once I had gotten a little deeper into … Read more

London Stock Exchange Glitch – Could Cloud Computing Have Saved The Day?

Just when you think that you have the worst job in IT, a story like this comes along! Last Monday the London Stock Exchange (LSE) experienced a full day outage. Traders who were ready to trade were unable to connect to one of the LSE’s main trading applications. No connect, no trading. If you’ll think … Read more