CA Technologies Corporate Blog: Perspectives : CIOs

Unleashing Capital for Innovation

Jacqueline de Rojas — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 16:44:00 GMT

"We're in a double-dip recession; I have cut thousands of heads out of my IT organisation and slashed the budget by tens of millions. Now I am being asked by the business to deliver even more services. What I need is your help to continue to deliver against the business agenda when there is an ever increasing reliance on technology".

It's a comment which is familiar inside these tough economic times. Austerity is the new normal, flat is the new growth and survival is now a feature on the competitive landscape that lies ahead. Organisations must recognise that austerity measures alone are not enough and in order to survive they need to adopt smart technology.

With no end in sight to the challenging economic climate, one of the most important decisions to make is where to place the emphasis on budgets in the balance sheet. Clearly there are lots of options but our customers tell us that they are voting for spending on innovation, automation and ‘pay as you use' options.

Consider, for example, the emergence of tablets and smartphones and what this means to information access in the workplace. Or how 'pay as you use' models are transforming today's business environment. Not to mention the new meaning that social networking is giving to collaboration and leverage with our customers. Cutting the technology budget can be like handing customers over to a competitor on a plate.

So how can organisations unleash capital for innovation? Take savings made elsewhere in the business and channel them into innovation investment?

One of the best places to start is by taking a fresh look at the way you manage IT. Move away from simply maintaining your technology towards delivering innovation. The first step is to speed up the pace of your IT, accelerate your ‘plan-build-run' lifecycle, prioritise investments wisely and embrace new technology like cloud, social, and mobile-into new services.

Just recently I was speaking to a large U.K. retailer, whose bricks and mortar business was challenged to compete with the agility shown by the big online businesses. The simple answer for the retail giant is to get their offerings to market faster than the competition. This is something CA Technologies is very experienced at and can provide the ability to outsmart the competition at a considerably lower cost. This money can then be channelled straight back into the business.

Step two is to transform your IT. Most companies I speak to are looking to transform their technology environment to free up resources, budget and capacity to innovate-while maintaining the best possible experience and value from their existing investments. Here, automation can help eliminate manual processes, reducing errors, delays and costs in one move; while service assurance delivers better services faster.

All of the organisations I speak to in the U.K. also put security as one of their top priorities-especially in light of today's complex hybrid IT systems, end-user devices, and external cloud services. Here again, the right security strategy can free up those vital resources needed for innovation. BT, for example, saved more than £15 million and improved customer service by implementing reusable authentication and single-sign on. They eliminated the need for 80 point solutions of user authentication and are performing 36 million transactions per day.

IDC recently reported* 67% of CIOs surveyed tell IDC they "see the role as evolving to Chief Innovation Officer". However, CIOs must not only innovate for the business but also create a culture of innovation within both their IT organisation and the business. Many companies are now realising that they need to plug the digital literacy gap on their boards, so that they can navigate the minefield of which technology they should or should not invest in; what will give them a return and what will enable them to survive these difficult times.

By getting more out of what you have today, you'll have more to spend on what's important tomorrow.

* IDC "Worldwide CIO Agenda, Predications 2012", #232816, Dec. 2011

Consumer Driven IT in Review - 15th Edition

Jackie Kahle — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:00:00 GMT

Last week Cloud Commons sponsored a tweetchat on “Rogue IT,” featuring a great discussion about why employees go “rogue,” what the risks are, and what IT should be doing about it. (See HERE for the transcript.) One theme was the opportunity for IT to take advantage of rogue IT. Users can be a great source of innovation – they often are the first to know about emergent technologies and they know what they need to be productive that IT isn’t providing.

While some users may view IT as irrelevant, IT can only do a better job if they know what is happening across the organization. IT should consider surveying users to find out what apps and tools they are using and why – as long as employees are assured that there will not be penalties if they participate, they will be happy to elaborate on what they are using. IT can then assess what they need to do to satisfy these users so they no longer need to go “rogue.” In the end, IT will be viewed as an enabler of employee productivity, not an impediment, and have a chance to break the vicious cycle of irrelevancy.

Here’s what else was in the IT consumerization news in the last two weeks:

May 2: The "Occupy IT" movement of organizations by Dan Pontefract
The business wants a seat at the IT table and an opportunity to be part of the solution. The organization would be better suited to have IT as a collaborative, proactive and engaging partner rather than viewed as an OPEX cost center simply in charge of keeping the lights on or, worse, launching roadblocks at any “Occupy IT” intersection.

May 2: AIIM thought-leaders to articulate impact of the consumerization of IT, via Marketwire
Industry association is creating an Executive Leadership Council to explore areas such as social, mobile, cloud and big data and the impact on the enterprise.

May 1: Google offers big-data analytics by Quentin Hardy via the New York Times
It was only a matter of time – Google joins the big-data fray with an online service to compete with Amazon Web Services.

April 30: New era of "social CRM" by Pedro Hernandez of IT Business Edge
Gartner reports CRM is emerging as a key priority for CIOs, aided by growth in “social CRM,” which brings together customer information, analytics, workflows, mobility and social disciplines into a richer, multichannel access to capture the entire customer journey.

April 26: CIO's cloud strategy must include public cloud services by Bernard Golden via CIO
Why CIOs need to make peace with the demand from the business for public cloud services and add them to the mix.

April 26: Talent shortage looms over Big Data via the Wall Street Journal
McKinsey report projects a need for 1.5 million additional managers and analysts in the United States who can ask the right questions and consume the results of the analysis of Big Data effectively.

April 26: How embedded tech can change IT's role by Vinnie Mirchandani via InformationWeek
“Smart” products are showing up everywhere, from shirts to showers to sheriffs’ offices – how IT can leverage these disruptions.

April 25: Box will fight Google Drive with ecosystem push by Barb Darrow via GigaOM
The battle to become the Dropbox of the enterprise is on as Google’s entry heats things up.

April 24: Why the lone wolf of IT has to come in from the cold by Steve Ranger via TechRepublic
According to Gartner’s survey of CEOs, CIOs are rarely seen as leading innovation. As such CIOs need to move from itinerant to entrepreneurial modes.

April 23: Yammer CEO: We're consumerizing the enterprise by Eric Knorr via InfoWorld
Yammer’s view on the movement to both bring social networking to the enterprise and to consumerize enterprise software.

NEW from CA Technologies This Week:

• Cool new Infographic shows information from our recent polling on how IT is coping with Consumer Driven IT, check it out HERE and on www.ca.com/cdit.
• Latest blog from John Michelsen, founder of ITKO (now a CA Technologies company) on service virtualization in the era of consumer driven IT at http://bit.ly/K1BpD1

World-Class IT in a Services World

CA Community — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:00:00 GMT

With a trend toward Everything as a Service (XaaS), CIOs need a new recipe for success, notes Peter High, author and President of CIO Advisory firm, Metis Strategy.

Smart Enterprise recently interviewed Peter about how CIOs can achieve world-class IT in a Services world.

Nimsoft: Be prepared for the new workforce

Lokesh Jindal — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:00:00 GMT

CIO Asia speaks to Lokesh Jindal, Senior Vice President (Strategy & Business Development) of Nimsoft, to find out how CIOs should be prepared for the next-generation workforce.

The role of the CIO has certainly changed, since the nature of business has changed, said Lokesh. “It's no longer a question of alignment; CIOs need to be hand-in-glove with the business. The time the CIO spends should not be on trying to focus on building his or her own datacentres and managing them — that part should be automated; almost a no-brainer. The time should be spent on deciding what services the business needs to drive more revenue.” The article can be found here.

Consumer Driven IT in Review – 13th edition

Jackie Kahle — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 12:00:00 GMT

While I agree with many of the points that Galen Gruman makes below about “millennial myths” (particularly ones that give us Baby Boomers credit where credit is due!), it remains a fact that there are statistically significant differences in attitudes and habits of the millennials versus older workers when it comes to social collaboration, use of public cloud services, and activities done from smartphones. For proof, take a quick look at our three-page summary of research results on How the Milennials are Accelerating Consumer Driven IT.

Here’s what else was in the IT consumerization news in the last two weeks:

April 3: Offices in the Cloud by Dr. Stephen Turner via CloudComputing
80% of workers may be working remotely by 2020, and flexible cloud services provide the vehicle.

Delivering the social business imperative by Rob Koplowitz of Forrester via ZDNet
49% of IT surveyed will have social networking initiatives in place in 2012.

April 2: Gartner to IT: get a grip on cloud services by Barb Darrow via CNN Money
Why IT should think of itself as a Cloud Services Broker (CSB).

CIO role will disappear in 5 years, say some CFOs by Sam Narisi via IT Manager Daily
Recent UK survey from Getronix shows CFOs think CIO will merge with CFO (43%) or disappear completely (17%).

March 31: UC Berkeley Lab receives $10m to research "big data" by Salvador Rodriguez via LA Times
Funding from the national Science Foundation is part of a larger $200M initiative by the Obama Administration focused on big data.

March 30: Millennials aren't the villains or drivers of consumerization by Galen Gruman via InfoWorld
Lots of myths around the impact of the millennials, but where there’s smoke there’s fire and you still need to include in your strategy.

March 29: The consumerization of IT from a wider angle by Scott Fulton via ReadWrite Enterprise
There are two powerful forces at work – consumerization and industrialization – continuing a time-honored conflict.

An app revolution manifesto by Tiernan Ray via Barron’s
Phil Winslow from Credit Suisse weighs in on a paradigm shift in enterprise software architectures, very similar to IDC’s notion of the “3rd platform”.

March 28: Bring your own tech: IT's missed opportunity by Bob Lewis via InfoWorld
BYPC used to mean Bring Your Own Computer, now it means Bring Your own Cloud.

IT must provide collaboration tools people will use by Thor Olavsrud via ITWorld Canada
The need to collaborate with partners outside the firewall is not being satisfied by approaches that limit options to just email.

March 27: BYOD failure: 5 reasons employees don't want to use their own devices by Ryan Faas via Cult of Mac
There are definite downsides to surrendering your personal device to corporate IT policies.

NEW from CA Technologies This Week:

• Great new post by Andi Mann on Eleven tips for a successful cloud computing adoption in Cloud Computing Journal.
• Excellent post by Robert Stroud IT moving from "No' to "Know"