The IT Beacon

Tech Sector Review: $$atyam fraud deepens

Hyderabad based IT services firm Satyam, famous for its $1bn accounting fraud, is back in the news again. India’s Central Bureau of Investigation has recently discovered that the fraud is much deeper ($2.6bn). This caused an 11% share price fall. The company’s former chairman and nine others have had charges filed against them.  Apparently over one thousand properties had been illegally purchased by the company. That’s a fair few holiday homes.

Tech Sector Review: H3PCom

Sounds like a Star Wars character. But the acquisition ($2.7bn) of network component player 3Com by IT giant HP will have an impact on the rapidly consolidating data centre market. Possibly this is a response to Cisco’s tie up with EMC, which some say could well be a first step towards full blown marriage? Possibly this is a response to Cisco snubbing its channel partner by entering the server market? So despite industry initiatives to be greener, it would appear that things are ‘hotting up’ in the data centre.

CIO: Time to hibernate?

Whilst out running recently, in an attempt to divert my mind from the discomfort that is part and parcel of interval training, I attempted to draw parallels with the environment I was running in and the one I spend my business life in.

Looking at the trees, I noticed that many of them were losing their leaves. But some were not.This by the way is quite an observation when the oxygen needed to keep the brain functioning drops into the red.

What if the trunk and branches represented the the business and the leaves were the IT function? Stick with this please.

So some businesses, when the environment gets challenging, choose not to feed the IT function. They are quite happy to let it struggle and eventually shrivel up and die. Such organisations have battened down the hatches with a view to going into hibernation until the market picks up again. And if that means the death of their IT function then so be it.

But what if this is the 'new normal'? I would recommend that CIOs and their staff migrate to organisations that are not so seasonal. Whilst today's industry leaders hibernate, tomorrow's industry leaders are busy growing.

What is intelligence?

The difference between intelligence and information was raised on one of the online CIO networks I frequent. What started as a one line response evolved into an exercise in Euclidian logic (that might be both overstating it and wrong). 

Anyway my perspective is that intelligence is actionable information, where typically the information comes from different sources and thus requires processing.

So in my view, whilst information is processed data., intelligence is processed information; though that definition also applies to knowledge. The difference being that knowledge doesn’t require action.

But action based on knowledge is wisdom. Isn’t it?

So is wisdom the same as intelligence?

Possibly intelligence has more of a real-time element to it?

So possibly intelligence is real-time wisdom?

QED!

CIO: The Giuliani Approach

The former Mayor of New York was  famous for coming down hard on minor misdemeanors. Focus on the small crimes and that in turn takes care of the large crimes. A zero tolerance approach. Why not try that with your IT department? Make best practice your only practice. Come down hard on staff that don't follow the release management procedure, side step testing or are rude to users. All of these undermine the IT function’s credibility.

Some would argue that it wasn’t Giuliani's zero tolerance policy that fixed New York, but the fact that he pushed the gangsters, pimps and drug dealers out to the suburbs. I guess the IT equivalent is outsourcing?

What's Hot in IT?

I am running a one hour webinar at 17:00 GMT 19th November covering where I believe the money is in the IT Sector. Click here for more details.

Vendors: Network network network

Big ticket technology sales rarely come from cold calls. Moving beyond the 'scores on the doors' 'end of week sales funnel' mindset is a challenge for many tech vendors.

Master networker Alan MacKelworth provides some sage advice on how to work an event.

Click here to watch his 4 minute briefing.

Happy networking!

Support your CIO!

The role of the CIO is at an all time low in terms of strategic influence. Their decision making powers, even over their own budget, have been reined in.

Some ‘score on the doors’ sales-focused vendors will be tempted by bypass the CIO in order to try to deal direct with the CFO, COO or whoever actually is making IT-related decisions these days.

In my view that would be a mistake. The CIO is likely to be the person who best ‘gets’ the features and benefits of your offering. And thus is best placed to sell your solution to the decision makers.  

The problem is that often CIO lacks the skills to get into the boardroom. High value (and thus big ticket) vendors will invest in their CIO relationships, where necessary supporting their personal development. When you realise that the CIO is fundamentally no longer the buyer but your vendor’s chief sales officer for that account then this starts to make sense.

Beyond the downturn?

There is much talk about how IT functions are going to change once the downturn has run its course. There is a presumption here that:

• The downturn will end (though history tells us they generally do)
• The financial beating taken by the IT function will be reversed once the organization is back on an even keel.

At this present time I am doubtful about both. And so CIOs are encouraged to think about how they change the IT function under what might be called ‘new normal’ conditions.

e-Brand Management

The difference between the cost of a company and the value of a company is directly correlated to the brand of the company. Therefore it makes sense to approach all value creation activities in the context of brand management.

The IT function might use this relationship to shake off its operational cost centre image.

So am I suggesting we appoint an IT function brand manager? No. In my experience CIOs struggle with branding. This is to some extent understandable given the siege conditions under which many IT functions operate. I suspect brand management doesn’t feature very highly in military academy trench warfare modules.

In a service / knowledge based economy, branding extends beyond the glossary literature and corporate sponsorship into the service creation and delivery processes (increasingly via the web).  Thus the IT function is a key element of corporate brand management.

And for that reason the IT function should report into the Chief Marketing Officer. Whilst this may be unpalatable to many of today’s ‘pre-brand’ CIOs, IT staff are likely to raise their game once it dawns on them that their role is now one of business value creation rather than technology cost containment.