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Audio Management Briefing: IT Governance
Advisor: Rob Mackinnon Date: March 10th 2010 Time: 11.00am - 12.00pm AEDT |
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Current Research |
Oracle’s acquisition of SunOracle’s vision is to become the leading IT Systems Vendor by
creating a complete IT stack of hardware, middleware and
applications. The objective is to reduce complexity, and to lower the
total cost of ownership, though integration and optimisation across
the entire stack.
Oracle
will retain Sun products that are both
complete this Systems Vendor vision and are aligned with its long
term business and technology strategies. The remaining Sun products
will either be parked, and the customer base transitioned to a
related Oracle product, or sold to a third party.
The Google Gambit - lessons in IT security incident responseThe recent attack on Google’s infrastructure (and resulting
announcement by Google of the attack) has a number of important
lessons for organisations which are also attacked by well-resourced
hackers. These lessons are important and may not be immediately
palatable to many, who would prefer to hush up an attack.
Adventure avoidance: Dealing with common IT strategic planning pitfalls‘Adventure is just bad planning’ observed Roald Amundsen,
renowned Norwegian explorer. Good strategic planning processes aim to
avoid unintended consequences. They have a firm focus on seeking
appropriate destinations then getting there with surety.
Current
economic indicators point to continued cost restraint in most
sectors. Having a coherent, business-supported IT Strategic Plan
(ITSP) is an essential vehicle for ensuring that IT investments get
over the line. For the ITSP to have credibility as a document
primarily focused on business enablement, it is important to avoid
the pitfalls that can weaken a well-intended ITSP.
IT trends in the Australian public sectorPublic sector IT
departments are facing greater financial scrutiny as a result of both
the GFC and the Gershon Report. There is a broad mandate to reduce
‘business as usual’ costs. In order to prioritise
projects, manage expectations and drive down IT costs, IT
professionals need to understand the key technology trends in the
public sector.
Reach and range – Today’s challengesCIOs must keep all levels of management aware of the impact of
extending the organisation’s reach and range1
of services. Whilst there are obvious benefits from the extension,
business managers must understand that it brings with it increased
application and IT infrastructure complexity2
and extra support costs. It also makes the organisation’s
network vulnerable to intrusion.
Astute
CIOs know that having alerted management of the impact of extending
reach and range, and to keep their job, they need to present their
strategy for its support while minimising the risks. Without
strategies, as set out below, they put their jobs at risk.
My procurement contract: Leave it to the lawyers?Despite the importance of the contract in the procurement process
some IT organisations continue to delegate full responsibility for
contract preparation to their legal group or to external legal
advisors. This can result in an overly legalistic document which may
also fail to adequately address the non legal requirements that a
buying organisation also needs in the contract.
The un-management of knowledgeA
decade ago Knowledge Management was the next big thing, and according
to the analysts responsible for the Knowledge Management hype, it has
evolved into a well-understood concept that is firmly established in
the majority of organisations.
Nothing could be further from the
truth. Only very few organisations have a practically useful
definition of knowledge, and even fewer realise that knowledge is not
something that needs to managed, but something that needs to be
nurtured – by committing to capture knowledge in its purest
form, neither diluted by implementation technologies, nor distorted
by organisational politics.
Developing a social media training guide More organisations are establishing
explicit rules governing the use of social media. Any guidelines or
functional principles for social media use should be comprehensive
and practical.
Sourcing Monthly - December 2009 – January 2010It’s January, so as usual there has been a lot of attention on reviews of activity in 2009, and 2010 forecasts. An upturn in outsourcing spending is predicted, and the forecast seems solid – large deals and lots of government tenders are early indicators. Mostly, upturn predictions are founded in new technologies the business sector is looking to adopt, eg. Cloud computing. Let’s hope for a good 2010 IT year!
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