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Audio Management Briefing: IT Governance

Advisor: Rob Mackinnon Date: March 10th 2010    Time: 11.00am - 12.00pm AEDT
Good IT governance practices are good for business. Research sourced from MIT's Sloan School of Management Center for Information Systems Research (CISR) indicated that those with well honed IT governance processes generated returns on  their IT investments up to 40% greater than poor performers. However many organisations seem to have difficulty establishing a truly effective IT governance framework. 

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Current Research


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Oracle’s acquisition of Sun

Oracle’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.
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The Google Gambit - lessons in IT security incident response

The 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.
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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.
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IT trends in the Australian public sector

Public 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.
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Reach and range – Today’s challenges

CIOs 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.
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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.
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The un-management of knowledge

A 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.
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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.
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Sourcing Monthly - December 2009 – January 2010

It’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!