Featured Advisory Papers
Workplace Innovation
As a Service
Security Leadership
Governance & Planning
Infrastructure
Applications
Sourcing & Staffing
Operations & Service Delivery
Workplace Innovation
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SNAPSHOT: From paper to digital thinking
Conclusion: Current approaches to knowledge management are being disrupted by a wave of new working practices that replace the paper-based metaphor that pre-dates the computer revolution, with a...
- Joseph Sweeney -
Digital transformation: More than a technology project
Conclusion: Organisations everywhere are thinking about, planning or undertaking digital transformation activities. While good progress is being made, there is still a tendency to view digital...
- Sue Johnston -
Digital Strategy Part 1: What are the traits of digital leaders?
Conclusion:CEOs need their CIOs to be out on the cutting edge to decide which technology to incorporate so that the organisation can adapt and transform in a rapidly changing landscape. As the...
- Karen Scott Davie -
Leadership is critical to innovation
Conclusion:It is difficult to plan when innovation will occur. It is particularly difficult for established organisations to be innovative – they have been successful through sound business...
- Sue Johnston -
Considering Chromebooks Part 2: Use cases
Conclusion:Unless an organisation has made a decision to go “all-in” with Google’s G Suite, Chromebooks (plus Chromeboxes and related Chrome devices) are best viewed as an adjunct to traditional...
- Joseph Sweeney
As a Service
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Running IT-as-a-Service Part 43: Service level penalties and incentives for hybrid Cloud
Conclusion: Penalties and incentives are designed to ensure agreed critical service levels are achieved. Penalties are enforced whenever service levels are not met. Incentives are rewarded whenever...
- Wissam Raffoul -
Running IT-as-a-Service Part 42: Incident and problem management integration is critical for hybrid Cloud
Conclusion: Traditional outsourcing and managed service contracts primarily focus on incident management service levels and give little attention to problem management. For example, incident...
- Wissam Raffoul -
Running IT-as-a-Service Part 41: Understanding private Cloud transition critical success factors
Conclusion: Private Cloud1 managed by an as-a-Service contract has become the inevitable replacement of managed services arrangements. The main difference is that an as-a-Service contract is...
- Wissam Raffoul -
Running IT-as-a-Service Part 40: Aligning business continuity and IT disaster recovery plans
Conclusion: Business continuity and disaster recovery plans are largely developed in isolation. The result is ineffective recovery arrangements that do not meet the fundamental business needs. With the...
- Wissam Raffoul -
Running IT-as-a-Service Part 39: Keeping digital transformation alive
Conclusion: Many IT organisations have adopted business transformation1 strategies to help their businesses increase revenue. However, while digital transformation has succeeded in making the...
- Wissam Raffoul
Security Leadership
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Security policies: More documentation is not risk management
Conclusion: A major benefit from using a framework is to support better decision making and help deliver consistent outcomes. When it comes to security and risk, a framework is only as useful as the...
- James Turner -
Use the NIST cybersecurity framework to drive for visibility
Conclusion: The updated NIST cybersecurity framework (CSF) is a pragmatic tool to enable an organisation to gain clarity on its current level of capability for cyber risk management. Remembering...
- James Turner -
Three levers tightening up the cyber security of Australia
Conclusion: There are three levers being applied to the cyber security maturity of specific parts of the Australian economy. These three levers are the Notifiable Data Breaches Scheme, the Security of...
- James Turner -
IT management leadership role in risk management
Conclusion: In a world where organisations increasingly rely on the successful performance of their business systems it is important IT management takes the lead in managing the risk of systems...
- Alan Hansell -
Hot cyber security vendors for your shortlist Part 3 – more Aussies
Conclusion: UpGuard, Nuix and WithYouWithMe each have a proven capability to address an important aspect of the cyber defences of Australian organisations. WithYouWithMe is about people, UpGuard is...
- James Turner
Governance & Planning
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Benefits management: Keeping it real
Conclusion: Benefits management relating to technology investments is widely recognised in importance and is quantified and articulated in business cases but not managed. However, often these...
- Sue Johnston -
Get serious and make IT staff upskilling a reality
Conclusion: The program to upskill IT professionals and managers must be intentional and the results measurable. Unless the program is actively supported by participating line managers and affected...
- Alan Hansell -
Tips for improving and monitoring ICT project governance
Conclusion: Managers need to pay attention to ensure effective project governance, or risk joining the already long list of ICT project failures in Australia, aided by weak or ineffective project...
- Peter Bickerton -
Mind mapping at work Part 1: Core business skills
Conclusion: Mind mapping is a tool that facilitates “whole-brain” thinking. It is a technique that can be applied to all forms of the thought process, particularly to memory, creativity and...
- Peter Hall -
When to use Agile project management
Conclusion: With business demands driving CIOs to be more innovative and apply digital innovation, Agile project management methodology is being adopted to manage customer-centric projects to create...
- Karen Scott Davie
Infrastructure
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Keeping your mobile device strategies up to date
Conclusion: BYOD strategies need to be updated regularly to keep pace with the evolving nature of not just the devices themselves but also the increasing challenges and complexity to stay secure;...
- Peter Bickerton -
Volume does not equal value: Use data demographics to set your data storage strategies
Conclusion:Technologists consistently under-estimate the growth of data volumes. The result is tactical actions aimed at increasing capacity achieved by adding storage on-premise using traditional...
- Sam Higgins -
Complexity is costly, risky and unavoidable
Conclusion:Managing large IT environments and provisioning IT services within an organisation is complex and complexity will always exist. However, not all complexity is “bad”. “Good” complexity is the...
- Peter Hall -
Preparing for networking in the Cloud
Conclusion:Preparing the modern business for Cloud requires a common computing and networking infrastructure with new Cloud architectures converging with data centres over a hybrid of both direct...
- Geoff Johnson -
Buying in Cloud Marketplaces
Conclusion:IBRS’ finding is that prominent Cloud marketplaces (CMPs) such as AWS Marketplace1, Microsoft Azure2, Google Cloud Platform3 and IBM Bluemix4 are gaining traction as alternatives to...
- Geoff Johnson
Applications
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SNAPSHOT: eForms & workflow products
Conclusion: During January to March 2018, IBRS conducted a detailed market scan of eForms vendors and their products in the Australian market. The market scan was structured around common selection...
- Joseph Sweeney -
DIY or ready-made? Choose your AI adoption path carefully
Conclusion: Organisations seeking to ride the new wave of AI-enabled transformation are facing a clear choice when it comes to the adoption of supporting AI capabilities such as machine learning or...
- Sam Higgins -
A review of ERP finance systems
Conclusion: The enterprise application marketplace has seen some changes in the past two years, with new entries, consolidation and acquisition, particularly in the mid-market of ERP finance...
- Karen Scott Davie -
Digital and AI-based transformation requires an evolution in business intelligence architectures
Conclusion: Due to years of tactical software deployments in response to urgent digital transformation uplifts, organisations have created a jungle of business intelligence (BI) technologies...
- Sam Higgins -
Prepare to manage the “evolution” of AI-based solutions with “DataOps”
Conclusion: The development of AI-based solutions is heavily dependent on various types of data input in the form of either: Large data sets used to conduct experiments to develop models and...
- Sam Higgins
Sourcing & Staffing
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Sourcing Monthly May 2018 – June 2018
Conclusion: This month, discussions regarding critical security issues have continued to be prominent. In particular, an increase in the ineffective management of security threats and incidents was...
- Irene Pimentel -
Benefits of a great working relationship with the CIO
Conclusion: Maintaining a good relationship with the CIO provides many benefits to their direct reports. It is more than just being given the opportunity to shine and leading exciting and new...
- Peter Bickerton -
Sourcing Monthly April 2018 – May 2018
Conclusion: This month, there have been increased discussions regarding highly targeted, industry-specific security threats. Security issues for managed service providers can be especially complex due...
- Irene Pimentel -
Sourcing Monthly March 2018 – April 2018
Conclusion: This month, discussions regarding ICT outsourcing project completion and outcomes have been prominent. Whilst project successes outweigh those which are still struggling, the results make it...
- Irene Pimentel -
SNAPSHOT: Agile services spectrum
Conclusion: IBRS recently conducted interviews with development partners that promote the use of Agile project development. During the interviews, IBRS noted that the spectrum of Agile services...
- Joseph Sweeney
Operations & Service Delivery
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Identify the baton holders for effective ICT service delivery
Conclusion: Successful ICT life cycle service delivery from strategy development to system decommissioning relies on the person assigned the role picking up the work in progress and successfully...
- Alan Hansell -
Canberra-based Azure is about much more than security
Conclusion: On 3rd April 2018, Microsoft announced the availability of its Azure Cloud running within Canberra Data Centres (CDC) facilities, and officially rated for protected workloads....
- Joseph Sweeney -
Workforce transformation Part 1: Disrupting the very idea of paper is an important first step
Conclusion: Current approaches to knowledge management are being disrupted by a wave of new working practices that replace the paper-based metaphor which pre-dates the computer revolution, with a...
- Joseph Sweeney -
Understanding power in stakeholder management
Conclusion:Most organisations today understand that business change requires the effective management of stakeholders. Whether they be internal or external, the inclusion of their opinions, needs...
- Sue Johnston -
Is AWS “Connect” the path to exquisitely automated customer service?
Conclusion:The future of customer service will rely heavily on automating assistance with targeted empathy1. Expect virtual digital assistants to heavily reduce the need for contact centre...
- Geoff Johnson
