Nearshore Blog

Virtualization Data Protection Demands Attention

The typical CIO has an overflowing “to-do” list of items that are virtually all “mission critical.” Inevitably, tasks that literally must be performed to keep the IT enterprise running, such as server maintenance, take precedence over tasks which are equally critical but do not immediately shut down the enterprise if performed improperly, such as security.

And when you’re talking about a specific subset of security, such as virtualization data protection, then it is almost certain CIOs will first focus their attention elsewhere. Thus it is not surprising, but still an ominous sign, that a new CIO survey from backup, replication and virtualization management solutions provider Veeam Software shows numerous weaknesses in overall enterprise virtualization data protection levels.

Chief Digital Officers Transform 21st Century Business

The C-suite has gotten a lot more crowded in the last decade or two. It used to just be CEOs, CFOs and COOs, but by the 1990s chief scientific officers and chief information officers were also becoming the norm. Fast forward to the 21st century and the C-suite grew even larger as tech companies such as Google and Facebook started hiring chief technology officers, chief privacy officers, chief strategy officers, chief digital officers and even chief people officers.

TweeksBI Eleven: Real Time

Last week I received a call from a sales representative of a teleconference solutions provider, referring to a request I made about video-conference software. It took me a few seconds to recall that, in fact, three weeks back I had called the company. I was trying to buy the $50 PC-based version of their software, so I could video conference with my colleagues sitting in a boardroom in Mexico. My first surprise was to find that the software was not available for download. Then I tried an old-school solution by looking for the software at Staples and OfficeMax, but no luck. So, I stepped back in time even further, and called the company looking to buy the software, hoping they could FedEx it overnight. Then they surprised me with yet another vintage approach: “I’ll be glad to pass your information to one of our resellers, as that is the only channel we use. They’ll get in touch with you ‘pronto’.” After that, I’m not surprised that their fast response time was three weeks. Obviously my solution at this point was to use one of the many options available, which include Skype, Apple’s Facetime or Google Hangouts. No hassle, no money, no middle man.

Taking Advantage of Increased Enterprise IT Spending

CIOs have not had an awful lot to celebrate in the past few years – personnel reductions, spending freezes and a refusal to risk precious corporate funds on leading-edge, innovative systems have been realities for far too many top IT executives since the Great Recession began in 2008. But according to a new forecast from IDC, CIOs actually may have reason to smile this year – as long as they do some advance planning.

According to IDC’s United States Black Book 4Q 2012 report, total IT spending on hardware, software, and IT services across all 15 enterprise industries tracked by IDC is forecast to grow 6% year-over-year in 2013 to approximately $474 billion. Although factors such as the “fiscal cliff,” contracting G.D.P growth, and declining international trade owing to reduced economic activity in the Euro zone all negatively impacted US IT spending in the final quarter of 2012, IDC predicts economic stabilization will take hold in the second half of this year, creating “moderately strong IT spending growth.”

Big Data 2020: Prepare Now

The year 2020 may seem fantastically remote, but it actually will arrive in less than seven years. So it’s not too early for CIOs to start preparing for a business and consumer landscape that may be substantially reshaped by continuing developments in Big Data. A recent report called “Big Data Democracy” from Intuit and Emergent Research makes several predictions about how businesses will have to take a very different approach at the dawn of the next decade in order to stay competitive. Following are a few of the most significant ones.

Consumers Hold Power
Intuit predicts that increased consumer access to pricing information and the insights of fellow shoppers will create an atmosphere of “turbocharged competition” where consumers are constantly hunting for the best bargains and products. Consumers will also regularly participate in the nascent activity of “social shopping,” which allows groups of friends to collaboratively shop via social media networks and streams of text, images and video.

In addition, consumers will increasingly make “value-influenced decisions,” meaning increased visibility of data on product sustainability and other broader issues will impact buying decisions beyond factors such as product quality and price.

Privacy Must Become Great
The report bluntly states that “being good isn’t enough” for privacy. As more and more personal consumer data becomes stored (and potentially accessible) on the cloud, consumers will demand that businesses make every possible effort to protect it. Companies that do not make transparent efforts to go “above and beyond” in protecting consumer data will see their brand reputation suffer dramatically. In addition, industry and government data privacy and security regulations already show signs of growing tougher.

There’s Revenue in Them Thar Mobile Devices

CIOs have learned to be skeptical of new technologies. After all, how many “revolutionary” IT trends turn out to have little or no impact once the novelty wears off and early adopters have moved on to the next latest and greatest thing? According to a new survey of 413 global C-level IT executives from Accenture, CIOs have no such doubts about mobile devices and are rapidly gaining confidence in mobility as a revenue generator.

TweeksBI Ten: The white collar IT organization

Last week, my colleague Federico and I spent some good time with Forrester’s Analyst John McCarthy. From my perspective, John has a unique way of making you think, “OMG! The future is changing so fast!” John’s brain works at an accelerated rate, processing anecdotes and research data while he energetically delivers the message. We talked about one of his favorite topics: The perfect storm of technology change, and how the rate of change is only going to escalate.

We tried –and I choose my words carefully—to frame the conversation around the five key megatrends we’ve outlined: applications everywhere, the new bi-functional aspect of IT, consumerization of IT, digitization of businesses and the everything-as-a-service phenomenon. 

I think the image to the right epitomizes what we talked about. I took this photo while riding the NYC subway. It’s a billboard announcing 42 new apps geared to simplify the life of m ore than 8.2
million daily riders of New York’s public transit system.

These 42 apps are the result of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s (MTA) App Quest, a software development challenge that yielded apps for travel planning, locating entrances to subway stations, tracking buses in real-time, in addition to providing entertainment and featuring the artwork that decorates various stations in the subway system, which is plenty.

This was a very smart move by the city of New York, first because the MTA recognized that they have huge amounts of data at their disposal, and that this data can be very valuable for their users. They also acknowledged the pervasiveness of smartphone applications, especially in a city like New York. Furthermore, they knew enough to recognize the advantages of conducting a contest, and basically crowd-source their apps, versus embarking in an effort to developing them by themselves.

The software challenge had $15,000 dollars in prizes. That sum would have probably paid for a few weeks of a good project manager in NY, and that’s it, no programmers. Yet the resulting product was not only bigger in terms of number of applications, but probably much more creative and sophisticated.

Big Data Analytics Innovation is Coming

It is still early enough in the year for prognosticators to forecast what will happen in the world of IT this year. One set of predictions that will make most CIOs happy is a list of five trends in Big Data analytics that analytic data solutions vendor Teradata says will bring significant innovation in 2013. Excited? You should be, so without further ado let’s take a gander at each predicted trend.

 

Big Data Discovery Platform Brings Experiments to Life
Teradata predicts that during 2013, the discovery platform, or a workbench that allows scaled Big Data experiments at a much lower cost than traditional up-front data sampling and modeling,  will become an “indispensable part” of Big Data strategy. The discovery platform allows hypotheses to be quickly tested and failed assumptions to become evident in a short period of time. To work properly it must support SQL, BI tools, statistics and next-generation MapReduce analytics from a single platform.

App Developers Seek Easier Situations

App developers are always looking for ways to make their apps more robust, feature-rich and easier to use. These are not surprising scenarios. But results of recent research from HfS show that app developers also want ease of management, hosting and deployment for themselves.

During a recent webinar, “Who Does IT Love in 2013,” HfS  reviewed results of a global survey it conducted of 468 IT executives at companies with 250 or more employees across a range of industries. When asked to name their number one development area in the application development/outsourcing space in 2013, a leading 17% mentioned migration to packaged apps and another 13.5% said migration to cloud apps.

How High is Your Company’s Digital IQ?

As a CIO, you likely rub shoulders with high-IQ individuals on a daily basis – both the IT experts in your department and the other C-level executives in your company. But despite all those smart people around, your company’s Digital IQ may still be quite low.

According to the recently released fifth annual Digital IQ survey from PwC, companies with a high Digital IQ – i.e., those that understand technology on an enterprise-wide basis and weave IT into the everyday fabric of the entire business – are four times as likely as other companies to be top performers. And a high Digital IQ means more than a big budget or the latest, greatest tools.

For starters, PwC identifies having a strong level of collaboration between CIOs and other C-level executives as the underpinning of a strong Digital IQ. Think about it, if all those educated, high-wattage minds in your company’s C-suite do not talk to each other or work toward common goals, a huge portion of their combined value is wasted. A good point of comparison is the 2012 Boston Red Sox, a baseball team with a collection of high-priced, proven talent that did not work together and had no strong senior management that finished dead last in its division.