Business Leadership
Is Someone Else In Your Company Better At IT Innovation Than You?

There's a new generation of IT-savvy people in the workforce, and if they're pushing IT forward in their own departments, rather than working with the CIO and the IT department, there's a disconnect in your company that you need to fix, fast. In this Q&A, Forrester Research vice president Laurie Orlov talks about strategies and tactics for better marketing and communication.

High-Stakes Analytics
By Tim Stanley, CIO, Harrah's Entertainment
Nowhere is the value of business intelligence (BI) and enterprise data management more evident than in the gaming, entertainment, and hospitality industries. When a loyal casino customer hits the jackpot at a slot machine in Reno, Nev., or Atlantic City, N.J., what's important is not how many terabytes of data are stored in our data warehouse or the kinds of reports some analyst can run after the fact. Rather, it's how the information is leveraged in real time to serve the customer immediately on the casino floor.

Business Management
Expanding The Boundaries Of Business Intelligence

Did you ever think anything would supersede security on the list of CIO worries? According to a Gartner study of CIOs, business intelligence was cited as the top technology priority in 2006. But there's a larger facet to BI that Gartner vice president Betsy Burton believes CIOs should consider: its fundamental definition, and its breadth and depth within your company. Simply put, in this Q&A, she maintains that CIOs should rethink not only what data constitutes business intelligence but also who in the company should be able to use it.

How To Keep M&A From Being Misery & Agony

Integrating an acquired company's systems is one of the hardest steps in a successful acquisition, yet CIOs are rarely brought in from the beginning of the deal process. Even so, there are ways, maintains Forrester Research analyst Alex Cullen, to have a positive influence on the M&A process.

I.T. Hiring Heats Up
By Katherine Spencer Lee
The need to install wireless networks, replace aging equipment, comply with government regulations, and pursue Internet-related business opportunities is spurring many companies to move ahead with IT staffing plans. Yet those same companies are choosy when it comes to hiring full-time IT workers. They're focusing on highly skilled candidates in select specialities, including Windows administration, wireless network management, SQL server management, and Cisco network administration.

Collaborative Strategies
Competing On Analytics
By Thomas Davenport
Optimization is the linchpin of most viable competitive strategies. Rather than try to satisfy every consumer, companies adopting these strategies focus on optimal customers—those with the highest level of profitability and lifetime value. Instead of receiving goods and services whenever they happen to arrive, companies attempt to optimize supply chains to minimize disruptions and in-process inventory. Rather than make adjustments after the fact, they accurately predict which measures will yield optimal results. And they don't throw money at the problem, but seek to maximize their use of capital.

Corporate Culture
Hot Jobs For 2006
By Umesh Ramakrishnan
At the beginning of each year, the Christian & Timbers firm publishes a study of trends in hiring it calls "Hot Jobs." Over the years, says vice chairman Umesh Ramakrishnan, the firm has been "remarkably prescient." With that admittedly immodest introduction, here is its list of hot jobs for the coming year, categorized by the forces that are driving the importance of the position.

Managing Today's Multigenerational Workforce
By Katherine Spencer Lee
Experts say that for the first time in history, the workplace includes four often distinct generations, each with unique strengths, expectations, motivations, and work styles. The prospect of managing workgroups consisting of such a wide potential age range presents several challenges, but it also can yield significant opportunities. As Robert Half Technology executive director Katherine Spencer Lee notes, acknowledging generational differences offers companies access to a wider array of creative ideas and, perhaps more important, ensures that the firm's talent pool is fully tapped.

Technology Innovation
Development That Accommodates Change

Among the key advantages of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) is not only the ability to map business processes but also the ability to keep up with them as they change--that is, providing business with the flexibility they need in order to respond quickly to changing conditions and maintain a competitive edge. The downside is that just because SOAs are flexible doesn't mean that they rewrite the rules of application development and change management. But because services are smaller and more lightweight than applications, there's also more to keep track of. In this Q&A, IDC's Rob Hailstone talks about the ramifications IT faces.

ILM: Start Now, Save Now
By Jay Wood
Information life-cycle management (ILM) has been hyped as a better way for CIOs to align storage costs and deal with regulatory compliance. It does indeed hold promise. Because it's content-aware, it allows organizations to automate their document and data-retention policies. And although compliance efforts are typically seen as a cost drain, ILM implementations can often provide a net savings by optimizing the use of expensive storage devices and ensuring that data is stored on the least-expensive media appropriate for its usage patterns.

Global Issues
If Outsourcing Is So Great, Why Are Contracts Declining?

There's really no way to sugarcoat the figures. According to the latest data from business process outsourcing (BPO) consulting firm NelsonHall, outsourcing is in a decline. In 2004 global companies spent $73.3 billion on outsourcing; in 2005 the amount fell 31%, to $50.7 billion. What's behind the drop?

Strategic Innovation
When A CIO Should Think Like A Venture Capitalist
By Pete Sinclair
Having survived the turn-of-the-century bubble and its incumbent madness, how should a CIO view the technology world going forward? Leapfrog Ventures' Pete Sinclair suggests evaluating new products as a venture capitalist would. VCs, like CIOs, are under renewed pressure to do more with less. The VCs who also survived the bubble live by a set of fundamental rules that help them avoid bad investments. Modern CIOs can use these same rules as they evaluate new technologies.

Why Crossing The Chasm Still Matters
By Steve W. Martin
Early adopters. Mainstream market. Laggards. If you work in the high-tech industry, chances are you know what these terms mean. This year marks the 15th anniversary of the publication of Geoffrey Moore's landmark book. How can Crossing The Chasm have maintained its relevance in an industry obsessed with continuous innovation--in which products become obsolete overnight?

What's Holding Up Utility Computing?
By Jim Cassell and Bruce Guptill
In theory, at least, utility computing has a lot going for it. It lets you tap into a shared pool of hardware, applications, and management software so that computing resources are available when and where they're needed--and you pay only for what you use. Besides reducing licensing and maintenance costs, it can improve customer service and agility to anticipate and meet new business demands. But while vendors and integrators have long touted the virtues of utility computing, CIOs and end-user companies have taken a cautious approach to a full-scale IT utility. Although some have rolled out streamlined computing operations through server consolidation and virtualization, others have relegated utility computing to the back burner.