All the way from alignment to convergence

"I recently reviewed research indicating that CIOs don\t want to hear about aligning IT to the business. That\s old news. Inst...

"I recently reviewed research indicating that CIOs dont want to hear about
aligning IT to the business. Thats old news. Instead, they want to hear about
how CIOs are contributing to the business, how theyre innovating for business
value. What are your thoughts?"
Beach: Alignment is still important, but it seems the leading CIOs have taken
alignment to the next level: the convergence of business and technology
An IDC study this past spring reported that 50 percent of CIOs claim their
focus this year will be enabling growth and innovation. Within 24 months, that
number will increase to nearly 80 percent. Ralph Szygenda, GMs CIO, said it
best: CIOs are morphing from being information "caretakers" charged with
keeping the shop running to being "business brokers" focused on transforming
the business.
Friedenberg: While alignment is necessary for success, the message itself has
become dull. What CIOs are talking about is the need to create business
readiness, reliability and resilience. The alignment and convergence of the
business and IT goals achieve this while transforming people, processes and the
products they produce.
Marc West, CIO of H&R Block, and Bill Morgan, CIO of PHLX, recently shared with
me their view that the need for alignment will never go away, but its the
execution behind the alignment thats essential.
Another way to think about this is in light of how our economy is changing from
transaction to interaction-based. How can businesses use IT to deliver customer
loyalty? This is going to be the new value proposition against which every
successful CIO will be measured. Hope this helps.
What do you think? Did Gary and I give sound advice or steer a pal wrong?
Whats slowing data encryption?
By Jim Damoulakis, Computerworld (US online)
Despite standing headlines of data security breaches on a daily basis in IT
publications, there seems to be remarkably slow movement toward encryption.
Anecdotally, our experience has been that organizations are at least as likely
to be considering alternatives such as maintaining their own corporate bunker
sites for tape retention or expanding replication capabilities to eliminate
tape entirely as they are to be considering encryption options. Unfortunately
for many organizations, this is simply not practical, and, as a result, the
default behavior is to simply not encrypt. Encryption appliances have now been
available for several years, so what is holding up adoption? There are at least
three reasons. The first, and arguably the biggest reason, is the unavoidable
fact that if you choose to encrypt, you must also manage your encryption keys.
While encryption may deter others from viewing your data, without a
bullet-proof key management capability you could be "locked out" of you data,
as well. For many, this is a far greater fear than the potential misuse of data
from a lost backup tape, and it is the reason why appliance companies like
Decru Inc. (now part of Network Appliance Inc.) and Neoscale Systems Inc. are
focused so heavily on simplification of key management. Another factor is
concern over vendor lock-in, or, to put it another way, the lack of standards.
Once you encrypt using a specific vendors technology, that technology is also
required to decrypt, meaning that there is a substantial barrier to
transitioning from one product to another should the need occur. Finally, the
cost of purchasing, implementing, and managing a broad range of encryption
products is also inhibiting adoption. Added to the other concerns cited, the
result is a continued wait-and-see attitude. Protecting data is a serious
concern that is here to stay. The good news is that there are signs of hope.
Draft standards are evolving for encrypting data at rest IEEE P1619 for disk
and P1619.1 for tape are progressing but have yet to be finalized. The next
generation of tape drives will be integrating encryption capabilities. And, of
course, we are all anxiously awaiting the fruits of the EMC acquisition of
security-leader RSA.
Shark Tank
Computerworld (US)
Pilot fish is tapped to research what it will take to integrate a vendors new
product into a homegrown application. But he cant find technical information
on it, so he schedules a meeting with the application guru, who tells him,
"Yeah, we have lots of documentation already complete." Where can I find it?
fish asks. "Well, what do you need specifically?" Architecture or design
documents, interfaces, databases used... "Oh, like I said, thats all out
there," guru says. Where? fish asks again eagerly. "Well, tell me what youre
looking for," repeats guru impatiently. "Its all there just read the code."
Newly hired IT contractor will need remote network access, so this pilot fish
uses the companys intranet-based application to set it up for him. That
includes coming up with a secret question and answer so the user can be
authenticated when he calls the help desk. "But the system assumes the person
filling out the request is also the one wholl be using the access," grumbles
fish. "It asked me to come up with the question and answer, not the contractor.
The result? His question is Why is this an insecure process? and the answer
is Poor design."
one user howl. "Turns out he stored all his e-mails in the Deleted Items folder
as soon as he read them, because he could get them out of his in-box with just
a click on the big X," says an IT pilot fish there. "I suggested that he
create a folder for items he didnt want to disappear. His first reaction: You
All the way from alignment to...
convergence konvergence, sbíhání
contribute přispívat
morph morfovat, měnit se
caretaker dozorce, správce, hlídač
broker prostředník, jednatel, poradce resilience pružnost
sound advice platná rada
Whats slowing data encryption? encryption šifrování
retention uchování consider zvažovat arguably pravděpodobně
deter zabránit
draft standard návrh normy
anxiously úzkostlivě Shark Tank
homegrown application aplikace vyvinutá samotnou
remote network access vzdálený přístup k síti
authenticate autentizovat, ověřit pravost
assume předpokládat
turn out ukázat se
Zveřejněné zprávy v původním znění prošly redakční úpravou a byly vybrány z
celosvětových informačních zdrojů vydavatelství IDG. Texty jsou určeny všem
zájemcům o zdokonalování se v odborné angličtině. Sestavil: pat(pat) 6 1375

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