CIO Talk Network Podcast

The higher you rise, the harder you land when you fall! With everyone scrutinizing you closely for mistakes or weaknesses, as you join an organization as the new CIO, what can you do to avoid a fall from grace? What can you do within your first few months to establish a strong foundation for yourself as an IT leader, and win the hearts and minds of everyone who matters, above you or below? Guest 1...

Airlines strive to provide air travel that is safe and reliable, with a customer experience that is world class, comfortable, and competitively affordable. They also have to route tons of cargo and baggage reliably (and intact) to destinations around the globe. How does IT help in this mission? And, what about external organizations whose internal IT's can also influence the success or failure of...

There has been a lot of talk about what we all want and expect out of Green IT, but have we achieved true sustainability at a positive or even breakeven ROI? What is left to do? Where are the success stories, and what have been the challenges that have prevented IT leaders from realizing the full potential of Green IT? Are there any new frontiers left to be explored? Guest 1: Dr. George O. Strawn,...

Technology can be extremely frustrating, both for IT leaders and for business users. Business people question whether IT costs too much and delivers too little, too late. They also resent being powerless to influence what IT does and how it does it. For their part, IT leaders feel that business demand for IT services often outstrips their ability to provide those services and that business users u...

If there are obvious benefits for corporate IT to move to the cloud, what about Federal IT? Wouldn't Fed IT benefit in the same way? Are there any situations where it doesn't make sense for federal IT to move to the cloud? What special security challenges will federal IT face in adopting the cloud, and how will they be handled? What lack of resources or support is slowing down Fed IT adoption of c...

There is a big push to modernized and make government IT more efficient. While there are a lot of ambitious initiatives, what's the plan for the fed IT workforce? If an IT organization is only as good as its IT workers, what are Fed IT departments doing about acquiring the best resources? Furthermore, corporate IT has been ruthless about paring down its IT work force, while government workers have...

To deliver value, a given business service must be highly reliable. What are the challenges to reliability? And, if reliability is based on broad accessibility, guaranteed continuity, and high performance - aren't those all dependent on IT? If IT is driving reliability, who is accountable, IT or Business? Shouldn't IT share accountability? Guest: Rob Reeg, President, Global Technology and Operatio...

Being in a hospital can be frightening and uncomfortable for patients and their families. Advances in IT are dramatically improving health care and bettering the experience for patients, their families, physicians, nurses, and all members of the health care team. Learn how IT is making care more patient centric, improving quality and safety, decreasing wait times and much more. What new kinds of p...

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 has put health care organizations under pressure to adopt electronic medical record systems (EHR) by 2014, but many health organizations are nowhere near ready to convert their existing systems to an EHR system. What are the challenges to this goal, and are there any ways to fast track the effort? Once all hospitals have an EHR system, will the ad...

Historically, BI reporting told you what had already happened, but hasn't offered much of anything actionable. Shouldn't predictive analytics provide actionable insight to business people other than analysts, so those on the frontline will not only understand what has happened but can see what actions they need to take to improve results? How practical and expensive is such a proposition? What ROI...

Wouldn't it be great to have a crystal ball that would warn us when our business critical application performance was starting to slip? Unfortunately, we can't predict this and when it happens, we engage in finger pointing matches, nerve racking troubleshooting exercises, and sometimes end up losing internal/external customer goodwill. What combination of tools and other elements need to be in pla...

As an I&O (Infrastructure & Operations) leader, do you know how to get the most bang for your buck, out of you data center and end user computing environment without sacrificing performance or reliability? Are you able to make your business leaders see servers, storage, PCs, or switches as more than capital expenses? Do you know how to run an efficient and effective helpdesk? ...Or, run support an...

The Application Development function is fraught with challenges, complexities, and can require hard-to-find resources. So, does it make sense to keep this function in-house? If you do outsource, why do only partial outsourcing? How would you plan and execute the complete outsourcing of an Application Development function? Guest 1: Ben Trowbridge, Founder and CEO, Alsbridge Guest Bio: https://www.c...

Whatever comes, economic recovery or misery, what priorities will be on a CIO's 2010 agenda to make their IT more strategic to their business? What new technologies will be key to this mission? Guest 1: David S. Kaufman, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, ARAMARK Guest Bio: https://www.ciotalknetwork.com/contributor/david-kaufman/ Guest 2: Eric Dirst, Senior Vice President and CI...

The holy grail for IT leadership is Business/IT alignment. Perhaps if IT leadership took a step back and focused instead on converging Business and IT strategy, business alignment would become a moot point. Has business and IT strategy convergence ever really been tried? If so, did it work? What were the challenges? Guest: Arshele Stevens, Chief Information Officer, Board of Education, City of Chi...

Most organizations use some form of SaaS. In the brave new world of cloud computing, what are the solutions and challenges to integrating two disparate data sets? How do we marry "data from somewhere else" with "our data here"? Guest 1: Gaurav Dhillon, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, Snaplogic Guest Bio: https://www.ciotalknetwork.com/contributor/gaurav-dhillon/ Guest 2: Jeff Chapman, Head...

What is "Business intelligence" for, if not to give a company a competitive edge? What's the state of competitive BI today? Have enterprises been able to fully exploit BI for all its promised potential or has it turned out to be more difficult in execution then expected? Have there been any breakthrough innovations to better identify and develop opportunities for a competitive edge? Besides the to...

IT leaders are used to thinking of IT governance as a way to optimize IT to create and deliver value. However, when economic times turn tough there is a tendency to see it as a cost and a budget item to be cut. What if that thinking is wrong? What if IT governance could help us to avoid costly mistakes and actually save money in the long run? Guest 1: Emil G. D'Angelo Guest Bio: https://www.ciotal...

In troubled economic times, organizations tend to cut their IT budgets to reduce the risk of losing sustainability. However, unbridled IT cost cutting could actually increase risk by cutting the critical funds IT needs to help sustain business strategies and run IT. Because such cost cutting affects not only the IT function but the whole enterprise, where should an IT leader draw the line? Guest:...

Since IT supports the business functions needed to execute business strategy, wouldn't IT be a powerful ally in minimizing business risk? Is there any way IT could help identify risks ahead of the curve so they could be dealt with before they become serious issues? What kinds of risks could IT best help tackle? Guest 1: George Westerman, Research Scientist in the Center for Information Systems Res...

No one is secure from the relentlessly morphing and multipronged threats facing the Internet. These threats are real and must be met with a cohesive and collaborative effort from both public and private sectors to increase security. What are the current R&D priorities on security, and what programs have been implemented? What can we understand about the road ahead which would help us to more effec...

There are risks inherent in all new technology. Sometimes these risks get blown out of all proportion in comparison to the advantages these new technologies can offer. Rather than letting our worse fears keep us from exploiting these new technologies for the advantages they offer, what steps should IT leaders take to balance their use against their risks, to deliver these new technologies and the...

While each state has its own technology issues, they all face similar internal problems related to cyber security. There is also a need to create a secure collaborative cyber environment among all states. What are the common current gaps each state faces with regards to internal cyber security? Are state administrations giving cyber security the kind of priority and resources needed to properly se...

IT leaders are getting aggressive about innovating and creating top line growth! So, what about optimizing IT product/services procurement and minimizing costs to the nth degree? This should, in theory, maximize profits, right? But what Will we have to give up or compromise on to do this? Guest 1: Rich Adduci, Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Boston Scientific Guest Bio: https://www.c...

The harsh new business world of globalized competition, economic contraction, and technological change are forcing businesses everywhere to transform themselves by expanding their boundaries, consolidating their business interests, or reinventing themselves. In what situations is IT the helper, and in which should IT be the leader and driver? How does IT help or lead business transformation? Guest...