Several years ago, I reviewed ITIL Version 3.0. When I got to the continual improvement volume, I asked the team whether the message was about continuous or continual improvement. I was told that continual improvement was chosen because improvement wouldn’t ever be nonstop in IT. Clearly, in the disruptive era, improvement may need to occur…
Every IT leader strives for efficiency — making the best possible use of available resources. Yet seeking efficiency and actually achieving it to any meaningful degree are two very different things. Often, despite careful planning, efforts at building efficiency fail to meet anticipated goals and key operations remain mired in mediocrity with wheels spinning in…
An education in data science can help you land a job as a data analyst, data engineer, data architect or data scientist. The data science path you ultimately choose will depend on your skillset and interests, but each career path will require some level of programming, data visualization, statistics and machine learning knowledge and skills.…
In the war between machines and mankind, the machines have gained the upper hand. It’s bad enough that computers can now beat us at chess, Jeopardy, and Go. Artificial intelligence-driven algorithms are now tackling jobs once considered the exclusive province of living, breathing bipeds. That includes doctors, lawyers, teachers, and, yes, IT professionals. To read…
The chief data officer role has been taking organizations by storm. Capital One appointed the first chief data officer (CDO) in 2002. Only a few organizations followed suit in the decade that followed, but NewVantage Partners’ Big Data Executive Survey 2018 found that 62.5 percent of senior Fortune 1000 business and technology decision-makers said their…
What is a business relationship manager? A business relationship manager (BRM) acts as a liaison between IT and other business units in the organization. As departments increasingly rely on technology, organizations often find they need to establish stronger communication between IT and outside business units. The BRM role is typically a senior-level position, for which…
Spend money to save money is an age-old aphorism. No statement may ring more true today for IT leaders hungry to disrupt, as CIOs are investing in digital technologies that both reduce operating costs and transform the business. Cloud services, robotic process automation (RPA) and cognitive technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning…
Encryption is fast becoming developer’s go-to solution for whatever data privacy or security worry ails you. Afraid of putting your credit card into a web form? Don’t worry. We’re using encryption. Unsure whether a website is authentic? Encryption has your back. The good news is, encryption algorithms do work some of the time. The math…
Data and big data analytics are the lifeblood of any successful business. Getting the technology right can be challenging but building the right team with the right skills to undertake big data initiatives can be even harder. Successfully deploying big data initiatives requires more than data scientists and data analysts. It requires data architects who…
In 2014, Jamshid Rezaei inherited a sprawling IT structure when he became CIO of Mitel Networks, which had acquired rivals and complementary concerns in pursuit of a strategy for providing unified communications systems (UCS) via the cloud. Mitel’s 3,500 workers, many of whom joined from acquisitions such as Aastra Technologies, Shoretel Networks and Toshiba’s unified…