IT leadership is changing nearly as rapidly as technology itself. Successful tech executives are shifting toward initiating strategic change rather than acting as trusted operators, as the CIO role sees greater emphasis on leadership skills related to digital transformation over keeping the lights on. While the spectrum for IT leadership success remains wide, the rules…
The Boston Red Sox have been among Major League Baseball’s most winning teams in recent years. The same couldn’t be said for the franchise’s technology systems when CIO Brian Shield joined the organization in 2013. Leaning on a new digital strategy that emphasizes improved operations and fan experiences, Shield has since overhauled everything from the…
We’ve all heard of the sharing economy and the gig economy, but a new business model is quietly introducing itself across many consumer-facing industries. It’s an extreme form of the convenience economy that I like to term the “lazy economy.” The term is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but there’s some real implications in these nascent business models…
As enterprises transition from on-premises IT, Oracle is positioning itself as the premier, one-stop-shop provider for cloud computing. You may think this is a stretch, considering that, for example, Oracle has been lumped in with “Others” in Gartner’s ranking of top public infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers, far below leaders like Amazon, Microsoft and…
In healthcare IT, data integration is often considered a back-end IT function, but the enterprise application integration team at Jackson Health System (JHS), one of the largest public health systems in the country, has turned data-as-a-service into a strategic differentiator that has improved patient care and saved millions of dollars in subsidy costs. JHS is…
If you’re like most CIOs, beating overload tops your list of New Year’s resolutions. But avoiding the dread and panic that comes with overload takes more than changing your mindset. Feelings of overload come from real, systemic problems — teams missing deadlines, projects going over budget, and you being dragged into endless meetings to untangle…
It’s strictly a numbers game when it comes to measuring the various aspects of IT success. Positive KPIs generally indicate that all is well with specific IT operations and services. Negative numbers, on the other hand, warn that IT efforts may be headed in the wrong direction or are already actively damaging enterprise goals. To…
CIOs who have led successful executive management careers often see corporate board service as the next stage of their career. For years, this was a tall order, as boards prized CEO experience over technology. But today, with cyber risk, digitization, and innovation threatening to disrupt long-established companies, the tides seem to be turning, says Debra…
The rise of virtual or artificial intelligence (AI) assistants has been underway for some time now with the growing popularity of products such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Google’s Assistant The technology — which has been trained to understand voice commands and complete tasks for users — is also making headway in…
What is ITIL? The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a library of volumes describing a framework of best practices for delivering IT services. ITIL has gone through several revisions in its history and currently comprises five books, each covering various processes and stages of the IT service lifecycle. ITIL’s systematic approach to IT service management…