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November 2009
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In this podcast, Susan Cramm, author of, The Eight Things We Hate About IT, talks about how CIOs can improve their relationships with business partners to achieve a higher quality of business value. She also attacks some of the political issues that CIOs face on the job.

 

Regardless of the company's size, CIOs have the on-going challenge of creating business value or business impact of IT. Executive management needs to realize that CIOs and their IT team can’t deliver business impact on their own. According to Susan Cramm, a former CIO and founder of Valuedance, an IT leadership coaching firm, says that CIOs don’t own the four P’s needed to realize business impact -- people, processes, products, and profit and loss. Business partners manage these four things. Cramm, the author of the book, The Eight Things We Hate About IT (Harvard Business School Press, says that CIOs and their senior leadership team need to partner with their business counterparts in order to deliver value to the organization.

 

"If you have a good strong leader and a relationship across the business for delivery of IT services, then you have a chance to move up the value chain and set up an investment governance process. Such a governance process will ensure that you have a full cycle of investment management in place. You just aren’t looking at things like a business plan, but managing those targeted business impacts through the duration of the program and subsequent projects. Moreover,  you are holding business leaders and IT accountable for the realization of that value."

 

In this podcast, Cramm, who writes and blogs for Harvard Business Review, talks about how CIOs can improve their relationships with business partners to achieve a higher quality of business value. She also attacks some of the political issues that CIOs face on the job.

 

Bio

Susan Cramm is the founder and president of Valuedance, an IT leadership coaching firm. She has worked with executives from a number of Fortune Global 200 clients, including Toyota, Sony, and Time Warner. She is the author of the book, The Eight Things We Hate About IT (Harvard Business School Press.) Cramm also blogs and writes articles for Harvard Business Review. Since 2000, she has authored the monthly executive coach column for CIO magazine.


Cramm is the former CFO and executive vice president at Chevy's Mexican Restaurants. Before Chevy’s, she worked with the Taco Bell Corporation and held the positions of CIO and vice president of the IT group and senior director for financial and strategic planning.


She received an MBA from Northwestern University, specializing in finance, marketing, and quantitative methods, and her BA in computer science and management from the University of California at San Diego.

 

Resources
Harvard Business Review Blog – Susan Cramm

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hbr/cramm/


CIO Magazine – Link to columns by Susa Cramm

http://www.cio.com.au/author/512535383/susan_h_cramm/articles


Insider's Guide to Executive Coaching by Susan H. Cramm

http://www.coachingsourcing.info/2009/02/insiders-guide-to-executive-coaching-by.html

 

8 Things We Hate About IT:  How to Move Beyond the Frustations to Form a New Partnership with IT, book by Susan Cramm

http://www.amazon.com/Things-Hate-About-Frustrations-Partnership/dp/1422131661/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258672617&sr=8-1

 

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

 

Sponsored by BMC Software
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5,160 Views 0 Comments Permalink Tags: best_practices, it_management, strategy, balance_scorecard, business_impact_of_it, business_value, podcast
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Soon, it will be 4G wireless. This technology will not only provide a staggering amount of bandwidth, but it will create new business models, as well as a new platform for innovation. As a result, CIOs to become 4G wireless savvy immediately. That's the advice of Dr. Scott Snyder, author of The New World of Wireless: How to Compete in 4G Revolution. Now let's meet Dr. Snyder, author, professor, and CEO of Decision Strategies International.

 

Every now and then a disruptive technology comes along and dramatically changes the way we live and work. In the mid-1990s it was the Internet and TCP-IP, and in 2000, it was the iPhone. Soon, it will be 4G wireless. Consider, for example, how it could make healthcare more pervasive. A doctor in Africa doesn't need to make a dangerous trip to treat patients at a remote village. With 4G wireless technology, he can treat these patients remotely.

 

Since the 1990s, 3G wireless has been in place, providing us with increasing amounts of bandwidth, speed, and the ability to download multi-media content in a more efficient way. Dr. Scott Snyder, author of the New World of Wireless: How to Compete in the 4G Revolution, says that many people think of 4G wireless, which is the next logical step in the progression of the technology, as just more bandwidth. "Yes, 4G wireless will offer up to 100 megabits per second to mobile users and one gigabit per second to fixed users. You are talking about a wireless connection that is 50 times faster than what you get in your home broadband connection. This is only part of the story. 4G wireless will provide a new paradigm that will alter the network and the handset, by enabling users to have more control over what type of content they get, and what type of services they can get from any location they might be in around the globe."

 

Snyder adds that user-centric capabilities will be the defining feature of 4G wireless. "Extremely intelligent handsets will have the ability to make decisions on your behalf, just like a remote control for your life. Because it is based on the cloud concept rather than a fixed network, 4G wireless has the capability to follow you around. You will have access to many networks without going back through a network. That's a scary proposition for wireless carriers that make money from people going through their network. This feature enables a whole variety of digital swarms or group behavior. Users can self-organize in this cloud without going through the structure of traditional networks."

 

As CEO of a Decision Strategies, a technology consulting firm, Snyder came across many executives who lacked awareness of what 4G wireless technology could do, not only to their business, but to their industry as a disruptive force and an innovation platform. The need to educate these executives propelled Snyder to write The New World of Wireless. His book is not just about what's happening with the technology, but how this technology could have broader social and business interactions to create new business models, new industries, and transformational type events.

 

Meanwhile, new standards for 4G wireless and experimental handsets loom on the horizon. Even aspects of the iPhone sheds light on what new business models might look like. Snyder says that because these weak signals will explode very fast, CIOs need to prepare for 4G wireless right now. "They need to start building wireless into their organization as a competency to be explored both as a communication platform, but also an innovation platform. They need to put the infrastructure in place to support both platforms and to leverage both to build an ecosystem with their customers, partners, vendors, and even your industry. They have to also start fostering wireless content, connectivity and allowing the digital swarm to take place both in your organization and in your ecosystem."

 

In this podcast, CIOs will learn the following:

  • The top three things they should be doing to prepare for 4G wireless
  • Some of the ways they can innovate around 4G wireless to become more profitable and derive more marketplace,
  • The new business models that 4G wireless will enable, and
  • And the security issues that will confront this technology.

 

Bio

Dr. Scott Snyder is the president and CEO of Decision Strategies International, a strategy firm focused on increasing the strategic aptitude of organization. He has held executive positions with several Fortune 500 companies including General Electric, Martin Marietta, and Lockheed Martin. He has also started business ventures in software including OmniChoice, a CRM/Analytics software applications provider. He was selected as a candidate for Entrepreneur of the Year for the Philadelphia Region. He has worked with numerous Fortune 500 clients on business and technology strategy including General Electric, NCR, Verizon, as well as government organizations such as the Federal Aviation Administration, National Security Administration, and the US Navy.

 

He has also contributed as a co-author to the recently released Future of BioSciences 2020 Report from DSI and the Wharton School and is the author of The New World of Wireless: How to Compete in the 4G Revolution.

 

Dr. Snyder is a senior fellow in the management department at the Wharton School, an adjunct faculty member in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and has lectured at MIT and RIT on decision-making, business and IT strategy, telecommunications, product design and development, and business intelligence. He holds a patent for on-line decision aids and has been quoted as a thought leader in numerous publications. Dr. Snyder earned his BS, MS, and Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from University of Pennsylvania and has an executive degree from USC in Telecommunications Management.

 

Resources
Profile of Decision Strategies International, INC magazine

http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2008/company-profile.html?id=200819430

 

How Failure Breeds Success, BusinessWeek

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_28/b3992001.htm?campaign_id=nws_insdr_jul1&link_position=link1

 

Put on Hold: Why Telecoms Can't Get Consumers to Bond More with Their Cell Phones, Knowledge Emory

http://knowledge.emory.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1138

 

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer

Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

 

Sponsored by BMC Software
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4,280 Views 0 Comments Permalink Tags: best_practices, it_management, innovation, strategy, podcast
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How does a guy with a Ph.D. in computational neuroscience wind up doing green IT initiatives at Microsoft? He also has co-authored a guidebook called Green IT: Reduce Your Information System's Environmental Impact While Adding to the Bottom Line. I'm talking about Dr. Tony Velte. In this podcast, he offers a concise framework for how you can green everything from your data centers to desktops. He also has co-authored books about cloud computing and virtualization. Now let's meet Dr. Toby Velte, a member of a Microsoft team focused on helping large enterprise groups with their IT strategies. That includes going green.

 

How does a guy with a Ph.D. in computational neuroscience wind up doing green IT initiatives at Microsoft and also co-writing a guidebook called Green IT: Reduce Your Information System's Environmental Impact While Adding to the Bottom Line and the upcoming? Dr. Toby J. Velte's work in computational neuroscience focused on creating models that were very similar to the widespread enterprise networks found in most large companies and in government agencies. Contacts he made along the way helped him to secure a position at Microsoft helping large enterprise groups with their IT strategies, especially around green IT.

 

Velte's green IT book provides a roadmap for how you can create a company-wide green IT program starting with your data centers, moving down to desktops, and empowering individual business units to develop their own IT strategies. He says that the number one problem companies have with moving forward with green IT isn't the technology or having adequate funds. "It's the people situation." He urges companies to get all of their stakeholders together to try to understand what the green initiatives are going to look like at the end of the day, and how do they plan to measure success. Next, companies need to measure everything starting with power consumption. "Most companies don't have the metrics in place. People need to understand what they have and what they are consuming." Once companies know what outcomes they want to achieve, then it's time to execute the green IT program as if it were another IT initiative.

 

In most companies, green IT begins in the data center. In fact, that's where it began at Microsoft. When Microsoft built its new data center outside of Quincy, Washington, it supplemented reliance on the power grid by use of water power.

 

Meanwhile, virtualization and cloud computing can also cut down on a data center's power consumption. He says, "By moving business process out to the cloud, you are really turning over the power consumption issue to the service provider. With virtualization, can you eliminate the servers with low utilization, say around 15 percent, by moving those applications to virtualized servers. You can achieve upwards of 80 percent utilization with fewer servers."

 

In this podcast, Velte talks about some of the practical measurements you can take to make sure your desktops and data centers are green, the ways you can translate those metrics into meaningful results, the steps you can take to reduce your reliance on the power grid, and a plan companies can follow to stay green.

 

Bio

Dr. Toby J. Velte is a key member of Microsoft Corp.'s North Central practice focusing on helping thriving companies with their technology-based initiatives. He also works with large organizations to create green IT roadmaps that are business focused and practically implemented. Prior to Microsoft, he worked at Accenture as a business development technology executive. He has co-founded Velte Publishing, Inc. Velte has co-authored more than a dozen books published by McGraw-Hill and Cisco Press. These books include the following: Green IT: Reduce Your Information System's Environmental Impact While Adding to the Bottom Line and the upcoming Microsoft Virtualization with Hyper-V, and Cloud Computing: A Practical Approach. He obtained his Ph.D. in Computational Neuroscience from the University of Minnesota and then completed his post-doctoral training at Harvard University.

 


Resources

The Reputation Green IT Doesn't Deserve, Fast Company

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/anthony-toby-velte/green-it/reputation-green-it-doesn-t-deserve

 

Data Center Leaders: Green IT Equals Data Center Cost Avoidance With Toby Velte, PhD, Evolving Solutions

http://www.evolvingsol.com/blog/2009/02/03/greenit/

 

Perfect Storm Forming for Green IT, Fast Company

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/anthony-toby-velte/green-it/perfect-storm-forming-green-it

 

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer

Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

 

Sponsored by BMC Software
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3,665 Views 0 Comments Permalink Tags: it_management, best_practices, cloud_computing, green_it, power_grid, server_virtualization, podcast

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