IT leaders certainly . . . → Read More: Less than a quarter of CIOs feel data on mobile devices is secure]]> Just when you have finally come round to the potential benefits of consumerisation, you go and do something stupid and leave the door unlocked. Many CIOs have been slow to recognise the potential productivity benefits of mobile devices. And even when there has been recognition, many IT leaders have not prioritised security.

IT leaders certainly like to talk up the importance of security. Get a group of IT leaders together and they will all state the enterprise is going mobile. What is more, they will suggest that security remains the number one IT priority for the organisation. Dig beneath the rhetoric, however, and a different picture emerges.

Research by Vanson Bourne for data protection company Sophos reveals that less than a quarter of UK CIOs feel data on mobile devices would be secure if devices are lost or stolen. Three quarters of CIOs have already had to deal with lost or stolen corporate devices, with half of the respondents acknowledging that less than 10% of devices are ever recovered. In addition:

• Just 46% of CIOs allow or encourage the use of personal mobile devices for work
• Only 55% of IT leaders allowing personal mobiles in the work place have password policies in place
• And 41% of organisations do not have a separate budget for mobile device security

It is one thing recognising, as many CIOs now do, that consumerisation represents an unstoppable force that must be embraced rather than tamed. But it is quite another managing the tide associated to consumerisation and putting in place the kind of sensible security measures that ensure enterprise data is safe.

What do you think? Do you believe consumerisation is an unstoppable force? How can CIOs establish the type of security best practice that means mobile working does not create problems for the business?

In fact, it’s completely hideous: “Did I tell you about the time I achieved something brilliant? Actually, that reminds . . . → Read More: Twitter: Being smart is great but you don’t have to prove it all the time]]> Message to all the self-promoting Twitter users out there: give it a rest. There’s nothing worse in the old school world of real life than having a conversation with someone that only talks about their own achievements.

In fact, it’s completely hideous: “Did I tell you about the time I achieved something brilliant? Actually, that reminds me of the time I was fantastic. I was, like, so amazing and everyone had to recognise that I was wonderful.”

In the real world, you make your excuses and leave. The self-promoters achieve nothing in real life. They are viewed as arrogant, boring and self-indulgent. So, what happens in the online world?

Exactly the opposite, unfortunately. Social networking has given the extremely average a platform to talk as if they are the extremely talented. The crimes are constant and clear, and include:

• I’m so busy at the moment – Hey, guess what? I don’t care and neither should anyone else. Your desperate call for more work should be rejected
• I’ve had 500 emails this week – What do you want, a medal? Emails are no record of success. In fact, I’d be much happier if I’d only had five emails
• What a great day – Good for you. I’ve had one, too. I just don’t like to talk about it
• Blessed to have such wonderful clients – Excuse me while I am sick repeatedly. Do people really buy this self-obsessed and sickening junk?
• Off to a meeting in a minute and I’ve got lots of other meetings planned, too – Amazing, just amazing. Well done

In short, being smart is great but you don’t have to try and prove it all time. People will tell you that you need to talk about your achievements more in the digital age. That’s possibly true; it’s a very competitive age. But you don’t have to talk about yourself in a boring and rather obvious manner.

What do you think? Is Twitter giving the vain a platform to self-promote, or is personal brand marketing OK?

Too many of us, and that includes . . . → Read More: Confidence is key for CIOs in the age of the personal brand]]> What would be one of the words you would use to describe yourself? Technological? Strong? Communicative? How about confident? When you walk into a room, do you raise your neck a notch upwards or do you sink a little bit lower and wait for other people to take control?

Too many of us, and that includes a large number of CIOs, sink into the latter position. It seems more comfortable; if others are willing to be the centre of conversation, let them get on with it. Unfortunately, modern business is all about talking the talk.

In an age of self-proclaimed gurus, evangelists and entrepreneurs, CIOs have no choice but to advertise their personal strengths. Being recognised for your good operational work on behalf of the business is simply not good enough and will not get you that next senior position.

CIOs must act with confidence. They must talk with clarity about their achievements internally. They must stress, at all times, how the business is better because of IT.

Outside the office, CIOs must engage through social media and external speaking platforms. Your peers must look at you as someone that holds the floor; your c-suite peers must think of you as someone they would like to poach for their own business.

If that sounds grim, then you might be in the wrong business. The ever-competitive digital age is also the age of the individual, where everyone everywhere has the platform to boast about his or her strong points. You must develop a strong personal brand. So, get boasting if you don’t want to be left behind.

What do you think? Are you naturally confident and is confidence an essential tool to helping CIOs define their worth to the business? Will being confident make the difference to you grabbing that next executive position?

“Sadly, CIOs mostly equal IT managers,” . . . → Read More: Can suppliers bring something useful to the strategy table?]]> Vendors need to pay more attention to the IT manager. I asked the other day whether the sense of the ever-increasing importance of the IT manager resonates with your business, and whether vendors continue to court the CIO when they should really be aiming for their senior IT sidekick?

“Sadly, CIOs mostly equal IT managers,” replied columnist and consultant Ade McCormack, recognising the contested nature of the IT leadership role and the belief that too many CIOs act operationally rather than strategically.

“Find the influencers,” suggested technology strategist Mark Wilson, noting the importance for vendors – or anyone, for that matter – of finding the right person for the right type of business decision.

“Ideally they shouldn’t contact us at all!” said IT strategy specialist Martin Howitt, raising the spectre of IT leaders message boxes being filled with salesperson cold calls.

What’s the alternative to engaging with vendors, though? Can CIOs and IT managers influential enough to be able to circumnavigate the sales chatter, or can suppliers sometimes bring something useful to the strategy table?

Neither, on the other hand, is locking down all access. Your workers now have access to better technology at home than . . . → Read More: The consumerisation of IT relies on empowerment and flexibility]]> How does the organisation cope with the influx of consumer IT? Turning a blind eye – which sometimes feels like the approach closely to associated to many organisations – is simply not an answer.

Neither, on the other hand, is locking down all access. Your workers now have access to better technology at home than in the workplace and they will expect to be able to use such IT to undertake work tasks.

CIOs looking to create a strategy for consumerisation need to help the business find a comfortable middle ground between openness and easy access – and finding such a comfortable position is not in any way straightforward. Take research from IT specialist Websense and security organisation Ponemon Institute, which identified a series of hidden mobile risks. The survey of more than 4,600 IT and IT security practitioners found that:

• Through 2011, more than half of the organisation’s surveyed experienced data loss resulting from employees’ use of insecure mobile devices
• As much as 59% of organisations had an increase in viruses or malware infections because of mobile devices
• Only 39% of employers had controls in place to mitigate risk on mobile devices

The conclusion seems to be that the move towards consumerisation is outpacing the development of enterprise security and policy. Smart CIOs must take steps now, empowering their staff to create a policy that is right for the business and flexible enough to allow smarter and more productive means of working.

But are CIOs empowering their IT teams to create such policies? Is the management of consumerisation the CIO’s tasks or should the social agenda also be managed by other senior executives?

One reason is that the individual responsible for technology in an organisation is not always a board-level executive and . . . → Read More: Vendors who target the CIO should really sell to the IT manager]]> Debate might continue over the future of the CIO role, but one thing is for sure: vendors selling technology to the business are not necessarily targeting the right man or woman when they target the CIO.

One reason is that the individual responsible for technology in an organisation is not always a board-level executive and often has to get sign-off from another executive, such as the finance chief. Furthermore, the increasingly contested nature of executive reporting lines means many service-based roles are being combined, such as an operations chief responsible for the day-to-day running of the business, facilities and technology. But even then, that is not the end of the problem.

Even if a vendor manages to identify the executive responsible for organisational IT, they might not have secured the route to a sale. CIOs or their executive equivalent, you see, rarely make decisions on technology implementation. In fact, they shouldn’t be making such decisions at all.

In a modern, digital age, where the CIO is increasingly responsible for transforming business operations, IT leaders do not have the time to consider the variable qualities of networks, data centres and security settings. The modern CIO needs to be strategic, not mundane, and must avoid getting bogged down in technical details.

Help comes in the form of the IT manager. Often viewed as a tier-too-far below the CIO, the IT manager actually provides the key to sales for suppliers in the digital business. Strategic CIOs look to their trusted IT management-level lieutenants for decisions in specialist areas. They look to the data centre manager for the call on using storage from a particular provider, they turn to the network manager for decisions on communications infrastructure and they search out the advice from the security manager for the implementation of leakage prevention technologies.

The nub of the issue is that the CIO is the person that signs off the recommendations made by their trusted confidants. And even then, the CIO might need a further level of OK from another c-level executive. But in the age of the strategic CIO, vendors looking to sell IT should make a beeline for the previously overlooked IT manager.

What do you think, does this sense of the ever-increasing importance of the IT manager resonate with your business? Do vendors continue to court the CIO when they should really be aiming for their senior IT sidekick?

It is, therefore, both encouraging – and concerning – that leadership development for senior managers has, . . . → Read More: Senior executives are finally waking up to next-generation leadership]]> Nothing should be more important than the next generation of leaders. The future success of your business, after all, depends on the ability of your organisation to identify new people that can take on new responsibilities and inspire others.

It is, therefore, both encouraging – and concerning – that leadership development for senior managers has, for the first time, become the top priority for learning and development, according to the Corporate Learning Priorities Survey for 2012 by Henley Business School’s Corporate Development team.

The finding is encouraging because it shows that senior executives are finally recognising the importance of next-generation leadership. But concern comes from the fact that leadership development is only now rising to the top of the executive learning agenda.

The Henley research showed that 47% of respondents made leadership development their first or second priority, compared with 35% last year. As much as 71% said their number one learning priority for 2012 was to use learning and development as a tool to aid growth, up from 64% in 2011.

Henley believes the results suggest executives now see leadership development as a key to business growth. However, the recognition has little to do with economic turmoil – as much as 84% of respondents said they would be doing more or the same learning and development activity in 2012.

What do you think? Do you believe senior executives are waking up to the importance of next-generation leadership? Is grooming the next cadre of IT leaders a priority for CIOs?

It’s a tale of good over evil, where the IT professionals create something of beauty and simplicity that is usable, flexible and well designed. . . . → Read More: Technology that meets outcomes: Good IT is about backwards storytelling]]> Good IT tells a story. Once upon time there was an idea, a very good concept that used the best of technology to help people make the best of their skills.

It’s a tale of good over evil, where the IT professionals create something of beauty and simplicity that is usable, flexible and well designed. The story should always have a happy ending, but the potential for such happiness to be realised is dependent on a quirk in the narrative.

Unlike traditional story telling, good IT must always start at the end. There is no point starting a tale of technology implementation with the purchase of kit or the coding of bespoke software.

IT is never successfully implemented before the intended conclusion is imagined. Technology professionals looking to cut waste, increase efficiency and boost effectiveness must know what the business demands before getting down to the bits and bytes of implementation.

As such, the story of good IT must always be told backwards. IT professionals must start with the intended organisational outcome, having talked to line-of-business experts, and then go out and create necessary systems from in-house or external resources.

In short, everyone lived happily ever after because the IT people talked to the business experts and created systems that met a desired and achievable business outcome. The end.

Does that form of IT story telling match the way IT is implemented in most organisations? Do CIOs create the kind of narrative process that the business can understand? Or is too much technology still purchasing without a specific business result in-mind?

Managed services provider Claranet says 60% of medium-sized firm use cloud services, compared with 44% of small-sized and 48% of enterprise-sized organisations.

The research . . . → Read More: Medium-sized businesses beat small firms to cloud computing roll out]]> Who’s leading the way when it comes to the implementation of on-demand computing? Rather than big CIOs of blue-chip organisations, research suggests medium-sized businesses are leading the charge to the cloud.

Managed services provider Claranet says 60% of medium-sized firm use cloud services, compared with 44% of small-sized and 48% of enterprise-sized organisations.

The research polled 300 UK IT decision-makers and also found that 55% of respondents already use the cloud. Of this cohort, 27% were using cloud-based services in one form or another through 2011, while 28 per cent started using on-demand computing in 2010.

IT leaders, then, are beginning to push their departmental toes into cloud computing based-provision. While the move to the web might be too much of a step for CIOs charged with securing the data security of a disperate global business, the cloud looks to be a good fit for IT leaders at medium-sized firms, whose approach to compliance is not hamstrung by a wide geographical remit and a requirement to consider national borders.

This dominance of medium-sized firms is also some way away from preconceived notions that suggest small organisations are best placed to go on-demand. The theory suggests small firms, unencumbered by legacy software and hardware, will be able to more flexibly take advantages of the economies of scale offered through on-demand IT.

But what do you think? Is the cloud really the preserve of medium-sized firms, or are smaller and larger firms also taking a step towards on-demand purchasing?

In their posh leather covers, and tightly held and coveted by proud new owners, these devices often have the capacity to hook into the corporate network. The . . . → Read More: Three reasons why IT consumerisation fails: support, selectivity & security]]> Any regular user of public transport will know their return to the daily commute in the New Year has been accompanied by a plethora of shiny Christmas presents.

In their posh leather covers, and tightly held and coveted by proud new owners, these devices often have the capacity to hook into the corporate network. The theory behind the consumerisation of IT suggests CIOs are having to create the means to allow business executives to make use of such-high powered devices. Research, however, suggests that consumer-bsaed access is not an enterprise priority.

Research from cloud specialst Star suggests the most popular devices expected to appear at work in January are iPhones (69%), iPads (64%), Blackberrys (38%), Android phone or tablets (29%/21%), and Microsoft Windows phone or tablets (17%/10%). But the research also suggests three reasons why businesses are still struggling to help employees make the most of new consumer technologies:

• Support – There is a big mismatch between great gifts and the devices being supported by UK IT departments; Blackberrys are easiest for IT to integrate and Android devoices are the hardest
• Selectivity - Blackberrys, despite the continuing travails of manufacturer RIM, are  viewed as the most welcome device, with 54% of IT experts allowing their use in the workplace, as opposed to 48% and 45% for the Apple iPhone and iPad, and just 24% and 22% for Android phones or Microsoft-compatible phones
• Security – As much as 64% of technical staff complain it is increasingly difficult to manage the demands of users who want to use their own equipment at work; only one-in-four workplaces surveyed allow more than a tenth of workers to use their own devices for work

Why, then, is the consumerisation of IT progressing at such a slow rate? Are support, selectivity and security the key concerns for CIOs, or is consumerisation being hindered by other core business issues?