Management: Features

Chris Fydler wasn’t always a sales manager in the IT industry. Before settling down to a “regular” job he was one of four men who won one of the most famous swimming races in Olympic history.

Five key points CIOs should know when considering big data

We all make mistakes. But when you work in IT, those errors can quickly go public.

There is a paradox in the technology that IT employs and deploys. As it becomes easier to use and simpler to manage, it is actually increasing in complexity. And there is a paradox within this paradox concerning how IT relates to the business. More on that in a bit.

At the same time, we also know that technology will change dramatically. Who could have predicted even 10 years ago that the CIO would have to deal with complications such as cloud security and virtualisation? To find out how the role will change in eight years, we tapped industry leaders, analysts and CIOs themselves to discover what the challenges of 2020 for the CIO will be like. Here's what we found out.

In recent years, consultants Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton kept hearing the same lament from corporate clients: "It we can't get our culture right, nothing works."

Five years from now, the CIO will be a better, faster, stronger version of today's top IT leader, practically running the company single-handedly. Or maybe other business executives will become more educated about IT and decide to hire cloud companies to do it all, leaving the poor CIO to wither, enforcing service-level agreements for a living. For almost as long as there have been CIOs, we've heard breathless speculation about whether the position will last, and if so, in what form.

Steven Bradbury not only won Olympic gold he also helped BenQ sell plenty of PCs

Are you a jargon junkie? Got an insatiable appetite for information? Do you rule over your company's systems with an iron fist, unwilling to yield control until someone pries the keyboard from your cold, dead hands?

A help desk can be a real lifesaver for employees, not to mention a productivity boost. A keyboard stops working, or Outlook crashes repeatedly, and a technician is just a phone call away. Even complex issues can usually be resolved internally, and relatively quickly, without needing an outside vendor.

Communication is the lifeblood of productivity. Businesses need to communicate with customers, managers need to communicate with employees, and workers need to communicate with peers. Effective communication is a crucial element of getting things done.

Email/calendar systems are the most important communications channels for enterprises, and deliver a reliable, cost-effective and secure mechanism for collaboration. An email system is typically used for a decade before suppliers are changed: organisations should apply significant due diligence in selecting an email system, given the criticality of email to their overall health.

A lot of technology professionals are frustrated with the IT profession. They can't find a job or move into the position that they want. They're always hearing that demand exists, but that's not what their personal experience has shown them. They feel they have the skills for the job, and have even put in the time it takes to be qualified or certified in the technologies in demand. But the requirements for IT career development remain elusive.

A new survey by the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists & Managers, Australia (APESMA) about the state of the Australian ICT workplace has highlighted the dire effect the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) has had on local IT professionals.

Managing director of Newport Capital, Lou Richard, has a wealth of financial advisory experience to distributors and resellers alike. He sat down with ARN to discuss some of the trends he sees in the market, and expectations for 2011.

If the IT industry isn’t already in a skills crisis, it is headed to one shortly.

A company’s brand is its core – it’s the heartbeat that pumps blood to the organs, or the queen bee that the workers strive to fulfil. It’s a critical component in determining a company’s market value, and one that goes beyond the marketing terms that people often dismiss as being spin. We take a detailed look at growing your brand in a competitive environment.

The CFO’s guide to managing key performance indicators

A few painstaking steps offer numerous payoffs, including lowering risks associated with change, eliminating resource conflicts and redundancies, and learning from successes and mistakes of the past - all of which help to save money.