CIO Talk Radio

Guest: Ben Grimes Title: CTO, Avocent Co. Guest: Barbara M. Crane Title: Vice President, IT Customer Service, ARAMARK Guest: Fred Broussard Title: Research Director, Enterprise System Infrastructure Software, IDC What would it be like if an end user could be offered real flexibility in the way they use technology? This would include maintaining central control with respect to security and who gets what, as well as an almost self-healing desktop environment less dependant on support personnel. Are we there yet?

Guest: Russ Daniels Title: VP and Chief Technology Officer, HP Enterprise Services Hewlett-Packard Guest: Steve Moffett Title: VP of Solutions Delivery, DSW Inc. There have been multiple best practices and methodologies proposed to minimize the risk related to software projects (iterative, agile etc.). With stakes so high, organizations are open to any and all suggestions and deploy internal/external resources to help select the right software project methodology and manage execution. Still we can count more failures than success. Are we missing something here?

Guest: Simon Crosby Title: Chief Technology Officer of the Virtualization and Management Division of Citrix (formerly CTO of XenSource) Guest: Tom Bishop Title: Chief Technology Officer, BMC Software Guest: Dr. Tim Marsland Title: Sun Fellow, Chief Technology Officer, Software Organization, Sun Microsystems Inc. Guest: Brian Stevens Title: CTO and Vice President, Engineering, Red Hat We've virtualized servers, networks, storage, applications, and I/O, and reduced the physical infrastructure footprint. The next step is to maximize performance. What avenues are being explored and what benchmarks can we reach or exceed?

Guest: Jean Grant Title: VP of Advanced Technology, March Networks Guest: Mark Kirstein Title: President of Multimedia Intelligence Whether it's used for security surveillance or as a resource for an enterprise, Video over IP has penetrated the enterprise. What used to be an operations issue is now one more headache for the IT leader. What does getting Video over IP buy us? While it's a bandwidth hog, could there be benefits worth the investment?

Guest: Mark Tonnesen Title: VP IT, CIO, Logitech Guest: Jack Staehler Title: Group Vice President, Technology, Orbitz Worldwide Most IT leaders don't take much needed long vacations. The fears are that on one hand, if something happens, they'll have a mess to fix. On the other hand, if every thing works smoothly in their absence, corporate management may wonder if they are worth the pay. Should/Can a CIO enjoy a long vacation?

Guest: John Rowell Title: CTO, Opsource Guest: Joe Burton Title: CTO, CISCO-Unified Communications Guest: Ben Pring Title: Research Vice President, Gartner IT Services and Sourcing Group SaaS promises big relief while causing new headaches such as: Identity Management challenges, difficulties in moving quickly and seamlessly from one SaaS offering to another, and greater difficulty in isolating issues within the brave new world of mashups.

Guest: N. Dean Meyer Title: Organizational Transformation Author and Coach, NDMA Guest: Christina Maslach Title: Professor of Psychology, Vice Provost, University of California, Berkeley With stakes continually rising, maximizing the use of IT talent and resources can become so demanding, it becomes counter productive. Burnt out and struggling with grueling hours toiling over ever growing task lists, IT soldiers suffer from battle fatigue with negative results ranging from acute productivity loss to resignation resulting in loss to an organization of valuable system/business knowledge.

Guest: Karl Triebes Title: Senior Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, F5 Networks, Inc. Guest: Mark Fabbi Title: VP Distinguished Analyst for Gartner's Networking and Communications Equipment practice Business growth brings its own challenges. With organizations delivering large web applications and content across the globe to multi-platform desktops and mobile devices, there are 2 delivery problems: 1) Scale (number of users and devices) and 2) The flexibility needed to support any device. These problems could create a bottleneck, but just adding more hardware is not the best solution. What can organizations do to enable their infrastructure to support practically limitless bandwidth and performance requirements for demanding needs both now and in the future

Guest: Susan Cramm Title: President Valuedance and Former CIO, Taco Bell Corporation Guest: Tim Sanders Title: Author, Speaker, former Yahoo! Leadership Coach and Chief Solutions Officer If being a CIO is a very demanding role that requires taking control of the IT function to reduce cost and get things done whatever it takes, are you in danger of being seen by your own crew as well as other business users, as an oppressor, control freak, and an alien who is making their life miserable?

Guest: Robert Friedrich Title: VP, Enterprise Data Architecture, Equifax Guest: Aaron Zornes Title: Chief Research Officer, The MDM Institute Guest: Jim Honerkamp Title: CIO, The Hillman Group Organizations are facing a problem: They don't have a unified view of the data spread across departments. Expensive technology tools claiming to magically solve this problem have not helped. Is this a problem with creating or sharing data? Is it an IT or a business problem?

Guest: Mark P. McDonald Title: Group VP Executive Programs, Gartner, Inc. Guest: Lloyd Taylor Title: Vice President of Technical Operations at LinkedIn Beyond the cool technology factor, can social network tools (networking sites, Internet communities, blogging software, et al) be adopted by enterprises to facilitate learning, internal and external communication, and improve productivity within the IT department and organization as a whole?

Guest: Molly A. O'Neill Title: Assistant Administrator and Chief Information Officer Office of Environmental Information U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Guest: Wendy Bell Title: CIO of GE Capital Solutions Fleet Services Guest: Pat Lawicki Title: Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Pacific Gas and Electric Company Guest: Ashok Singhal Title: Chief Technical Officer, Founder, 3PAR Guest: Molly A. O’Neill Title: Assistant Administrator and Chief Information Officer Office of Environmental Information U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Green IT initiatives are primarily to help improve the global environment rather than our balance sheets. While organizations may join the bandwagon for visibility, do they really care about it given that there is not a significant tangible ROI on related investments?

Guest: Stephen C. Savage Title: Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer, CA, Inc. Guest: Atefeh (Atti) Riazi Title: Chief Information Officer, NY City Housing Authority (NYCHA) Effective communication with internal/external constituents and customers is key to achieving success in business and IT. How well are we doing on that front? What does it take for an IT leader to become a maestro and conduct a communications orchestra where the right messages are getting conveyed, timely, to the right people and nothing gets lost in translation?

Guest: Dr. Howard A. Rubin Title: Senior Gartner Advisor, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Hunter College of the City University of New York, former Nolan Norton Research Fellow Guest: Dr. John J. Sviokla Title: Vice Chairman, Global Managing Director of Innovation and Research, Diamond Management & Technology Consultants Former professor, Harvard Business School When faced with a car skid, experts teach that you should “steer into the skid”, despite an instinctual urge to do the opposite. Similarly, when it comes to IT investment and its impact upon business performance, management reacts the same way. Just at the point of crisis, when companies should be investing more in technology, to drive business performance, management's reflex is to cut spending. While this is no surprise, since management's focus is mainly on IT's cost, not its value, how can IT leadership challenge such a management reflex?

Guest: Jane Landon Title: CIO, NYC Department Of Finance, NY, NY Guest: Charles Hunsinger Title: Vice President, Chief Information Officer, Corporate Express US There are numerous examples of failed IT initiatives and related analysis of why the failure happened. What can be done to proactively raise the flag? At what point, do we cut our losses vs. trying to save a sinking ship?