Debate on CIO UK

Will there be a Cloud backlash?

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:07:00 GMT

CIO Debate on Cloud Computing part 6

I am privileged to co-chair the SDForum Cloud Services special interest group (SIG). But recently I was a bit taken aback, when, during the pre-presentation networking, one attendee told me "I'm starting an anti-cloud company."

Defining the business case for cloud computing

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:18:00 GMT

CIO Debate on Cloud Computing Part 5

This CIO Debate kicked off with two webinars hosted by our partners MWD Advisors. The webinars are still available and well worth viewing. But for the time pressed CIOs MWD have pulled out the most important slides from the webinar for you to view here. The essence of this Debate is the business case for cloud computing, we are not here to get overly excited by the technology, amazing though it is. Cloud computing continues to be a major topic of interest to enterprise IT organisations as they explore the strategic, economic and architectural value of Cloud-based services. 2010 will see every major IT vendor and service provider moving to offer or enable Cloud-based services. You must be prepared to reap the potential benefits while managing the potential risks.

Cloud Computing is the new SOA

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:46:00 GMT

CIO Debate on Cloud Computing Part 4

Just very recently, I read a tweet from ‘thought leader' Peter Hinssen, saying "Cloud Computing will remove the CIO from the board table". That was all the catalyst I needed to get off my backside and write some of my thoughts down (I'll explain why in a moment).Cloud Computing: building on SOA principlesSo let's get to the topic at hand: why is Cloud Computing the new SOA?From an IT or enterprise architect's point of view, there are definitely similarities. If we put the commercial and financial aspects of the Cloud Computing model to one side for a moment, and just concentrate on how Cloud Computing platforms work to deliver software functionality, then what we're looking at is a software service delivery platform - something that is conceptually at the heart of every SOA initiative. From an application and data integration standpoint, too, the principles of SOA shine through Cloud Computing very strongly indeed.I firmly believe Cloud Computing and SOA are strongly related at a conceptual level, too. Back in 2005 when I formed MWD Advisors, our main focus was SOA and its potential to help forge new, more structured relationships between IT organisations (acting as service providers) and their "customers" in other parts of a business. We believed that SOA - done right - could help organisations think about IT as a service delivery discipline from "cradle to grave": not only thinking about service delivery by pursuing ITIL, but also by looking at what the idea of service delivery meant from a software development and integration perspective.With that thought in mind, I see Cloud Computing as another route to achieving "service oriented IT" that is complementary to, and builds on, SOA adoption.Falling into the SOA trap?So why did that tweet about "Cloud Computing removing CIOs from board tables" make me finally put fingers to keyboard on this topic? Because as well as being excited about the potential of Cloud Computing to build on the good things about SOA, I'm worried that Cloud Computing could be dogged by some of the negative aspects of SOA too.Although some organisations have stuck with SOA and seen really significant results (cultural as well as technical), many organisations have also been turned off the idea - by grandiose claims, unsubstantiated hype, and unnecessary complexity exacerbated by industry standards bodies (the very organisations you'd hope would be aiming to make things simpler). All these things were fuelled by IT vendors collectively conspiring to create Towers of Babel - focusing too much on trying to shape the emerging market, carry out "land grab" manoeuvres and leapfrog the competition - and not focusing enough on needs of customers. It wasn't the IT industry's proudest moment. My worry is that the same could easily happen again with Cloud Computing. Hinssen's tweet came as he referred to an article in the FT by Tod Nielsen, COO of VMware, called "Time to remove IT from the board agenda". Its argument appears to be that virtualisation (and eventually Cloud Computing) will reduce IT complexity to the point where IT no longer struggles to deliver services in line with business needs - meaning that boards will no longer be preoccupied with how to deal with underperforming IT. This is bad enough as an example of crass oversimplification - but at least the article itself didn't go as far as suggesting that Cloud Computing would mean that CIOs lose their places at the board table. But you can see how these things snowball quickly...Let's get a few things straightLet's get a few simple, hype-free facts about Cloud Computing straight:1. Cloud Computing is not suitable for every workload or application.2. Different people will try Cloud Computing out for different reasons - some because of the financial benefits, some because it helps them do things quickly, and some because it helps them get closer to an outsourced IT capability. 3. Cloud Computing, just like virtualisation and SOA, don't eliminate IT complexity - but they are tools to help you manage complexity better and reduce it over time.4. Cloud Computing platforms won't replace on-premise infrastructure in the short or even medium term; it'll augment it - nothing ever dies. As we always say to our clients: today's IT world is a world of ‘and', not a world of ‘or'.Back in 2006 at MWD we launched an online petition against "SOA 2.0" - as a reaction to the way that certain IT industry players were focusing primarily on trying to create and own the market for a new set of supposed needs, rather than focusing on the needs of the day's customers as they struggled to get their heads around SOA. That petition got over 500 signatures in short order, including from some representatives of the vendors involved... and I hope I'm not being too self-centred in thinking that at least for a while, we helped to dampen the craziness.I'm really hoping we don't need to do the same kind of thing for Cloud Computing - but I'm keeping an eye out.

Evaluating Cloud Services: Five Tips

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:11:00 GMT

CIO Debate on Cloud Computing part 3

It's still the early days for real enterprise-level commercial cloud services offerings by IT providers. Most providers have only a handful of offerings to enable cloud services for clients or to directly deliver services. Organisations need to be skeptical about some claims made by providers about cloud services. There are critical differences between managed services repackaged as cloud offerings and true scalable, flexible, easily accessible, utility services.

What CIOs need to consider in defining their cloud computing strategy

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:50:00 GMT

CIO Debate on Cloud Computing Part 2

Cloud Computing continues to be a major topic of interest to enterprise IT organisations as they explore the strategic, economic and architectural value of Cloud-based services. 2010 will see every major IT vendor and service provider moving to offer or enable Cloud-based services. You must be prepared to reap the potential benefits while managing the potential risks.MWD Research Director Neil Ward-Dutton hosted the first MWD CIO Debate Webinar on the cloud computing, which can be accessed here, and below is an abstract of the issues covered. "There's a lot of hype and one vendor is already talking about Cloud 2.0 and there is still a lot of discussion on the scope of cloud computing," Ward-Dutton says of the confusing landscape CIOs face when considering adding cloud computing to their own organisations. Ward-Dutton began the webinar by demonstrating how we have arrived at cloud computing through a history of time-shared computing, application service providers (ASP), datacentre outsourcing and web services integration. MWD splits cloud computing into three distinct propositions for the CIO: the cloud (the internet); Cloud Computing platforms; and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), which are similar in that they all offer a plug-in and go experience. The key elements of all three are that there is a standardised and shared service, users pay on a consumption basis and there is an agreed level of service. CIOs considering a cloud strategy need to think along three elements of demand which match up to the opportunities that cloud computing offers. Considering cloud computing a CIO must evaluate the economic, architectural and strategic elements. The economic value comes from removing capital expenditure involved in investing in new applications and adding new tools to the operating cost. As an architectural tool, cloud computing has already gained a reputation for quickly delivering requirements. Strategically cloud computing has many similar advantages to outsourcing, you the CIO don't have to own the infrastructure your organisation trades on. Private clouds have entered the lexicon of late and Ward-Dutton describes these as a valid offering to CIOs, but outlines that what they really are is cloud inspired computing as they often entail the infrastructure still being in the ownership of the CIO. "Cloud is not a model of technology ownership," he says. Where MWD see cloud really helping CIOs is in the short term needs that are placed onto IT teams, examples include testing and developing new applications or online marketing campaigns. "You can match your cloud investment exactly. So a three month marketing campaign means a three month rental of a cloud application." MWD expect to see SaaS dominate the adoption of cloud computing as it alleviates the need to put capex into applications that do not help distinguish your organisation. Therefore sales automation tools like Salesforce.com make good sense.

Making the business case for cloud based computing

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:52:00 GMT

CIO Debate on Cloud Computing Part 1

If you were hit by a car last year and woke up in 1973 wearing a flower print nylon shirt, skin tight leather jacket and Cuban heels, then you may have missed the technology world becoming obsessed with clouds. Now before you think your return to 2010 has been corrupted and the IT world has gone insane and now lies on its back in fields and pastures looking for cat shaped fluffy white weather clouds, do not panic. Cloud computing is the newest way of delivering IT applications and services. Like any new technology it has been spun and hyped and put into quadrants by every vendor and market watcher you can think of. The net result for CIOs is total confusion. So CIO and its editorial partners MWD have set out to make it clear what cloud computing offers as a technology by focusing on the most important issue of all, what is the business case? This CIO Debate is structured around two webinars that MWD have put together as well as a series of articles that will appear within the Debate channel of CIO UK, so please keep returning and watch our Twitter feed for the latest articles. You can listen to the webinars now here. We've chosen to focus on cloud computing because as Neil Ward-Dutton of MWD says, "In 2010 almost every vendor will offer a cloud product". Ward-Dutton says "it is vital that CIOs understand how cloud fits your IT portfolio". Throughout this Debate we plan to look at the business value that cloud computing offers, as well as the business risks from issues such as network reliability. It promises to be an interesting conversation and I hope many of you will contribute. To take part either follow CIO on Twitter to receive updates and comment on articles, register to leave comments on our articles or connect to our community on LinkedIn.

Why BPM should be on the CIO's agenda in 2010

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:04:00 GMT

CIO Debate on BPM Part 13

Last month, Gartner published predictions that suggested that modern business environments are more knowledge-based and unpredictable than ever before and need technology that can support this state of affairs (http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1278415). The current crop of Business Process Management (BPM) solutions have done a great job at taking existing processes, modelling them, finding optimisations and eliminating errors. However, the overarching promise of BPM - to introduce automation and make business processes more responsive - has not yet been realised.

BPM -- the CIO's smartest idea ever

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:07:00 GMT

CIO Debate on BPM Part 12

About the author: This article is taken from a post that first appeared on the Mike Gammage's blog, he is VP at BPM specialists Nimbus.

BPM allowed Irish Life Corporate Business to go digital

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:57:00 GMT

CIO Debate on BPM Part 11

Irish Life is a large but very traditional pensions and insurance service provider. Its Corporate Business division completed the digitisation of the division through using business process management techniques, shifting a paper based organisation into the digital world. It was a major change in how Irish Life Corporate Business operated, Paul O'Neill, Head of IT & New Developments used constant engagement with the staff and ensured they felt they were part of the process to ensure the project was a success.

Why does everyone get BPM wrong?

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 10:29:00 GMT

CIO Debate on BPM Part 10 Reclaiming the business by the business and for the business

Everything you have heard to date about Business Process Management is wrong, says Lombardi president Phil Gilbert. BPM is not about SOA, or BRM, in fact, it is not about a technology at all! It's about reclaiming the business by the business and for the business; a business that's been stolen by technologists over the past 40 years.

Support for BPM from IT leaders

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:13:00 GMT

CIO Debate Part 9: Opportunity winning over hype

This CIO UK debate opened with the discussion on whether business process management was a window of opportunity for CIOs or just a load of hype from software vendors. Here are the initial responses from members of the CIO LinkedIn community, add your voice, let me know what you think. Global viewI suspect most successful business have had BPM at the core of their activities for sometime - they probably just didn't realise it was called BPM. The current wave of technological innovation does make BPM considerably easier, but BPM does not exist because of it.

Top tips to prevent BPM failures

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 12:43:00 GMT

CIO Debate BPM Part 8

"BPM projects go wrong for the reason that all IT projects go wrong - if you approach them from the point of view of an IT installation, you're in trouble from the outset," explains Burton Group analyst Richard Watson. Not IT but the business case should be guiding the project, he argues. "Too often it's a case of: ‘Let's install the software and then find a project to support it'."Colin Earl, CEO of BPM vendor EnterpriseWizard recommends starting a BPM project by picking a single business process and automating it. A company can then focus on the process that is causing the most problems or is most costly. "This means that the CIO can then define precisely what currently happens in that process and what needs to happen for it to be more efficient and auditable," says Earl. "At this point the focus is not on the technical solution, but rather on the business needs."Increasing the flexibility of the way that a company achieves a business objective (aka: the business process) is often limited by IT systems. But it is first and foremost a business challenge. BPM failures often approach BPM as a project. "BPM isn't about buying an infrastructure. It's more like a lifestyle choice. That could require a top-to-bottom reorganisation," Watson says.However, defining business goals is just the first step. "There are other areas where I can see clients struggling, for example if they have ineffective data management. And there needs to be clear communication between departments - one side of the business might have a completely different definition of a customer than another part. If they can't agree on a common definition, they're struggling," he says.The development method too plays an important role. The recommended way to go is a so-called 'agile development' model where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organising teams. The agile process furthermore allows for frequent adaptations during the development process, thereby ensuring that IT meets the business requirements. "Sophisticated implementations are probably not going to be perfect the first time and will require several iterations to get right. So set expectations appropriately," advises Earl.As the BPM space itself matures, the market is doing its part to tackle implementation issues. After years of standards confusion, the industry is now rallying behind the recently ratified BPMN standard that was drafted by the Object Management Group (OMG), points out Watson.Vendor tools also have become easier to use, eroding the need to hire armies of consultants to ensure BPM success. "Previously there was a bit of a conflict of interest because vendors could make more from support," Watson says.

Top benefits and concerns of putting BPM in the cloud

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:37:00 GMT

CIO Debate BPM Part 7

Enterprises are displaying a great hunger for using a public cloud to host business process management (BPM) software, argues Gartner vice president Michele Cantara. As concerns about security persist, few have taken the plunge so far. But Cantara claims to be seeing early signs that firms are losing their inhibitions over security. In the meantime, the use of BPM in private clouds is already growing at a fast pace.

5 steps to help CIOs choose the right BPM system

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:35:00 GMT

CIO Debate BPM Part 6

The focus on business process management (BPM) as an organisational discipline has grown rapidly, particularly over the last year as the slower economy forced "doing more with less" to the top of every CIO's agenda.

Business Process Management: It's the organisation, stupid

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:23:00 GMT

CIO Debate BPM Part 5

Although the idea of business process management (BPM) has been around for nearly a decade - and before that, the concept of business process re-engineering (BPR) held industry's attention for the previous decade - the market for tools, technologies and techniques to help deliver on the BPM promise is only now coming into maturity. Indeed, in the current uncertain economic environment BPM stands out as one market area where there's very significant opportunity for growth.

Engineering an approach to BPM

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:18:00 GMT

Zensar boss, author and BPM guru Ganesh Natarajan shares his experiences

Back in the summer CIO had an opportunity to meet process management guru Ganesh Natarajan. The relaxed Indian has authored a number of books on business process management, outsourcing and knowledge management (KM) and was in London lecturing at the London Business School. Natarajan moved into IT from engineering and discussed with CIO the lessons he learnt as an engineer which he now applies to process management in the IT world. He is vice chairman and CEO of Zensar, which specialises in business process outsourcing from Pune in India. Natarajan had four years as an engineer in the manufacturing of materials. "I moved into IT as there was a need, and I liked it so much I have stayed with IT," he says. Asked what his greatest lesson from engineering was he says, "Engineering is to take a larger perspective and how to address a real problem. Engineers do not get carried away by the problem at hand, but look at the cause of the problem," and you sense that Natarajan doesn't believe the same is true of the IT world. The CEO takes a similar view to business process management (BPM) and outsourcing, describing it as "real business" rather than an IT solution. "You need a good process, then add the technology. It starts with someone being humble enough to want to change," he says of the need for senior level leadership in any BPM change. Zensar has gained a lot of customers and experience in the retail and financial sectors as a provider of business process outsourcing services and business process technology, amongst its top flight customers is US retail giant Walmart. From Pune it develops systems for merchandising, supply chain and purchase order as well as the full gambit of processes retailers require end-to-end of their organisations. "Supply chain is always the problem area," he says, adding that "Walmart is always optimising its supply chain". As a result, Natarajan sees BPM as a unique opportunity for CIOs to play a major role in the improvement of supply chain and back office functions of their organisation. "Use your budgets to create and RoI," he advises, before adding that he sees CIOs increasingly approaching his organisation looking for advice on how to use business intelligence (BI) applications across the organisation to improve BPM. "IT now drives business strategy rather than just being part of the strategy," he says of the marriage of BI and BPM, led by CIOs. Natarajan joined Zensar in 2001 as CEO and almost immediately set out on a BPM project for the organisation. "They wanted me to look at the organisation all over again. So I had a mandate to build a major new company and to find a reason for it. So we became more innovation led in our processes, so we can show people how we can be innovative for them." Zensar has had the National Grid as a client for 16 years now and prides itself on scaling its existing relationships upwards. Although busy lecturing and running Zensar, Natarajan still finds time to write, he is currently penning a book on the lessons Africa can learn from India's recent success as a technology and business hub CIOs rely on. The books of Ganesh NatarajanBusiness Process Reengineering One of the most prevalent concepts in the business today, reengineering involves a fundamental rethinking and redesigning in the way we work. This book, one of the very first to emerge from India reveals a fascinating picture of what business process reengineering (BPR) can do to re-energise an organiosation. Implementing BPR - An Agenda for the CEOFor most business managers, corporate heads and leaders of organisations, Business Process Reengineering is no longer a mystery. It is an opportunity, to chart out a new future for the organisation, to destroy or obliterate age old systems that are too slow to function in the IT era. Inspired!Inspired! investigates the essence of inspiration in a series of interviews with exceptional individuals some of whom lead regular lives like us while many are renowned leaders in diverse fields such as business, social activism, education, sport, the government, the arts and the media. Knowledge Management - Enabling Business GrowthThis book explains how technological and conceptual synergies can be deployed for conversion of knowledge to knowledge management in the organisational context. Written by professionals who have tremendous expertise in consulting and developing knowledge management solutions, it captures the essence of the times that is being referred to as the dawn of the knowledge society. Unleashing the Knowledge Force- Harnessing Knowledge for Building Global CompaniesThis book traces the impact of knowledge force in the early stages of a business and throws light on the different frameworks of knowledge force relevant to businesses. Further it presents a new Knowledge Management Maturity Model (KMMM) for describing different stages of knowledge maturity in keeping with the phase of business growth. The applicability of the model across various industry sectors is also discussed. Winds of ChangeIndian IT- an insider's view In this book, that will prove to be of immense practical value to IT professionals and entrepreneurs.

BPM without busting the budget

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:01:00 GMT

Complexity determines tool choices

Business process management (BPM) requires BPM tools, right? Not always. In some cases, there are other process management tools that can do the job for less. Managing a global transportation network featuring shipments by truck, plane and ship is difficult enough. But managing the sea of data that surrounds that network can be even tougher, and that was becoming a challenge for US logistics company YRC Worldwide. Many of the shipments the $9.6 billion company moved were accompanied with corresponding paper documents, including purchase orders, bills of lading, tracking stickers, proof of delivery and, ultimately, an invoice. What's more, much of that paperwork was exactly that-paper, says Michael Rapken, CIO at YRC and executive vice president. "The [order-entry] process was manually intensive. Customers could make mistakes on forms. So could our order-entry people," he says. Mistakes were one issue, productivity was another. It was simply taking too long to complete each transaction. YRC didn't look at the problem in isolation. Rapken and his team realised that the order-entry issue was an opportunity to rationalise key parts of their business processes and IT structure, parts of which run on mainframes. But the company was not about to rip up and replace its existing systems.

BPM allows CIOs to take control of their destiny

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:34:00 GMT

Investments in BPM tools remain a key priority in many firms

Attracted by their performance-improvement potential, business stakeholders often adopt such tools from inside their functions and fail to recognise the overall impact at the enterprise level. The consequence? Many tool-based initiatives are counter-productive, making already intricate processes even more complex and difficult to support. As costs swell and projects become...

Is BPM just hype, or a window of opportunity?

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:17:00 GMT

The market for BPM-related tools and services is one of the fastest-growing in IT

Companies have been focused on understanding and improving their business processes since the days of Adam Smith and F.W. Taylor. In the 1990s the term 'business process reengineering' (BPR) swept through industry, driven by Hammer & Champy's blockbuster book Reengineering the Corporation - along the way practically creating today's multi-billion dollar packaged business application suite market (enabling companies like SAP to rise to prominence) and driving huge investment in distributed and client-server style IT systems. So far so good, then - at least for the IT industry. When Howard Smith and Peter Fingar wrote their book BPM: The Third Wave in 2003, the microscope was once again turned on the management of business processes - but this time the talk was all about enabling a whole-lifecycle approach to managing processes, and automating them through specialist technology toolsets that have come to be known as BPM Suites or BPM Systems (BPMSs). Large IT vendors like IBM, Oracle, SAP, Software AG and TIBCO, as well as a large group of specialist players, now sell BPMS tools.

Bwin CTO says DNA analysis is formula to alignment

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:41:00 GMT

Know your organisation well before demanding alignment says Thomas Kiessling, CIO UK Debate part 6

Thomas Kiessling is CTO at Austrian online betting and entertainment giant's Bwin. He's also been e-commerce director for travel systems provider Amadeus and involved in the internet as a COO, analyst and network director. With Bwin transforming to become not only a destination for sports bets and gaming, but also the supplier of online services to other gaming brands, Kiessling is well positioned to debate the merits of software customisation and alignment. "I've tried so many models," he smiles when asked if he thinks CIOs should demand that the organisation align with the IT systems, rather than systems being re-engineered. "CIOs must understand the DNA of the organisation that you are implementing for." He advises CIOs to analyse whether they are strong within the organisation and have the power and support to be as bold as Adrian Dilworth has been at Vodafone Qatar. The organisational culture also has to be analysed carefully, with the CIO considering whether it is a creative body or a homogenous outfit. Kiessling is honest enough to admit that in a recent project he tried to introduce production planning processes to an organization where it was not suited, "our DNA was to react to business opportunities in an agile and often ad-hoc manner, the organization was not ready to embrace a more formal production planning and portfolio process."As to getting organisations to align with major applications sets like Oracle or SAP, he agrees with the overall sentiments of our CIOs. "We introduced SAP last year, there is nothing special about our general ledger," he said of standardised approach he took. Kiessling is in a luxurious position, Bwin as an online business is built on IT foundations. " It is a core strategy of the company to have IT define the ‘how‘, i.e. the IT architecture, tools, IT processes, etc., however, to have product owners and business at large, to define the ‘what', i.e. developers, testers, and even to some extent architects, and application engineers, within their respective product lines (like sports betting, poker, marketing tools, etc). This means that these IT functions are directly tasked by product owners within projects or release teams (we are running monthly Sprint release cycles). Thus we give as much accountability of and direct access to productive resources, which is very much in line with agile development methodology," he says.

ABB aligned its business to SAP successfully

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 17:13:00 GMT

The business must align with the applications IT delivers. CIO UK Debate part 5

As Ellis-Braithwaite describes in a full CIO UK interview, ABB undertook a group wide project to standardise its enterprise resource planning (ERP) on to SAP. In the UK and for Ellis-Braithwaite, this meant consolidating the data of eight different ERP applications onto SAP, and to make things more difficult, not one of them was SAP.

Packaged or bespoke, CIOs must know the business case first

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:33:00 GMT

The business must align with the applications IT delivers. CIO UK Debate part 4

IT to be consultativeThis is indeed a thought provoking topic and one that many have strong feelings about.

Alignment is finding the best deal for the organisation

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:28:00 GMT

The business must align with the applications IT delivers. CIO UK Debate part 3

Vodafone Qatar CIO Adrian Dilworth believes that the business should be putting more effort into aligning with IT, rather than the other way round. In recent years CIOs have been putting considerable effort into ensuring the IT division is well aligned with the business. But now many applications are more than software for the business, they are best practice for operating the business. Leading members of the business and technology community have responded to the views of Dilworth, Ian Dobb and Rorie Devine.

Business must align with IT, says Vodafone Qatar CIO

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 11:43:00 GMT

The business must align with the applications IT delivers. CIO UK Debate part 2

This month's CIO UK Debate is the result of a conversation the editorial team had with Adrian Dilworth, the CIO of Vodafone Qatar, the latest network launched by global mobile operator. Dilworth enjoys challenging assumed attitudes and comes at the issue of alignment of IT with the business from a very different angle; he believes that in many cases the business should align with IT.

IT-business alignment is still on the CIO agenda

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:39:00 GMT

The business must align with the applications IT delivers. CIO UK Debate part 1

Read the full CIO UK interview on how Rorie Devine bet on his staff at Betfair here.Ian Dobb was CIO for Channel 4 for 10 years, read the full CIO UK interview of his career with the famous broadcaster