technology

How To Keep Focus In Your IT Projects

Your company’s IT project implementation will bring a load of benefit to your organization as well as big transformations, whether from an individual business unit’s or whole organization’s, depending on the scale of the project. No matter its complexity, it will have a lot of challenges that an IT executive needs to overcome. I will discuss the big challenges in this article, together with how to overcome them, with the experience that I have learnt right in the field. Many IT supervisors and managers tend to think that the biggest hurdle in an IT project is the technical side: server and network infrastructure, connections, integrations, tests and all that’s related to bits, bytes and packets. They are right from their own perspective, but looking at the overall picture, the technical issues are essentially “bits and bytes” compared to other barriers, as we will see. Before beginning any project, we have to define why are we undertaking this project. What particular problem are we trying to solve? What is that particular thing that would make this project useless?

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How To Keep Focus In Your IT Projects

technology

IT Budget: Pinch Pennies Without Hurting Operations

Expected or not, as an IT manager, you may come into a situation where you have to cut your budget or put your staff – or maybe yourself – at a layoff risk. The catch is to make the budget cuts without hurting the operations. To say, this is the choking point. Of course, such a situation will come with dire consequences. Your IT department will go a few years back while the company moves forward. The gap between the next years IT requirements and next year’s infrastructure will be wider than today; and everybody should know that. To be frank, there are still some decisions you can take to pinch pennies.

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IT Budget: Pinch Pennies Without Hurting Operations

technology

IT Budget: Items To Remain

For the majority of IT managers and CIOs we have come to the closing of the year. The budgets are in front of us, and we have to decide how we can get the maximum out of the available funds. If we plan carefully enough, and with some luck, we can get through the rough times. Planning and doing it well is what we can and have to do. During planning, it is always easy to miss the items that are possible, but not so obvious at a first glance. Let’s start with out IT pros. Budgeting for staff is highly correlated with your business.

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IT Budget: Items To Remain

technology

Updating Your Company’s Mobile Collaboration Policy

Every year we see some more shift in mobile collaboration: employees become more mobile, workplaces are redefined , partners and customers require more mobility and quicker access. These shifts bring more pressure on the corporate IT, who is expected to match the technology adoption. Looking from the management perspective, we need to review and update our company’s mobile collaboration policy. A mobile collaboration policy is about matching the right technology with the company’s strategy. It is allowing the employees to securely collaborate on corporate documents anytime, anywhere and from any device. And, yes, the policy is different in every organization. There are three sides of the mobile collaboration policy: data, user and the corporation

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Updating Your Company’s Mobile Collaboration Policy

technology

Business Travelers: Here Are The Backup and Security Tips You Need

People often overlook backups of their personal computers and by the time they lose files they go around in panic trying to come back to normal (to avoid that March 31st is the World Backup Day – to remind people at least once a year to backup their documents). But if you are a business user, an executive, you cannot just offload everything to IT and go on with your heart’s desire. Not only you have corporate responsibilities but also there are tasks you need to take care of yourself. Here is my collection of tips from the field, from my interactions with the traveling business users. Backup first. The importance of having regular backups has been voiced by pretty much everybody and I will emphasize it once again. Have regular backups. Just purchase a small, USB drive and keep it connected to your computer and setup backup from Windows or Time Machine if you are a Mac user.

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Business Travelers: Here Are The Backup and Security Tips You Need

technology

IT Managers: Where To Use Self-Service To Save Time

IT managers for years are pressed by the cliché of “doing more with less.” IT pros already have their daily tasks of user requests, incidents, maintenance issues, upgrades and infrastructure changes and plus they are asked to keep up with the new technology. But the headcount remained flat during the years. One of the things the IT managers do is to implement self-service where they can in order to have a breathing space for their teams. And surprisingly, the end users have an acceptance on self-service, too. Of course it does not work for every situation, but here are some areas where it is working. If we are speaking about a large company with 1000+ users, user identity management is the first place to start. With user identity, I am talking about the user provisioning that starts with the hiring process, continues with onboarding until the employee finishes its contract. During the “corporate lifecycle” of the employee, there will be switching of departments, various password resets, new rights/permissions requests and the like.

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IT Managers: Where To Use Self-Service To Save Time

technology

The Art of Choosing a Web Host

When it comes to choosing a web host most of us don’t even know where to start. There are hundreds of companies out there each promising 99% uptime, unlimited everything, and knowledgeable support. While it’s tempting to just sign up for a free host, there are a lot of factors to keep in mind, and you’ll often find that a paid host is much more beneficial in the long run. How do you decide if a web host is reliable? There has to be a way to make an accurate decision. Let’s consider some basic criteria to help you choose the best plan. Cost This is the aspect most of us will look at first when choosing a hosting provider.

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The Art of Choosing a Web Host

technology

CIO Perspective: Make Sure Your Disaster Recovery Plans Are Complete

have talked extensively on disaster recovery (DR) plans and I was pretty sure that I have covered everything. From the concept of moving DR to the cloud , including the issues to consider , to CIO tips , from choosing the right DR software to the people perspective, I thought my words on the DR was complete. Wrong. Here is an overall check on your DR plans, right from the field, assuming that you already have your business impact analysis. Do you have a written plan? Is that obvious? Don’t be so sure. I have seen medium sized businesses who have “complete DR plans” in “somebody’s mind” that will be implemented when something goes wrong

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CIO Perspective: Make Sure Your Disaster Recovery Plans Are Complete

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CIO Perspective: How To Keep Your Sanity In a Merger/Acquisition

During the past months, I was a consultant in two acquisition issues in one small and one medium sized company. Financial, accounting and inventory issues were draining the employees’ and consultants’ times. IT issues did not seem as complex as the others but once the management tipped their toe, they understood how out-of-world things tend to go. Here are my notes for the CIO to keep his/her sanity during a merger/acquisition, freshly from the field. Mergers and acquisitions are hard for the business side – financials, books, records, inventories, whatever you name them but they are harder for the employees. During these times, as an IT executive be as transparent as you can. Whatever staff decisions are ahead, let your departments know. If you have the chance, try to reach everyone, even with a small online meeting

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CIO Perspective: How To Keep Your Sanity In a Merger/Acquisition