Mitch Betts's Most Recent Posts

I just read "Unleashing the Power of IT," by Dan Roberts and the folks at his consulting firm, Ouellette & Associates, which specializes in the "people issues" of IT. Here are two takeaways.

For example, here's my favorite, No. 5: High-performing CIOs allocate more time to talent development than to any other activity.

Dickie Oliver is on a mission to build an enterprise "know-how platform" so that 1.6 million employees across 110 countries can do a better job of selling chicken, pizza and tacos. And he isn't afraid to use some nontraditional IT approaches to do it.

An eclectic collection of my takeaways -- the things stuck in my head -- after Computerworld's Premier 100 IT Leaders conference in Palm Springs, Calif. For example, I heard IT execs say that business folks today have zero tolerance for downtime and expect applications to be "Apple-simple."

It sounds impossibly fast. But Avnet Inc.'s M&A playbook allows it to bring acquired companies into the fold (including IT systems) with speed and sensitivity.

CIOs are starting to grapple with the BYOT (bring your own technology) phenomenon, such as employee-owned iPhones and iPads. And some common themes are emerging: Voice and data service costs will be capped. Lost devices will be wiped.

First, there are the "unstoppable forces" of mobility, cloud computing and consumer technologies in the workplace. And that's just the one of the trends sweeping through enterprise IT, according to presenters at Computerworld's Premier 100 IT Leaders conference. There are nine more to go....

Conference-goers typically say that a key reason they go to conferences is for networking with other people. Yet, today, many attendees are heads-down checking their e-mail on a smartphone. Hardly a way to make connections with other human beings.

The biggest enterprise risks (overall) include regulatory compliance, fraud, talent flight and (ahem) "IT risk." Now, what can the CIO do to mitigate those risks?

Private clouds are scalable, elastic, shared and metered. And one more thing.

Is this the Holy Grail of IT management? Volvo and consultancy Arthur D. Little have developed an IT financial model that shows the probability that different IT roadmap decisions will generate real business benefits.

Facebook Places will make it pretty hard to keep secrets in the future, and could lead to some embarrassing situations. A location that makes perfect sense to your bar-hopping friends might not look so good to others. You now have the ability not only to tell people too much about your life, but also where you're doing it. Here are six scenarios to ponder...

Get ready for a wild ride: The traditional, standalone IT department will shrink by 75% and have a sharply diminished role. IT services will become business services. At the same time, the remaining IT professionals will need to help their employers cope with the future megatrends of business.

Accounting firms can be conservative about trying new technologies -- especially when they're worried about the security of financial data in the cloud. But their professional association is working to ease those concerns by identifying "preferred vendors." Will other industries follow?

The acquisition targets: Juniper, CA, Compuware, BMC, Novell and Symantec. Others say the brands Motorola and Palm may disappear, too.