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Webcast: In the Google Apps Cloud: How to Achieve Your Business Objectives

Dec 3rd, '09, 1 - 2 pm US/Eastern (GMT-5)

Join Council member Brent Hoag, Director, Global IT, at JohnsonDiversey, as he discusses the adoption of Google Apps which has helped meet four corporate goals; sustainability, simplification, increased employee productivity and global collaboration.

Webcast: Collaboration Initiatives: Benchmarks & Best Practices

Dec 15th, '09, 4 - 5 pm US/Eastern (GMT-5)

Join Council members Ruth Thorpe, VP & CIO at the U.S. Pharmaceutical Operations of Sanofi-Aventis, and Gary Kuyper, CIO at Bethany Christian Services, as they speak about their collaboration initiatives and experiences in how and why they chose the social networking and collaboration tools they are using and their business goals for collaboration, and facing culture change challenges.

Data Overview: Collaboration Initiatives Field Guide: Benchmarks & Best Practices

This appendix to the Council Field Guide provides an analysis which discusses benchmarks for collaboration IT implementation costs, adoption rates and payoffs. The overview identifies top IT and business goals and satisfaction rates for collaboration initiatives as well as best practices and lessons learned for implementing collaboration IT.

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How to Lay Dead Technologies to Rest

Disney wants new business projects to plan for decommissioning obsolete or unsupported technology up front.

 

October 29, 2007CIO

Inside every company live systems that, although built on old technology, are core to the business and can't be migrated easily to more modern software or hardware. That's the nature of IT. Build and install an application today, knowing that in five or eight tomorrows, the technology will be outdated.

Project managers try to choose technology they think won't get obsolete quickly or one that future products can link to. Crystal ball stuff like that is tough and no one predicts accurately all the time. Even today's modern SAP or Oracle enterprise resource planning suite will be a legacy system someday.

Disney is trying to come at the problem another way: making business and IT people involved in project planning aware that, eventually, the technology they're using will have to be replaced. So that at the same time they're planning what to build, the project team can also plan how and when to take it apart.

"I tell business people that putting in a system is like pouring concrete. You're going to need a lot of jack hammers to get it out someday, and this is the opportunity to plan for that," says Steven P. Davis, chief architect and vice president of IT at Walt Disney Studios, a $9 billion movie company that's part of the $34 billion Disney entertainment empire.

Davis wants to classify every IT product at Disney as emerging, under evaluation, core or declining. "Domain leads" inside Disney—subject matter experts in, for instance, servers or application software—are assigned to write research papers about their technologies, to identify what's declining. These papers are then released in the fall, a couple of months before Disney's annual business planning cycle begins in December, Davis says. Davis spoke at the Society for Information Management's annual conference in Memphis in October.

That's enough time to get it in front of the planners before project decisions are made, he says. Some technologies, such as server software, are assessed annually. But others are moving so fast that quarterly reviews are the norm, for example, BlackBerrys, other PDAs and smartphones.

Once hardware or software is labeled declining, something must be done about it.

One rule Davis has is to keep within one version of the latest iteration of a piece of software. For example, if the most recent full version of Microsoft's database is SQL Server 2005, Disney will run no more than one version behind—SQL Server 2000. When SQL Server 2008 arrives, expected this spring, Disney, presumably, will step up the trudge migrating its databases from 2000 to 2005.

 
 
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WHITE PAPERS

Top 10 Habits of Highly Effective PMOs

This white paper outlines the top ten habits necessary to make your PMO more effective and maximize its benefit to your organization.
 

Why an Enterprise Project Portfolio Management, EPPM

Beyond traditional project portfolio management, Primavera P6 EPPM improves visibility into every aspect of the project manufacturing process.
 

Does Your Organization Need a Project Management Office?

Read this paper to find out if a Project Management Office (PMO) could be your solution.
 

Making Earned Value Management Work for Every Project

Earned Value Management (EVM) allows you to predict your project results within 15-20% of completion, in time to make a difference.
 

Project Management Office Best Practices

Once best practice basics are in place, the PMO has demonstrated improvement in project delivery and the office has gained credibility.
 

Automate and Accelerate with Project Management

This white paper asserts that the common thread that must run through all phases of project manufacturing is a Project Portfolio Management (PPM) system.
 

WEBCASTS

Extending Client Refresh - 11 Steps to Maximize Savings

11 Steps to Maximize Savings
 

The Last Software You'll Ever Buy? The Platform Approach to Development

Torn between "buy" and "build"? There is a third option that can give you the custom fit of an in-house build and t...
 

Beyond Installing ITPM Software: How a global company reduced risk and successfully implemented ITPM

Hear directly from one of your peers who has reduced risk and successfully implemented ITPM in this Live Webcast. ...
 

Informatica 9: What it means for the CIO?

Hear from Informatica's CIO on how Informatica 9 will improve...
 

The Case for Data Protection for SMBs

Every business needs a data back-up and recovery strategy. Without it, a severe storm or power outage could result ...
 

Enterprise Capture: Your Onramp to Business Process Automation

Date: Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Time: 11:00 AM PT/2:00 PM ET

Today more than ever companies are see...
 

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