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CIO Executive Council

A Peer-Advisory Service and Professional Association for CIOs

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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What It's Like To...Be An Early Adopter

The RIM BlackBerry may be everywhere now, but in June 2001 it was still a novelty. At the time, RIM hadn't worked out all the security routines necessary for scaling the BlackBerry to...

By Joe Cleveland

December 15, 2004 — CIO —

The RIM BlackBerry may be everywhere now, but in June 2001 it was still a novelty. At the time, RIM hadn't worked out all the security routines necessary for scaling the BlackBerry to an enterprise such as Lockheed Martin, but we'd been looking for a means to help our senior executives utilize technology in a meaningful way. A lot of them were using e-mail successfully, but they had jobs that took them out on the road-with customers, on airplanes-and away from their PCs.

We were torn. My information security team had always tried to make sure that if we handed something to an executive, it would be bulletproof. But back then, the BlackBerry wasn't, and using it would practically run counter to our security policy. Furthermore, RIM didn't have a customer support structure sized for our needs; we would have to build one. Finally, the technology's reviews in the press were mixed.

In short, there was a whole lot of cause for concern.

The executives were clamoring for them, however, so we went ahead. And it worked. We actually had one say, "This is the best technology that I've seen, so I'll tolerate the problems until you get them solved." Coming from one of our demanding execs, that was a shocking comment.

Do I have one? Yes. My CEO at the time was one of my best troubleshooters. He knew to the minute when service was out and when it resumed.

I had to get one in self-defense.

-As told to Christopher Lindquist