Offering regional and national programs, CIO (and CSO) events bring together some of the most respected names and thought leaders in information technology and security. Presented by CIOs and other senior level executives, these invitation-only programs offer timely topics and strong networking. Learn More »
Social Responsibility's Strategic Benefits
December 15, 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM US/Eastern (GMT-5)
Join Ed Granger-Happ, CIO of Save the Children, for a discussion of how creating an organization that is socially responsible improves staffing, retention, leadership development and overall corporate health.
Working With and Communicating to Your Board of Directors
January 13, 2009, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM US/Eastern (GMT-5)
CIO panelists who will share tips and experiences working with their boards: Twila Day of SYSCO; Jeff O'Hare, West Corp.; Marc West, formerly with H&R Block.
IT's Role in Growing Mid-Market Companies
January 14, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM ET (GMT-5)
Mid-market Council members will share their companies' stories and challenges in driving or coping with growth. Panelists represent Veterinary Pet Insurance, Medicis Pharmaceutical, and Intrax Cultural Exchange.
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What are some current Google-scale challenges? Google hosts tens of millions of users on the consumer version of Gmail; 7 million photos are uploaded to Picasa every day; and 10 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. He noted that as vendors build more data centers, the cost will come down, creating more opportunities to build powerful applications.
"What if you had unlimited scalability?" Chandra asked the audience. "What projects would you be doing that you're not doing today? The opportunity is limitless."
Barriers to adoption of cloud computing are falling, Chandra says, though challenges remain. Namely, the big hurdles include security, user experience, reliability and offline mode, he says. With respect to security, Chandra takes a typical Google approach: He challenges the current state of enterprise security and contends that it's pretty weak.
For instance, he notes that one out of 10 laptops gets stolen, and from a corporate perspective, laptops store 60 percent of corporate data. If that information were in the cloud instead of on a laptop, the loss of the hardware would be trivial, he says.
"Our vice president [and president of Google Enteprise] Dave Girouard got his laptop stolen while he was at a San Francisco Giants game," Chandra says. "He called our CIO, and said, my laptop is stolen, now should I get a Mac or a PC?" That story elicited chuckles from the audience.
Other stories by C.G. Lynch © 2008 CXO Media Inc.
Just the basics, please. Sometimes we all need a refresher or we need to make sure our team and our colleagues are all on the same page.
Over 25 tutorials on everything from business intelligence to virtualization.