cio

Obama's CIO returns to work after temporary leave

The recently appointed federal chief information officer returned to work Tuesday, after temporarily stepping down in response to the arrest of one of his former employees on bribery charges.

Vivek Kundra took a leave of absence from his position as federal CIO last week after an FBI raid of the District of Columbia's office of the chief technology officer. The FBI raid coincided with the arrest of two individuals charged with conspiracy to commit bribery, including one man who worked in the government office while Kundra served as D.C. chief technology officer.

The defendant Yusuf Acar allegedly attempted … Read more

Open letter to Ellison critical of Oracle strategy

TechWeb Global CIO writer Bob Evans recently published an open letter to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. The heart of the note illustrates the point that Oracle's current strategy remains a burden to customers and that they are (finally) starting to get fed up.

The issue that needs your fresh thinking and attention in today's brutal economic climate is the one-size-fits-all, nonnegotiable 22 percent annual maintenance fee Oracle charges your customers.

As you well know, those customers are desperately trying to cut costs and conserve cash, and are exploring every possible option for doing so. You can help those … Read more

AMR Research: ERP vendors looking more and more like Detroit

I loved this post from CIO.com, reviewing an AMR Research report on the similarities between the big ERP vendors (SAP, Oracle, etc.) and Detroit's rusted Big Three: Chrysler, Ford, and GM. Money quote?

"Executives from one of the best-known ERP vendors recently talked to us about their 2009 product plans and strategy," writes Richardson. "At the end of the call, I expressed my astonishment that there were no plans to offer any part of their company's product line as software as a service."

As Richardson expected, the vendor's executives first response was … Read more

If you're borrowing from your vendor, you can't afford it

TechDirt tries to put a pretty face on vendor-financed software/hardware deals, but let's be clear: if you have to borrow from the vendor that is overpricing its software (or hardware) in the first place, you can't afford to buy it. If you can't afford to buy software (or hardware) with cash or bank financing, you can't afford to buy software.

I'm not sure why this is complicated for some. The last organization you want to borrow from to buy software is your software vendor. This lets the vendor completely control your destiny, not to … Read more

Open source: The new usability testing

Furthering my recent focus on de-risking IT investments for the chief information officer, a thought occurred to me while reading CMS Watch's analysis of portal usability testing: open source offers the most comprehensive way to ensure software actually works before you pay for it, and to tweak it to make it work how you want it to work.

This should be an obvious benefit to any CIO used to listening to endless rounds of demos from a vendor's sales engineers...only to discover that the difference between a PowerPoint and implementation is often stark, painful, and costly.

Enter … Read more

What CIOs can learn from Honda

On Tuesday The Wall Street Journal ran an interesting story on Honda's flexible manufacturing strategy (subscription required), and how it's helping the company stay ahead in a bruising economy. Today, chief information officers should be scratching their heads to figure out how Honda's manufacturing excellence can be applied to their IT operations.

While not exactly the same, Honda's "manufacturing dexterity" is similar to savvy CIOs' use of open source to keep IT flexible, avoiding long-term investments on proprietary software that has yet to demonstrate even short-term value:

The manufacturing dexterity of Honda's plants, now the most flexible in North America, is emerging as a key strategic advantage for the company. In an era of volatile gasoline prices, Honda can adjust production to inventory levels faster than its competitors. Earlier this year, when gasoline prices reached $4 a gallon, the company slowed production of its Ridgeline pickup truck at its Canada plant and increased output of better-selling vehicles.

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) understands this, with its CIO stating last year that open source lowers costs and boosts IT flexibility:

By using open source, the agency won't be locked in to using a proprietary software program, at least for the duration of the contract.

Not having sunk costs in a commercial software program also means the agency can move to a new program more quickly should its needs change. The general openness also means the agency could become a collaborator in the further development of the software itself.… Read more

Microsoft's CIO: 'I feel your pain'

I really liked this Ina Fried interview with Microsoft's new CIO, Tony Scott. It gives good insight into how Microsoft "eats its own dogfood," and how it can improve in understanding customer requirements.

On this last item, Scott's commentary was intriguing:

What I am trying to do is improve our world in all three areas. On the dogfood side, I think this is where maybe I bring some value as an outsider. I've been going to Microsoft for years...What I was always disappointed in was the relative degree to which Microsoft could talk to … Read more

While the CIO was sleeping, enterprises look elsewhere for innovation

With SAP and Oracle raising prices in an effort to test the limits of price elasticity, CIOs are devoting an ever increasing share of their IT budgets to feeding bloated technology vendors. As CIO.com's Bernard Golden suggests, however, such devotion to the old guard of IT is making it easier and easier for disruptive SaaS and open-source vendors to "ooze" into the enterprise:

...[J]ust because most of your budget is tied up feeding legacy vendors doesn't mean that the rest of your company isn't going to pursue new IT-enabled offerings, it just means … Read more

Money is tight. Buy more open source

CIO.com addresses the souring economy with this counsel for CIOs:

When IT directors take the time to build a business case demonstrating the ROI for these kinds of projects [training, etc.], they tend to get funded. Businesses aren't really interested in cutting costs for the sake of doing it, they just want to eliminate waste and get the most from every dollar spent on IT services. It falls to the CIO to demonstrate the value of IT initiatives to the business in real economic terms, and to counter the image of IT as a cost center.

Given that … Read more