Technology

I asked the following question on LinkedIn earlier this week and received some very insightful responses:

What are the top challenges in IT organization’s today?

In reading the various magazines, blogs and websites out there (CIO.com, etc) on the subject, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are many many issues facing IT groups today. What are the top challenges that most IT organizations are facing today? What is keeping CIO’s up at night in today’s environment?

If you haven’t tried out LinkedIn yet, you should…there are some great folks over there as well as some excellent information available in the Questions / Answers Section.

I received some excellent responses…and most were on target with my own thoughts.  Prior to asking the question, I thought that the issues that were in the front of many IT leaders were:

• Find and Keeping Talent
• Business / IT Alignment
• IT Strategy
• Outsourcing

The responses received from other LinkedIn users seem to back up my original thoughts.  There were other issues listed (System integration, Merger and Acquisition Due Diligence, etc) that were very interesting to see as well.

It’s interesting to get the feedback from people in the field on what they see as huge issues.  An interesting point to note, none of the responses seemed to be from CIO’s of an organization…all were from people who seem to be at a more tactical level than strategic level.

Why is this important?  To me, it says that there are a lot of people in IT with the business savvy to see the challenges that is facing them and their organization.  Why then are these same IT folks being told that they aren’t “business savvy” and need to start speaking “like business people“?  It sounds to me like there are plenty of business savvy people in IT but very few people on the ‘business’ side of things that have really reached out to these folks to get their opinions.

Any additional challenges for IT groups that have been overlooked (either in my post or in the responses on LinkedIn)?

If you’re in business today (especially in the Information Technology space), you’ve no doubt heard of the need to ‘align IT to the business’ or something similar…you may have even heard me talk about it (see here and here). The majority of my time in my consulting practice revolves around the idea of alignment and that’s also what I’ve devoted this blog to (although I sometimes ramble on about other topics). I live and breath in the space of alignment of IT and business…..and I’m always perplexed by the lack of understanding of what it truly means to align the technology of an organization with the business goals and practices of an organization.

What does alignment really mean? It’s simple (not really…but…): it means that you look at every aspect of your business to ensure that you are taking on the IT projects that will bring you the most benefit. These projects must fit into your strategic goals and must deliver value to your organization. It’s not really that simple..there are always political agendas, pet projects and personal quirks as well as other issues that creep into the equation. which complicates things.  But…for the purpose of a definition, it’ll do.

So…what does any of this have to with Information Technology Leadership? Read on and see.

With proper leadership in IT groups, and proper leadership within the organization, the act of alignment can be made much simpler. Let me ’splain.

As part of the push to align business and IT, there’s been a lot of talk of bringing ‘business savvy’ people into IT groups. To do this, organizations are sending their IT staff to business classes and MBA programs and hiring technology savvy business professionals to run IT groups. This approach is a good one because it gets your IT staff closer to the business and helps IT understand the terminology and business ’speak’ as the rest of the organization.  This approach is flawed though as it lacks the two-way communication that is required to truly align business and IT.

Training your IT staff on the business lexicon is all well and good…but what about training your non-IT staff on what the IT group does and what it can do for the organization? The current approach is one-way. It turns ‘techies’ into business people….but what about putting the onus of responsibility on both sides? Make the non-IT staff truly understand what IT is, what its capabilities are, and what they can do for the organization and you might open up the communication channels even further.

Mike Schaffner had a great quote in a recent blog post (read it here):

I once had a CEO tell me that one of the things she wanted in IT was people that “talk like us” meaning they understand business issues and can explain things in business terms

It’s great that the CEO understands that she needed to have IT people that understood business principles and the business lexicon. Wouldn’t it be just as important for that CEO and the rest of the organization to understand basic IT principles and what technology can do for them? More importantly, doesn’t it make sense to take some time to understand the people that work in IT?

Rather than making “them” (IT) talk like “us” (business people), why aren’t we looking for more of a two-way communication medium? Rather than forcing IT professionals to change, why not look at the organization as a whole and change the way it operates. Integrate the Information Technology professional into the organization so they can be involved from the start on any new projects and can quickly provide input on the best way forward.

So…you might still be asking “what does this have to do with Information Technology Leadership”. Well…this is what should be at the forefront of every IT leader in the world. Scratch that. It should be at the forefront of every leader in the business world.

Before you make IT personnel ’speak business’, why not take the time to understand what drives them? Understand why they do what they do. Most times you’ll find that IT Professionals like to solve problems using technology….which is exactly what organizations need in abundance these days. Stop forcing ‘them’ to act and speak like ‘us’ and start working together to understand what IT can do for the organization and what the organization can do with IT.

In order to “lead IT”, organizations need to look for leaders on both the IT side and business side who can bridge the gap between the two worlds and help fold IT into every aspect of the business. Bring IT into the strategic planning sessions…heck….let your IT staff take a crack at leading your strategic planning sessions. You might be surprised to find that you’ve got some very savvy folks in IT today who haven’t been given an opportunity to show their true value.

If you truly want to align IT with business, you must first lead change within the organization.  Lead the organization into a new reality and help everyone understand that IT is more than a bunch of ‘techies’…the IT group can be one of your most important assets into today’s competitive environment.

Organizations need to ensure that the proper leadership is in place within both IT and the rest of the business.  These leaders need to understand that IT and IT personnel can be a competitive advantage.  Organizations need to pull IT into the organization and make it an everyday part of business life rather than a necessary evil. To truly align IT with the business, leaders to lead the change that makes people say “I’ve got a meeting with IT tomorrow and I’m excited about what they can do for me” rather than “I’ve got a meeting with IT tomorrow and I’m not looking forward to it.”

One of the projects I’ve been working on over the last few months is the implementation and customization of a Content Management System (CMS). The CMS chosen by my client is Sitecore CMS, which is garnering some attention for its somewhat unique approach to the world of CMS and was recently named a “Cool Vendor” by Gartner.

Sitecore’s product is pretty interesting. It’s a .NET based product that gives you the ability to (er…forces you to) create everything from the ground up for your website. Everything is customizable…layouts, templates, everything. The product is delivered as a .NET ’solution’…in other words, you can open the ’site’ in Visual Studio and customize to your hearts content.

Personally, I like this approach because it provides a great deal of flexibility and provides developers with a way to easily ‘hook’ into a Sitecore website and customize it…..but it isn’t the right solution for every problem. If you are looking for a CMS, or just interested in CMS platforms, you should look into Sitecore. If you are looking to buy, expect to pay more than some CMS platforms and less than others
Here’s a quick Hit List that you can use to determine if Sitecore is right for your organization:

Sitecore is a good option if:

• You have a good sized website and/or many websites to host.
• You are a Microsoft shop with SQL Server, Windows Servers, etc.
• You have a development staff who are fluent with .NET (C#, ASP.NET) or are OK with paying an outside firm for this work & expertise.
• You are willing to invest in a long-term approach to migrating all your websites and web apps into a .NET environment (this gives you your biggest ROI in my opinion).
• You are OK with looking at a payback period of over 1 year. My personal opinion is Sitecore is at about 18 to 24 months or longer depending on what you spend to implement and what customization you have done.

Sitecore is probably not the best option if:

• You can’t spend much money
• Your payback period is less than a year
• You have no development staff with .NET experience nor do you want to pay for outside development
• You aren’t a Microsoft shop
• You have a few sites and don’t need .NET integration

For the developers out there…if you’re interested in jumping on a bandwagon and learning a new product, there is a tremendous need for sitecore developers in the marketplace. I’m contacted ~3 to 4 times a week for resources. You can download an ‘express‘ version from Sitecore for free (not to be used as a commercial site) and join their Developer network to jump in and start learning.

Sitecore is a good product and provides a very good ’skeleton’ for a CMS but might not be the best selection for anyone looking for a quick turn CMS and/or quick payback.

I’ve been a little quite lately due to being extremely busy with the Boy Scouts of America. We recently migrated the main site from a flat file HTML system to a content managed system using Sitecore CMS. The migration was a learning experience due to Sitecore’s completely customizable architecture…but…we got it done.

The new site (you can see it at http://www.scouting.org and compare it to the old site at http://old.scouting.org) went live on Tuesday Feb 19 and has been very stable. We’ve had a few minor hiccups (broken links, etc) but overall, it’s been good. The front page is 100% html and the rest of the site is 95% Sitecore driven…the front page will continue to morph as we change the design and add a few more Sitecore driven features.

Remind me to tell you about my thoughts on Sitecore one day. For now….i’d say sitecore is a good product but don’t look for an immediate ROI upon first implementation. Sitecore takes a lot of upfront customization but delivers long term benefits.

Now that this phase is over, we are on to phase 2 with some really interesting functionality and 35+ more sites migrated into the system.

I hope to be able to get back to more regular blogging schedule soon.

Scot Herrick over at CubeRules had a very interesting post today titled “Innovating Like Crazy; Executing Like Crap“. Great title and great thoughts in his post, including this one:

Innovation is essential to your work. Yet delivery of the innovation is the outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace that you provide to your work.

As Scot says, Innovation is essential. In fact, its critical….but execution is as critical (and dare I say more critical) because without the ability to deliver your innovations to a market, the innovation has been nothing more than an exercise to see what cool stuff can be developed.

Need an example of Innovation needing execution?

Easy…one word: Xerox.

Many innovative ideas that have shaped our world today came out of Xerox PARC….but none of these ideas were turned into marketable products that made money for Xerox. Think about the following list of innovations…and think about how poorly Xerox executed the delivery of these products to market

• The Graphical User Interface (GUI)
• Mouse
• Laser Printing
• IPv6 (arguably a standard and not commercialized by anyone)
• pervasive computing
• and many more

The GUI was commercialized by Apple and has become the standard for interacting with computers…as has the mouse.

Xerox PARC was (are they still?) the research and development arm of Xerox but very little of the innovative ideas that were developed there became mainstream because of Xerox. They lacked the ability to excute on delivering these ideas to market.

NOTE: I’m sure that there are those readers that disagree with me about Xerox PARC and Xerox’ inability to execute to deliver marketable products….and you may be right. My knowledge of the situation is from reading many articles, books and speaking with people who were around at the time, but I’m not an expert in this field by any means.

The moral of this story is this: Before you innovate (or at least while you innovate), make sure you think about how to execute and deliver the new ideas you are cooking up.

Thanks for the idea for the post Scot.

Technorati Tags: Innovation, Execution, Delivery, Xerox PARC

I finally got my new 30MB/15MB FIOS service installed (see here for more info)

Wow…here’s the result of my speed test:

Technorati Tags: Verizon FIOS, Broadband

Just finished upgrading my Verizon FIOS Internet to 30Mbps download speed and 15Mbps upload speed…what a wonderful thing technology is. Now I can access my home network with VPN without crawling like it has been doing.

Of course, I don’t NEED this speed but it is sure nice to have

Technorati Tags: verizon, FIOS, 30Mbps/15Mbps

I’ve been using Thunderbird for about 3 months since moving from Gmail to Fusemail and have been fairly happy with it. There are a few quirks that I could do without and/or would like to see changed but I’m working with/around them.

The one thing that Thunderbird is missing ‘out of the box’ is a calendar. Thankfully, the Lightning add-on takes care of that (and does a great job of it). Lightning lets you connect to any iCal and Google Calendar (using the Google Calendar Provider addon) and gives you the ability to create events and tasks (I don’t believe the tasks are replicated to Google Calendar though).

Even better….the latest Lightning update brings this addon to a level that makes it much easier to use and much more attractive. The latest version (ver 0.7) has the following new/updated features:

• It is now much easier to switch between the mail and calendar parts of Thunderbird thanks to a user interface redesign
• Redesigned event/task dialog has been enabled to gather feedback from the community.
• It offers a much cleaner user interface and additional functionality including:
  • Events/Tasks can be created in different timezones
  • Attendees can be added from a local or corporate LDAP directory
  • Free-Busy information is available for users of the Sun Java Calendar Server
  • Integrated display of recurrence patterns, reminders and attendees
  • Custom recurrences and reminders
  • Clear separation between tasks and events
  • The new event summary dialog lists all the details of tasks and events for calendar which are read-only
• The Today Pane gives a quick overview over your current tasks and upcoming events. The Today Pane can be enabled/disabled by a toolbar button
• Colliding events (events in the same time slot) are shrunk so that they fit into the display of a day. This no longer affects other events on the same day
• Localized releases of Lightning and Sunbird in Chinese (simplified), Georgian, Lithuanian, Portuguese (European), Spanish (Argentina) and Turkish

If you’re using Thunderbird, you should be using Lightning for your calendar and if using Lighting , definitely download this latest update. It’s much slicker and much easier to use.

NOTE: If you are using Lightning and make this update, make sure you reactivate your calendar. More info is in this thread.

Technorati Tags: Lightning, Thunderbird, Technology, Email Clients

I thought I was fairly intelligent when it comes to technology, software and gadgets….until I met the world of photography. Wow. I feel like such a non-geek in this realm.

As you might have read, my wife started a photography business (Jordan Brown Photography) and while helping her learn more about the business and the technologies behind photography I realized I know very little about this particular field of technology.

For some reason, taking a good picture isn’t as easy as pushing a button…it requires a lot of work plus a good eye for capturing those special moments.

To all you photographers out there who’ve mastered this particular area of technology, my hat is off to you.

Technorati Tags: Photography, technology

This update is an easy one: I love Fusemail.

As I noted in my post titled “Moving from Gmail to Fusemail“, Gmail wasn’t quite cutting it for me and I decided to move to Fusemail for ~$7 a month.

I’m perfectly happy with Fusemail. The feature set is awesome….a few highlights are below.

• IMAP access lets me use Thunderbird on my desktop and laptop without having to worry about email storage (IMAP leaves everything on the server).
• Blackberry Access - Using Syncje for Blackberry, I can sync my contacts, calendar and tasks between my blackberry and Fusemail.
• iCal access for Calendar and tasks. I can use Thunderbird (or any other iCal compatible calendar) to keep my Fusemail calendar updated. I had been using Google Calendar for my calendar, but I hated having multiple logins (Fusemail for email, google calendar for calendar, etc) and it seems like the gcalsync program for my syncing my blackberry and google calendar was having difficulties at times…so I switched.
• LDAP - Fusemail provides LDAP access so I can use my contact folder from Fusemail within Thunderbird. This isn’t ideal, but it works. I’ve been trying to get SyncKolab to work…this would allow me to sync my Thunderbird address book with my IMAP server and keep multiple Thunderbird address book’s synchronized…but I haven’t got this program to work just yet
• Fusing of multiple email addresses - I never have to check my hotmail, yahoo mail or any other accounts…fusemail allows me to get the email from these accounts in one locations. Perfect!
• Hosting of email for domains - Instead of just fusing accounts, fusemail allows you to change your MX records in your DNS for your domain. This will send all email to fusemail for that domain…no more lost emails or checking other accounts.

As I mentioned…I love fusemail. If you have the same problems that I do, check them out at http://fusemail.com.

Technorati Tags: fusemail, Google, Gmail, Technology, Email