Allan Alter

Business processes have plenty of room for improvement: IT executives say IT and finance, the most computerized of business functions, can be far more automated than they are now. And IT’s potential for improving customer service is massive. But data integration is thwarting IT’s ability to improve productivity, reduce costs and increase revenues. So, companies […]

Companies are utilizing infrastructure, integration, mobile and knowledge management technologies to improve business processes. Except for knowledge and human capital management, these meet expectations more often than they fail. But there are also new technologies and services, such as business process platforms and management suites, and business process modeling software, which were created for the […]

One of the most important lessons from the last 25 years of business computing is that you can’t throw technology at a problem and expect it to go away, or fling a system at an opportunity and expect the dollars to rain down. To get any real value, business processes—how people work, how work is […]

Bad things happen to good customers. In the past few months, laptops containing Social Security numbers or customer information were stolen from the Veterans’ Administration, Fidelity Investments, Ameriprise Financial and Ernst & Young. The theft of a file server at insurer AIG put a million customers’ account data at risk. And organized criminals fraudulently withdrew […]

Three-quarters of CIOs have confidence in their company’s IT security, but there are plenty of reasons to wonder why they do. In our survey, we asked about 14 IT security practices and about seven general practices for protecting customer and employee data. Of them, only three are in place at 80 percent or more of […]

Viruses, Trojan horses, malware…given all the damage they can do, these online nasties ought to be scaring the pants off IT executives. But three-quarters of IT executives still believe they have adequate protection because of the high degree of confidence in their antivirus software, antispyware software and virtual private networks. A remarkable 96% of our […]

If every cell phone in the room starts ringing simultaneously, start running. In 2008, the Federal Emergency Management Administration plans to have a national digital alert system in place. In case of “events of national significance”-extreme natural disasters, terrorist attacks and the like-FEMA will set off cell phones, ping PDAs, and pop open media players […]

In our previous security surveys, IT executives have always expressed plenty of confidence in their security, even though so many corporate networks and web sites have been roughed up and penetrated. That’s true again in 2006, although the level of confidence may have slipped just a bit. IT executives at large companies appear the most […]

The first set of results from our latest annual Security Survey provides an update from the war zone that is IT security. There’s plenty of bad news: over half of companies over $1 billion report security breaches in the past 12 months, and 45 percent have been targeted by organized criminals. Penetration by spyware and […]

According to the results of this month’s survey on the future of the IT organization, corporate IT departments are going through more change now than ever before. Change is never easy or universally welcome, of course, but in this case, change is good—for the most part. Organizations are growing, morale is improving, and more opportunities […]

The final installment of the August 2006 IT Organization Survey presents two important trends that will shape both the IT organization and IT careers far into the future. It turns out that about half of all IT organizations are still regarded primarily as a support function, not a strategic organization. Whether that’s a serious limitation […]

Organizational change always brings fear, uncertainty and doubt. So when we found that 57 percent of respondents say their IT department is going through more change today than they have ever seen in their career, we expected to also find that morale is taking a dive. That’s not how it turned out. Yes, one in […]