Brian P. Watson

CIO Insight: How do CIOs build a strong relationship with C-level executives? Trisha Rozas, CIO, Guy Carpenter Over the years, what I’ve tended to try to do is come in and spend some time learning about the business, what the business entails, and how they’re there to make money and what are the key drivers […]

A year ago, no one really knew exactly how down the downturn would get. CIOs and their executive peers rightly prepared for the worst, and in almost every case, they got what they expected. Now, several months into the recession, many IT leaders tell CIO Insight that they believe the worst has passed. But that […]

In this economic environment, CIOs walk a tightrope in balancing long-term priorities with the pressing concerns of the business. Karl Salnoske is no exception. The Schering-Plough CIO joined the health care giant in 2004 as part of a management shakeup. His first 18 months were dominated by stabilizing the business and its IT. Then he […]

Over the past few years, some of the most interesting conversations I have had with CIOs and industry experts have centered on innovation. That shouldn’t come as a big surprise. Who doesn’t like talking about creativity and new ways to accomplish old goals? In an arena where the status quo often dominates, innovation should be […]

The relationships between IT shops and the businesses they support can be a bit turbulent. Getting both sides to understand each other’s wants and needs–and speak the same language–has burdened countless executives since IT first became an integral function inside the enterprise. That’s all old hat to Jeff Kubacki. In almost 30 years at work, […]

For those of you heading to the MIT CIO Symposium on May 20 in Cambridge, Mass., stick around for the 5 p.m. keynote panel on cloud computing. I’ll be moderating a discussion with cloud experts from Amazon, Cisco and Microsoft. The timing for this panel couldn’t be better. Recently we’ve been seeing an uptick in […]

A number of outlets choose a word of the year. Past winners have included “blog,” “Y2K” and “subprime.” For 2008, both Merriam-Webster and the Amer-ican Dialect Society awarded an obvious choice: “bailout.” If CIO Insight decided to get in the mix this year, the early front-runner in the IT leadership arena would have to be […]

It’s abundantly clear at this point in the recession that cost reduction remains priority No. 1 for IT leaders. We’ve written quite a bit about this in recent months, and there’s no doubt we’ll dig deeper as the recession lingers. But it’s important for CIOs to stay focused on all the other issues on their […]

For too long, cios viewed collaboration technologies as an experiment, a “nice to have” tool to appease certain factions of their staff. With growing pressures to cut costs and boost productivity, though, more CIOs are turning to collaboration to drive their business forward. Cisco Systems CIO Rebecca Jacoby spearheaded the implementation of numerous collaborative technologies […]

Maybe it’s not that bad out there for CIOs. With budgets under the CFO’s microscope, projects in jeopardy and the role of the CIO itself in question, IT leaders are certainly feeling some pain. But fear not, says Microsoft CIO Tony Scott. His contrarian message: CIOs, burdened for years with tight budgets and forced to […]

In their new book, The Adventures of an IT Leader, Harvard CIO gurus Robert D. Austin and Richard L. Nolan and Cutter Consortium consultant Shannon O’Donnell tell the story of Jim Barton, the new CIO of the struggling–and fictional–IVK Corp. Barton had no previous IT experience, and not long into his tenure, his novice status […]

Kevin Hart, CIO of Level 3 Communications, deals with an unusual dynamic inside his company. “Some of the executives know more about the tech than the tech guys,” he says. That’s due in part to the nature of Level 3’s business: A fiber-based communications services company is bound to have a tech-savvy executive team. But […]