CIO Insight Staff

While philosophic in nature, Nick Carr’s hypotheses on the strategic value of IT investments has fueled a two-year debate—which means he’s hit upon the very root of the tension that exists between the technology and business camps in most organizations. Here’s where there’s truth to his argument: Companies that consistently get the most value from […]

Resolved: That offshoring technology executive and/or development management will benefit project effectiveness and organizational competitiveness. My column earlier this month suggesting that we offshore technology executives and managers and asking for “pro” and “con” arguments on the resolution that starts this piece generated lots of responses. Most are insightful, many sardonic, a few emotional. Last […]

The new director of IT at a rural hospital found dozens of clinical systems, a hefty IT bill, and a need to simplify. He decided to replace many vendors with one, scuttling the best-in-breed approach and executives pet clinical system. Doing so reduced maintenance expenses by a quarter-million dollars. And the transition was not directed […]

Resolved: That offshoring technology executive and/or development management will benefit project effectiveness and organizational competitiveness. Two weeks back I describedwhy I believe that if you accept the traditional business case arguments for offshoring development and developers, it makes more sense to offshore management and executives instead. I invited readers to respond in 111 words or […]

In my last column, I was telling you about Savage Beastand the Westergren/Glaser model. The model approaches automation issues by establishing what mix of automation and manual work will product the greatest efficiency not on automating everything one might be capable of automating. It parses lists of functions the way you’d do it with a […]

Nicholas Carr—who is notorious within IT circles for his 2002 article in the Harvard Business Review claiming that IT no longer matters—stirred up CIOInsight.com readers with his predictions about The Next IT Revolution. We published some of the thoughtful letters to the editor commenting on Carr’s analysis.While the overall tone was negative, most readers agreed […]

One particular segment of the IT population is driven by exuberance and other irrational motivations to automate everything; and they have reaped a lot of bottom-line victories over the last few years. But their ability to continue to deliver is tapped out. That’s not to say the demented utopia in which all value-added processes are […]

In a nod to experiential learning, students enrolled in the executive master of science in technology management program at Columbia University in New York City are learning how to speak the language of business firsthand from some of corporate America’s leading IT executives. As part of its two-year, part-time masters program, students are assigned C-level […]

Technology You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Complexity in IT is like the national budget deficit. It just keeps growing. And every urgent project that IT assumes just adds to it. It’s no wonder then that a CIO Insight October 2004 study shows 74 percent of respondents find increasing complexity has stretched the technical […]

Kesh Narayanan is a perfect example of what has, in the past, made the U.S. a force in the world of innovation. He came to this country from India in 1974 as a science and engineering Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon, stayed, and eventually became head of research and development at the Norton Co., an […]