Larry Bonfante

It amazes me the way some CIOs treat their vendors. I totally get the need to negotiate good terms for your organization (as any vendor who has done business with me can attest). I also understand that you need to hold your vendors accountable for delivering the value for which you are paying. However, many […]

I once had the experience of seeing an IT executive argue with his CEO (never a good idea) regarding the level of “customer service” his team was providing. He continually referenced a pie chart showing 99.99% availability of some metric he felt substantiated his case. His CEO’s reaction was that he was less interested in […]

Social media has become pervasive in every part of today’s society. Historically much of what has shown up from our Twitter feeds and Facebook posts has ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime (do I really need to know that you had a turkey sandwich for lunch or that you have sent me a “virtual […]

Mobile computing is one of the most exciting and important trends we have experienced in a very long time. Eliminating the barriers of time and place allows us to be productive when we are ready to engage. It also allows us to carry the information we need to succeed in our pockets (or on our […]

I have memories of my mother telling me when I was a kid not to bite off more than I could chew. That seems to be the biggest challenge with big data. There is so much of it, we can’t seem to figure out how to capture it, store it, search it, analyze it or […]

It’s that time of year when everyone starts to think about what to accomplish in the new year. Unless you have an unlimited budget and headcount (which would be a first!), you have to start prioritizing where you will invest your limited resources. We are in the process of going through this exercise and use […]

Time and again we have heard discussed in the trade press and at industry conferences the perspective that CIOs must evolve past being providers of utility services. I couldn’t agree more. However, there is one critical caveat
that many people fail to articulate. Evolving beyond providing basic enterprise infrastructure services does not mean we can forget […]

What is the risk/reward proposition of leveraging cloud computing and other “everything-as-a-service” models? Cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS) are relatively new approaches to delivering technology services, and there remains work to be done. Taking issues of data security, privacy and compliance into consideration is critical. However, using these considerations as excuses not […]

Over the past three years, my operating budget has been reduced by 20 percent. This is the type of thing that sends many CIOs into a tizzy: How am I supposed to do so much more with so much less? (For more on budgeting, read CIO Insight‘s IT Investment Trends Study.) But, for us, this […]

Lately there has been a great deal of focus on the topic of business intelligence–and with good reason. Being able to separate key information from the mountains of data we all collect in our organizations is critical. Even more critical is being able to provide our key decision-makerswith the right amount of information in the […]

Which concerns cause me to lose sleep these days? Certainly, enterprise security is a source of constant concern for every CIO. But there are plenty of other issues that are just as vexing. Social media has been an area of great focus over the past two years. Many CIOs worry about the impact of having […]

Those of you who read my column regularly know that I don’t believe that IT is separate from “the business.” I’m not a fan of all that “alignment” hooey. Rather, I believe that IT is a critical core component of the business. Therefore, if we are truly part of the leadership of our organizations, there […]