Archive for the ‘IT Innovation’ category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Tops-Down Corporate Social Media

April 6th, 2012

Social media has emerged as a dominant force in people’s lives over the past several years. Individuals are using the platform to connect with others and share information on a daily basis. Whether you’re a Facebook Friend or Twitter Follower, you are part of this revolution. However, as quickly as social media has grown on the personal side, it is still relatively new in the corporate sector. Many organizations have begun focusing attention on the bleeding over of social tools into their enterprises. They are looking to use internal social networking as a way to promote their brands and connect with their customers. Some organizations have even piloted internal social tools in an effort to promote enterprise-wide collaboration. Social media is driving business transparency and engagement, creating both new challenges and opportunities.  As with any other initiative you try to push through the company, it is important to gain support from the executive leadership. In the case of social media, Senior Executives like CEOs, CIOs, etc. shouldn’t be afraid to set the example for their employees. They need to be leading the social media charge and pushing this movement tops-down. A new study even found that social media-active CEOs are more trustworthy. These quotes from Information Week’s article on “Why CIOs Must Be More Social” are pretty telling:

“If CIOs are charged with building a social business, shouldn’t they have a social presence?” Fidelman asked, suggesting that “CIOs who don’t get social might not be CIOs next year.” Yet even in conservative industries like finance, there are CIOs like Royal Bank of Scotland’s Ian Alderton (#4 on the list) who are social standouts, Fidelman said.” -Mark Fidelman, Chief Social Strategist at Harmon.ie

Fidelman recently compiled a list of the Top 25 Most Social CIOs. Here is the Top 10:

1. SAP, Oliver Bussmann

2. Google, Benjamin Fried

3. Pemex, Abraham Galan

4. Royal Bank of Scotland, Ian Alderton

5. Microsoft, Anthony Scott

6. Supervalu, Wayne Shurts

7. Kimberly-Clark, Ramon Baez

8. Jacobs Engineering Group, Cora Carmody

9. Tesco, Mike McNamara

10. Omnicom Group, Kenneth Corriveau

For our members who are interested in corporate social media, we encourage you to check out a couple of upcoming IMF events:

April 26th - Web Forum on “Social Media’s Benefit to the Business” led by Kandy White from Verizon

June 7th & 8th - IMF Innovation Forum discussion on “Corporate Use of Social Networking to Promote Collaboration”

No comments »

Posted in IT Innovation, IT Workforce, News, Social Media, Strategy

Tags:

Build a Private Cloud for Virtual Desktops

March 20th, 2012

“Virtual Desktop Deployment: Lessons Learned & Mistakes to Avoid” is a report based on a Web Forum presentation given by Doug Burton and Greg LaVigne from Allstate. They are two years into an enterprise-wide virtual desktop initiative, targeting over 30,000 employees. One year after going live with the technology solution, 100+ applications and 2,000+ users have been converted.  This report looks at their approach to this initiative, with a focus on the people, processes, and technology lessons learned.

Here is an excerpt from the report which talks about the benefits of building a cloud for your desktop virtulaization efforts:

At the end of the day Allstate actually decided to build their cloud. Some people refer to it as a private cloud. What does that mean? They took all of the current computing that occurred on the individual endpoints as well as all of the data that resided on those devices and moved it within the data center. Allstate’s devices today, for the users that are in this environment, do not have any local data or local applications. Basically users are given a web front end, but there is no data on those endpoints.

People at Allstate talked with other businesses in their space that had performed a desktop virtualization effort. A few of them had gone down a similar road but had not actually gotten completely free of data on the endpoint devices. Those companies may have done a virtual session on their machine or have a partition there that is encrypted and secure but there is still data on that local device. However, in Allstate’s case, the fact that they have nothing on those devices made individuals in HR, Legal, Privacy and Security, and Risk Management much more comfortable with the idea. Allstate considers using XenApp in their Citrix infrastructure, as opposed to XenDesktop to download something locally, as a good decision.

This environment is also device agnostic and provides a 100% consistent user experience. There are corporate PCs and multiple iPads, along with a diverse array of devices and OS’s that are connected to the environment. A side benefit to this implementation on the technology side is making the concept of “Bring Your Own Computer” (BYOC) easier to accommodate. There was a lot of time spent between HR, legal, and privacy teams trying to digest and understand the risks and costs associated with a BYOC approach.

IMF members can download the full report on Virtual Desktop Deployment HERE.

No comments »

Posted in IT Innovation, Member Identified Trends, Strategy

Tags:

Stuxnet: A Pandora’s Box for Cyber Warfare

March 13th, 2012

“There’s a strong likelihood that the next Pearl Harbor we confront could very well be a cyber-attack.”

- Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on 60 Minutes

Anybody involved in some IT capacity would not be shocked by the quote above, especially considering the dramatic increase in cyber-attacks over the past couple of years. Perhaps it is the severity and sophistication of these attacks that is most alarming, moving from basement operations to billion dollar corporations all the way up to countries waging cyber warfare. This is where the Stuxnet worm comes into play. It is a particular piece of malware that has been referred to as groundbreaking, a Pandora’s Box of sorts, and even the “best malware ever.” Stuxnet has reportedly caused Iran’s nuclear program great setbacks in terms of uranium enrichment. The Iranian government concluded their investigation into the incident back in April 2011 and they believe the worm was joint venture between the U.S. and Israel.

Unlike most malware, Stuxnet does little harm to computers and networks that do not meet specific configuration requirements. For its targets, Stuxnet contains, among other things, code for a man-in-the-middle attack that fakes industrial process control sensor signals so an infected system does not shut down due to abnormal behavior. That kind of complexity is very unusual for malware. Many high ranking officials think this worm has kicked the door wide open for future cyber warfare tactics, believing the worst is yet to come. The scariest part is how ill prepared everyone seems to be for such a sophisticated attack.

CBS’s 60 Minutes just recently aired a great piece on the Stuxnet worm and you can watch that video here.

No comments »

Posted in IT Innovation, IT Security, News

Tags: