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| Getting down to business | May 2008 / issue 2 | |
Hiring the wrong IT staff to achieve your goals? CIO.com Are you having problems with alignment? Is your IT staff unable to provide the business with the support it needs? Does it seem like your IT staff just doesn't understand the business? Perhaps they don't. For years, authors and top-ranked CIOs have complained about business and IT alignment. CIO magazine articles like Why Is Business-IT Alignment So Difficult, How to Close the IT-Business Alignment Gap and The ROI of Alignment, coupled with the ongoing presence of alignment as one of the top ten information management concerns every year, indicates that the problem of aligning information technology with business goals and processes is much deeper and more fundamental than we realize.
The real problem underlying the IT business alignment conundrum is that we're not hiring the right people in IT. The right people need strong backgrounds in both business and technology. Most IT hiring managers place too much emphasis on strong technology backgrounds. A recent CIO.com article, Why Business Analysts Are So Important for IT and CIOs, depicts how critical it is to have a meaningful combination of business and information technology know-how. The article states that the most successful business analysts (e.g. the ones who most effectively apply IT in business environments) possess the ability to "communicate, facilitate and analyze" not technology, but business. In addition, the article propounds that these positions "tilt more toward business functions such as operations, marketing, finance or engineering." Although the article hits the nail directly on the head when identifying the capabilities that will enable your staff to "turn business-requested, IT-delivered applications into tomorrow's dynamic business applications," it fails to address why these individuals are so difficult to find. The reason? These people are hard to find because businesses are not asking for them.
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Top 5 Disaster Recovery Tips ITworld.com A basic, but documented disaster recovery (DR) plan, with recent backups and a practiced staff, will work better than a grandiose scheme that hasn't been tested or properly executed. Yet, most DR plans fail because they lack a few simple elements. Below are the top 5 tips for protecting your data and ensuring business continuity in the face of disaster. Document, document, document! One simple, but critical step is to store system passwords in at least two separate secure locations. Only one of which should be in the same building as your IT equipment and at least two staff members should have access to the passwords.
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| IT TIPS 1) Have someone monitor your servers; crashes are recurrent and can paralyze your office setting for hours at a time
2) Implementing proactive IT management versus reactive management can help catch and eliminate various threats before they have a chance to implicate your IT environment
3) KNOW your IT provider; Many companies imply that their services are top of line with a helpdesk in your area and paint a picture perfect portrait and in the end, you the customer is the one who loses. Check out your provider, visit their facility and meet their helpdesk. You will be surprised as to how many actually are telling the truth.
4) Frequently backup your data; At a minimum it should be done daily
5) If it sounds too good to be true, it might just be. You may be getting a great price initially, but what are you really getting into? Check your IT provider’s references to make sure you make the best decision for your business' future, not just your pocket book
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Report: Google holds meeting on revived Microsoft-Yahoo deal Computerworld.com Over the weekend, Microsoft said it might be interested in buying part of Yahoo, but not all of it. For the past month or so, Google has been in talks with Yahoo to extend a two-week test whereby Yahoo would deliver Web advertising from Google alongside its own search results. According to various reports, that deal could be solidified this week. |
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