The Hub Commentary_

I stumbled upon a great article written by an old friend of mine, Kevin Cunningham, from a previous software life.  Now more than ever the alignment of IT and business as I posted from an article regarding IT roles yesterday is a requirement.  The thought that IT is separate from the business is an antiquity.

I agree with Kevin, just illustrating that you can pass an audit knowing that things have changed, who changed them and were they approved is not enough.  Managing and mitigating risk while providing flexibility to apply the right technologies to drive the business forward.  New technologies and customers are driving shifts in how they expect to do business, when, where and from many devices.

As Kevin states, no one technology addresses all aspects and it will be key to bring the data together from each of the supporting technologies into a live view of the services of the business, assessing performance, availability and security.  Dynamic and mixed environments will continue to push IT organizations and will be led by the customer’s expectation of how they want to do business.  Those that embrace these technologies and put the management intelligence in place without restricting the desired flexibility will lead their markets.

How do you see the convergence and management of infrastructure and security as services to your business?

Michele

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One of the consequences of the global recession two years ago is a significant increase in IT risk facing global companies.

IT risk – the threat of negative consequences resulting from the operation of information systems – has spiraled upward for multiple reasons: large-scale mergers, acquisitions and divestitures and the resulting need to consolidate people and systems; greater use of IT hosting and outsourcing; the shift to replace full-time employees with temps and contractors; and new technologies like cloud and mobile computing. As a result, CIOs face a massive challenge: how do they balance the need for flexible and open access to their company’s IT infrastructure (so business can be conducted) with the need to mitigate IT risks associated with that access (so bad things don’t happen)?  (Read Full Article…)