CIO Digest: Feb. 15, 2002

2. "How to Partner with Your CEO," by Jack Brennan, CIO, Feb. 1, 2002.

3. "Vendors Spur Linux On," By Paul McDougall, InformationWeek, Feb. 11, 2002

1. "Technologies that Can Save You Money," By Meg Mitchell Moore, Darwin magazine, February 2002.
Everybody talks about saving money when it comes to IT spending. This report in Darwin tells you how you can turn the talk into action.

Darwin's article acknowledges what today pass for universal truths: attitudes and budgets have changed drastically since the heady days of two or three years ago. Corporate revenues aren't growing, so to hold up the bottom line they're seeking ways to reduce expenses.

While these suggestions may not make the company rich, there are some easy savings possible with a few shrewd moves. And not all the suggestions are of the nickel-and-dime variety.

Tips include:

• Be a bandwidth miser. Instead of buying more bandwidth to handle increasing traffic, use what you already have more effectively. Install software to manage congestion and prioritize the data flow.
• Manage your desktop smarter.This is called one of the areas that is "most ripe" for savings. The goal for organizations: Standardize every user's desktop - put everyone on the same version of Windows or the same email app - to knock 10 percent off your budget. Your IS people will spend far less time managing desktops.
• Pinch pennies with network policies.Adopt policy-based network management. The idea: Companies set policies that dictate which users or departments get network priority at certain times of the day. Darwin's story says, "Savings start to appear when critical applications operate at their peak performance."
• Get stingy with your storageTurn to storage management software to use storage resources more efficiently. It can help you use the storage disks you have more efficiently and save you from buying more.
• Scrooge it up with you ISPs Several new tech companies are offering Internet route control devices - hardware that checks available Internet traffic pathways and uses the one that makes the most sense, according to Darwin. Using the technology helps you to lower your monthly bandwidth costs.

Click here to read this story:
http://www.darwinmag.com/read/020102/money.html

2. "How to Partner with Your CEO," by Jack Brennan, CIO, Feb. 1, 2002.
CIO presents a first-person view into a key relationship inside every corporation - the CIO-CEO relationship. This column, written by the longtime CEO of investment firm Vanguard Group, goes into detail about what makes a good relationship between the business and IT leader in any business.

Some of his tips are organizational, such as his opinion that the CIO should report directly to the CEO, not the CFO. To Brennan, the relationship must be a two-way street: The CEO should be interested in technology and the CIO should be interested in the business. Another point: The CEO must support the CIO visibly -- within senior leadership and across the organization as a whole.

But just as helpful to any CIO are what Brennan calls the three character traits of all successful CIOs: A good CIO must be comfortable with ambiguity; must have a voracious appetite for knowledge about the business; and must inspire the trust of the CEO and other senior members of the CEO's team.

Click here to read this column:
http://www.cio.com/archive/020102/cxo.html

3. "Vendors Spur Linux On," By Paul McDougall, InformationWeek, Feb. 11, 2002
Here's one you haven't heard before: 2002 will be a breakout year for Linux in the enterprise. OK, so maybe it's not new news. But InformationWeek takes it a step further, detailing the plans of the biggest vendors and providing concrete evidence of the Linux trend for IT execs now thinking about adopting it.

According to InformationWeek, major vendors in 2002 are lining up their enterprise Linux strategies, products, and services, while many big companies, including E-Trade Group, have already made the switch to Linux systems.

On the vendor side, take IBM and its hard Linux push. InformationWeek notes how Big Blue is a proponent of "grid computing" - linking all of a company's computers with software that can direct processing power in a heterogeneous network to where it's most needed. That can only be accomplished in an open-source environment. The result: IBM is so serious about this strategy that it's "conceivable that IBM could ditch all of its own operating systems ... in favor of Linux within five years," if customers demand it, according to InformationWeek.

Other vendors and their plans are highlighted, such as Hewlett-Packard, which this spring will add Linux systems to its pay-per-use programs it offers Windows and Unix customers, as well enhancing its broader Linux services. Red Hat Inc., a Linux software distributor, recently launched enterprise services to make it easier to deploy and manage Linux installations over the Web. Later, it will release an Advanced Serve edition of its software.

And on and on. It's enough to make you think 2002 really will be Linux's breakout year.

Click here to read this article:
http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20020207S0018