For senior IT, job satisfaction, optimism tied to innovation and growth

A lire sur: http://searchcio.techtarget.com/news/2240211485/For-senior-IT-job-satisfaction-optimism-tied-to-innovation-and-growth

Karen Goulart, Senior Features Writer

Published: 19 Dec 2013

For senior IT executives, the view from the top was a little brighter in 2013.  Results from this year's TechTarget IT Salary and Career Survey indicated that as the U.S. emerges from the Great Recession, IT leaders are feeling positive about their jobs and also detect a sense of optimism within the organizations they serve. And while the sunny outlook is helped along by stable and surging salaries, as documented by the survey results, money isn't all that is making the glass appear half full.

Our drive for innovation keeps everyone motivated, challenged and engaged at all times.

Daniel Salama, CIO, MCNA Dental

One reason for the optimism? Company business is picking up for many of the senior IT execs in our survey, and that's encouraging them to stick around. The survey found that 53% of the 464 senior IT leader respondents aspire to stay with their current company for the next three to five years.  Among that group, 23% would like to move up in the company, 14% hope to move up in the IT organization, and 14% would be happy to stay in their current role.

In all, 68% expressed happiness with their job, 23% claimed they were satisfied with their current position and company, and 45% said they'd be open to new opportunities but weren't actively looking. Senior IT executives were defined as CIOs, chief technology officers (CTOs), executive vice presidents and directors of IT/MIS/IS.

Daniel Salama, CIO for Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based MCNA Dental, counts himself among that 53% of senior IT leaders who see themselves sticking with their company for at least three to five more years. "It's an exciting time," he said. "The company is growing quickly, which keeps everyone challenged and on their toes." Salama plans on growing with the company, and anticipates his job will transition to a higher authority role in the next few years.

For the CIO at a regional IT consulting practice in the Northeast who requested anonymity, the chance to grow along with a burgeoning business also factors into his current job satisfaction. He's part of the leadership team at the practice, and right now that's right where he wants to be. After spending years in unhappy work situations in order to develop his technical and leadership skills, he has earned the luxury of taking only the jobs he wants.

"I have a seat at the table and a voice in the overall direction the company is moving. … I am quite content where I am," he said.

"My job satisfaction includes knowing that my own employees feel they've achieved their own definition of job satisfaction and that I've helped them in achieving that," Salama said.For MCNA Dental's Salama, job satisfaction boils down to a handful of simple yet important things, like knowing he's making a difference in his company and for their clients, feeling eager to come to work even when it stretches beyond the normal 9 to 5 hours, and being recognized for accomplishments. And it also hinges on the job satisfaction of those who work for him.

Optimism inspired by growth and innovation

It's easier to feel good about work when the vibe is upbeat. Among the senior IT executives in our survey, 78% said the mood in their organization was either optimistic (39%) or neutral (38%). Two of the top reasons cited for the mostly positive outlook were the encouragement of innovation (61%) and business growth (34%). That correlation is key, according to Salama.

As the company grows, his team is working on "exciting" projects and has the freedom to stay on the "bleeding edge," he said. 

"We're tasked to continuously innovate our technologies and be the best of the best in what we do," Salama said. This requires a lot of hard work, but results in a great deal of satisfaction. "Our drive for innovation keeps everyone motivated, challenged and engaged at all times."

Sam Cattle, now practice manager at Cincinnati-based Mainstream Security, agreed. "To excel at a job, innovation and growth are key," he said. Cattle recently left a job where many of the factors cited by IT leaders in the survey as being crucial to a positive outlook were waning or lacking entirely. There were layoffs, unresolved customer challenges and no growth. His new IT organization is different.

"The care and feeding elements -- budget, training, effective management, career management and advancement -- are critical, from an employee's point of view," Cattle said. He loves what he's doing and would be happy to continue working for Mainstream Security into the foreseeable future. 

"Nothing is driving me to look," he said. "I'm bullish on my new company."

IT Salary Survey top projects: BYOD programs in, outsourcing out in 2014

A lire sur: http://searchcio.techtarget.com/news/2240211402/IT-Salary-Survey-top-projects-BYOD-programs-in-outsourcing-out-in-2014

Nicole Laskowski, Senior News Writer

Published: 18 Dec 2013

In yet another sign of the rapid workplace shift from desktop to mobile computing, mobile technology has become a top priority for CIOs and IT leaders, according to results from TechTarget's 2013 IT Salary and Careers Survey.

Twenty percent of the 463 CIOs and IT leaders who participated in the survey pointed to mobile technology as a top-three project area for 2014, sandwiched between security (21%) and disaster recovery/business continuity (19%). At the same time, other core IT responsibilities appear to be losing ground. Only 2% of survey takers selected outsourcing and privacy as primary project areas for 2014.

The BYOD spotlight

Based on conversations with IT leaders who participated in the survey, rolling out a bring your own device (BYOD) program across the enterprise continues to be a top to-do for CIOs. The programs range from baby steps to implementing an all-out "have it your way" mobile environment. Their focus dovetails with survey results that indicate operational efficiency (56%) and increased employee productivity (43%) are the top two business values companies are hoping to gain from technology projects in 2014.

"Right now, our [BYOD program] is in pilot," said an IT leader of a large financial institution who asked to remain anonymous. "So we'll be rolling that out, which really means just phone, and it really means just iPhone." Rather than secure the device, this IT leader's organization opted for the containerization approach for its more-than-60,000 employees. Company data will be stored within its own container on the mobile device, giving the financial institution a chance to wrap it in features such as encryption and authentication and leave personal data alone.

"With the containers, we feel we've got enough of a handle on them to protect card members' data in the event of a lost phone or something else along those lines," he said. That is as long as the device isn't rooted or the original operating system hasn't been swapped out and replaced with an alternative version, he said.

During the second or third quarters of 2014, the BYOD program will make room on the network for Android-based devices as well. But for now, "we're just starting with iPhones," he said, a reality driven by "nontechnical people who like the i-type devices."

Having a BYOD focus in 2014 isn't just for the largest companies. "We no longer call it mobile," said Scott Kushner, chief innovation officer for the midmarket organization Voice Systems Engineering Inc. "We think of it in terms of multidevice."

The telephone and online entertainment company based in Langhorne, Pa. plans to introduce a "have it your way" mobile environment in 2014, which means any data on any device at any time for both internal- and external-facing applications.

"We're making use of responsive design," Kushner said, referring to the practice of coding websites to conform to the device. "You don't have a separate site for the smartphone and a separate site for the desktop. It's the same site. It recognizes the device you're on and sizes accordingly."

Outsourcing, privacy out in 2014

While CIOs and IT leaders will continue implementing mobile technology in the new year, other responsibilities will get the cold shoulder. According to TechTarget's survey results, privacy and outsourcing fell to the very bottom of the project list, with only 2% of respondents indicating that either was a priority area for 2014.

Conversations with survey takers indicate that outsourcing and privacy may not stretch across industries and company size the way mobile technology and security do. For Michael Maya, CIO of the city of Wichita in Kansas, privacy isn't a top concern because he's working within the public sector. But for Anthony Peters, director of IT for Burr Pilger Mayer Inc., a financial services firm based in California, data privacy is a major priority.

"For us, it's close to the top [of the list]," Peters said. "I think that one depends on what industry the CIO is coming from."

Outsourcing seemed to follow a similar pattern. For Voice Systems Engineering's Kushner,outsourcing will be a major strategy initiative in 2014.

It's also an opportunity to inject new, potentially innovative thinking into the business, he said. Besides, as a midmarket company with a small IT department, growing all of the expertise in-house just isn't a reality, he said."There's value in having some portion of the workforce be from outside [the organization]," Kushner said. "It provides flexible capability to … meet the high demand of the business, as well as access to capabilities where it doesn't make sense for us to invest all of the way."

"I don't know what the right percent is, but we're probably moving to an 80/20 model where 20% of our resource pool is in some form coming from the outside," he said.

Perhaps in this instance, size does matter. The large financial institution referred to at the beginning of this article is insourcing more, according to the IT leader who asked to remain anonymous.

"We're starting to adopt Agile and Scrum more," he said, referring to a strategy that relies on small teams to build products quickly and work iteratively. "By bringing the resources together into rooms, we're more efficient, can get more done with less effort and [can] control our costs."

Additionally, while outsourcing used to be a cost-savings measure, it can also be self-limiting. Those with deep technical skills are promoted up the ranks and into managerial positions and tasks are fragmented and shipped elsewhere to be worked on, eventually creating "gaps in knowledge," he said.

"Long term, businesses can't sustain this because you need that internal knowledge to be built from the ground up and to grow and to make mistakes," he said. "You won't be able to do that by outsourcing and building knowledge outside of your company."

IT career salaries infographic: Salary expectations, projects and mood

A lire sur: http://searchcio.techtarget.com/feature/IT-career-salaries-infographic-Salary-expectations-projects-and-mood

Published: 31 Dec 2013

ESSENTIAL GUIDE

IT CAREER SURVEY 2013: EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION, EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION

• This article is part of an Essential Guide, our editor-selected collection of our best articles, videos and other content on this topic. Explore more in this guide:
  1. - THE 2013 IT SALARY AND CAREERS SURVEY: AN OVERVIEW: READ MORE IN THIS SECTION
  • Check out our IT salary survey infographic
• Explore other sections in this guide:
  • 2. - IT executive compensation, priorities and job satisfaction
  • 3. - Compensation and IT priorities by job title

Have you wondered how IT career salaries at your company stack up against the masses? Do you think the mood within your IT organization is unusually optimistic -- or pessimistic? In this year's Annual Salary and Careers Survey, TechTarget polled 1,771 IT professionals -- ranging from systems administrators to CIOs -- about their total compensation and overall job satisfaction in 2013. The survey covered everything -- from bonuses and pay cuts to staffing toIT priorities in the coming year.

In this SearchCIO salary infographic, we reveal how your paycheck compares to those of others with a similar job title, divulge that salary expectations are on the rise and show that IT professionals are optimistic about the road ahead.

IT Salary Survey: Information technology budgets are stable or growing

A lire sur: http://searchcio.techtarget.com/news/2240211640/IT-Salary-Survey-Information-technology-budgets-are-stable-or-growing

Nicole Laskowski, Senior News WriterPublished: 24 Dec 2013

ESSENTIAL GUIDE

IT CAREER SURVEY 2013: EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION, EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION

• This article is part of an Essential Guide, our editor-selected collection of our best articles, videos and other content on this topic. Explore more in this guide:
  3. - COMPENSATION AND IT PRIORITIES BY JOB TITLE: READ MORE IN THIS SECTION
  • IT head counts and budgets: On the up-and-up
  • Project planning: BYOD in, outsourcing out
  • GRC professionals: Are salaries keeping up with pertinence?
  READ MORE IN THIS SECTION
• Explore other sections in this guide:
  • 1. - The 2013 IT Salary and Careers Survey: An overview
  • 2. - IT executive compensation, priorities and job satisfaction

For all the recent talk of IT organizations on the road to extinction, the budgets and headcounts for most IT leaders either grew or stayed the same, according to the 2013 TechTarget IT Salary and Careers Survey.

In a poll of 348 senior IT executives, 76% reported their budgets either grew (38%) or remained flat (38%) when compared to 2012.

Similarly, 76% of respondents reported department headcounts either grew (29%) or remained flat (47%) in 2013. For those who reported staffing levels grew in 2013, the headcount increased by about 13%; for those who saw a reduction in staffing, the average decrease was close to 14%, according to the survey results. Conversely, only one-fourth reported they were either operating under ahiring freeze (16%) or shrinking by attrition (9%).

The salary survey was launched in September and remained open through October, attracting 1,711 participants in total. Senior IT executives were defined as CIOs, chief technology officers, executive vice presidents, and directors of IT and information security.

Whether information technology budgets in the future are siphoned off by business groups -- remember the prediction about chief marketing officers? -- and all the IT jobs get ported to the cloud or taken over by robots remains to be seen. But for now, reports of the IT organization's demise appear premature.

Indeed, data suggests 2014 will provide another year of stability and even growth for IT departments, with 32% of respondents indicating they're fully staffed and another 39% indicating they're looking to make new hires. 

The relative stability and uptick of budgets and headcounts, however, doesn't mean IT leaders have left their penny-pinching ways behind. All the CIOs and IT leaders interviewed for this article, including those whose budgets and staffs increased in 2013, stressed that they continue to look for ways to cut costs without sacrificing service or innovation.

Ups and downs of headcounts

Count Michael Maya, CIO for the city of Wichita in Kansas, is one of the fortunate 29% of senior IT execs whose staffs grew in 2013. In a follow-up interview, he told SearchCIO he was finally able to fill seven positions that had gone unfilled for up to five years. "We just got back to where we were before [the recession]," he said. "Positions went open through attrition, and I pretty much held those open so I wouldn't have to worry about laying people off."

Anthony Peters, director of IT for the San Francisco-based financial services firm Burr Pilger Mayer Inc., had a different story to tell. His headcount decreased in 2013, but that was because of strong market demand, not layoffs. "We started to see the market open up with more opportunities for IT technicians," he said. "One former employee left because the position he was going to was more senior and [it] gave him more authority to make decisions."

Scott Kushner, chief innovation officer for the Langhorne, Pa.-based Voice Systems Engineering Inc., said his headcount remained flat in 2013. That's a statistic that might technically be true for Kushner in 2014 as well, but he also expects to increase the company's use of consultants and contracted positions. It's a strategic initiative backed by company dollars. "Because I'm adding in more consultants, [my budget] will actually go up by 6% to 7% [in 2014]," he said.

Flat budgets aren't necessarily a bad thing

While Kushner will get more money in 2014 for outsourcing, other areas of IT spending will follow the trend at his company since 2012 and will likely remain flat next year. "We're trying to go through a process of cleanup -- [cutting] where we think we spent too much in the past years relative to our size," he said. "So we're trying to organize and prioritize what we choose to work on."

"When you have money to spend, you're not concerned about priorities," Peters said. "IT leaders and CIOs have to be more creative and prioritize more."Maya and Peters echoed Kushner. Both of their budgets remained flat from 2012 to 2013, which neither saw as a bad thing. Instead, budget planning was described by them as a strategic puzzle: How can they improve efficiency while providing better service to the business?

Maya agreed. He plans to reduce costs by moving away from point solutions in favor of an enterprise resource planning environment. "I look at it more as a reallocation from a CIO perspective," he said. "How do we provide the same or better services with existing or new technology and still reduce costs so that we're providing better or more services with the same budget?"

An IT leader at a large financial institution who asked to remain anonymous had another name for reallocation; he called it "re-engineering targets."

"As part of the budget, we're asked to look for ways to reduce costs … [and] remove stuff that's no longer needed," he said. Freed up funds are reinvested into new project initiatives for the department. "We had to build a new data center -- that's a $300 million effort. And, over the course of about three years, we built that data center without increasing our operational costs."

A CIO's journey to IT transformation begins with 10 steps

A lire sur: http://searchcio.techtarget.com/opinion/A-CIOs-journey-to-IT-transformation-begins-with-10-steps

Niel Nickolaisen

This has been quite a year for changes in IT. I sometimes feel like an overmatched boxer in the ring. As soon as I think I have a good handle on the changing state of technology and my CIO role, something new comes along and lands another punch on my jaw. And, as the pace of technology change continues to accelerate, the hits will keep coming. Here is what I learned in 2013 and where I think IT transformation will be in 2014.

Niel Nickolaisen

In spite of our concerns about and uneasiness with the cloud, it is a certainty. This past year, I made a single hardware purchase. That purchase was to expand my storage. I also vowed that this one would be my last storage purchase as we move our never- and rarely-accessed data to slow and cheap storage in the cloud. I did not make a single server purchase while still handling a significant growth in employees and customers.

My legacy complexity only gets in the way of our IT agility. My stated goal is for IT to be faster than the organization. We have accomplished that except where our work touches my un-architected, overly complex, and highly customized legacy environment. My plans for 2014 include dedicating resources to blowing up and rebuilding that environment.

For the first time in the history of the world, we are the persons and teams who can help the organization own the future.

I can use analytics to prove the value of IT. In early 2013, we experimented with and piloted advanced customer analytics. At the risk of sounding too arrogant, we knocked it out of the park. The results of these analyses have changed how the organization thinks and operates. In parallel, everyone really believes that we IT-types are amazing. We can already measure the impact of these projects on customer retention. We will continue to focus on and innovate our analytics in 2014 and, probably, forever.

In 2013, we made significant strides in shifting how many resources we apply to new projects and innovation. Through a combination of prioritization and standardization, we were able to allocate just over 50% of our IT resources to new projects. In an environment in which the entire organization is now dependent on IT and demands more from IT, we have to get out of the business of maintaining and enhancing our legacy systems and processes. With so much new stuff coming our way, we simply do not have the time to keep our focus on the old stuff. For the first time in the history of the world, we are the persons and teams who can help the organization own the future. We cannot seize this opportunity if we spend our time making business rule changes to how we process payables!

It's IT transformation or bust

Recognize that my role is to create a culture where innovation and motivation thrive.Along those lines, 2014 is the time to become transformational leaders. The organization needs us to be effective in leading change, delivering value and moving into the future (because the future is all about technology). A friend recently asked me what I meant by "transformational leaders." To me, being transformational means that I:

• Accept the reality that I, by myself, will never have the answers the organization needs.
• Thus, believe that collaboration is the only meaningful way to deal with both ambiguity and market dynamics.
• Focus innovation on the few areas that lead to competitive advantage.
• Create a culture of trust and be trustworthy.
• Create a culture of ownership and never take ownership away.
• Continuously improve processes through simplification and standardization.
• Can clearly articulate the why of what must be done -- the why is the vision that others will follow.
• Hold myself and others accountable, but blame and fix processes (rather than individuals or teams) if things do not go as planned.
• Think "outside /in" by understanding the lives and needs of customers.

The pace of 2013 was crazy. I expect the pace of 2014 to be insane followed by whatever is beyond insane in 2015.

4 Ways To Manage Multiple Projects

A lire sur: ProjectManager.com

If you have to manage multiple projects at the same time, then it's known as "Portfolio Management" and it can be a tough challenge.

There's resources, costs, timelines and more and they all need managing with care, so read on to learn these...

Here are 4 ways to make portfolio management that little bit easier.

#1: Use dashboards
Portfolios are made up of lots of different projects and programs, and a portfolio manager needs to see a view of what's happening on them all. Instead of going into each individual project to get the latest status, use dashboards to consolidate reports and key metrics from each project. Then you can see progress and areas of concern on one page. Of course, you can drill down into the detail easily if you need more data about a particular problem.

#2: Give your teams online access
Portfolio managers are often responsible for a number of project teams. Make it easy for your project managers and team members to do their work by ensuring they have instant access to the right files online. It will help everyone get their tasks completed effectively and you'll be sure that you're getting real-time reporting at portfolio level. It's easy to set up online access for staff and contractors, and if everyone is using the same software you can roll up data to see a portfolio-wide picture of what's happening at every stage.

#3: Use resource reports
Creating bespoke resource reports will help you balance the needs of the people working on the portfolio. There are a number of reports in ProjectManager.com specifically designed for resource reporting that will assist in tracking and managing project resources. This is the best way to check that you aren't overloading one project team member, or leaving someone else with nothing much to do. You can also see who is available to switch from one project to another-a great advantage when project priorities in the portfolio change.

#4: Get collaborating
It might seem like many of the projects in your portfolio don't overlap, but when you look closer there are lots of ways in which they interact with each other. As a result, it's really important for each project team to be able to effectively communicate with the others. You can facilitate this by making sure that they all have access to good collaboration tools.

Use project management software to help your teams work together to manage project dependencies and conflicts. You may have to step in to help them resolve problems, but it's also great for them to have the tools required to sort out some of the smaller issues themselves. Instant messaging, file sharing and online discussions are examples of how you can get diverse project teams working together.

#5: Check your tools integrate
As a portfolio manager you will deal with lots of people: stakeholders who have different priorities and also different communication styles. And they could want information in different formats. Make sure that the tools you use integrate with each other. For example, check that you can import task lists created in Microsoft Word, or import spreadsheets from Microsoft Excel to feed data into your consolidated dashboards. This will save you a lot of time and ensure that your admin overhead is kept to a minimum.

Three Techniques for Managing Small Scope Changes

A lire sur: Method123

Everyone can recognize and appreciate that a scope change request must be invoked for large changes to the project. However, you may encounter resistance to formal scope change management for small change requests. The sponsor and other project team members may consider this to be unnecessary overhead for such small decisions.

They might be right. There are three alternate techniques to employ that may help with small changes. None of these options implies that you are not managing and tracking scope changes. These are just additional techniques to use that may be more appropriate for managing small scope changes. 

• Batching. It is not always practical to get the sponsor to approve all small scope change requests each time one is requested. The project team usually does not have day-to-day access to the sponsor and it is hard to get the sponsor’s attention for these small requests. It is a better use of time to batch the small changes up into a bundle. This means that you keep track of the small scope changes, their business value and their impact on the project. Then, when they hit a certain threshold, you take them all to the sponsor for approval. For example, instead of visiting the sponsor ten times for small scope changes, you batch the small changes together and see the sponsor one time.
• Discretion. It may make sense for the project manager and a tactical customer manager to be given discretion to approve small scope change requests under some threshold of effort hours and cost. This authority must be explicitly delegated by the sponsor. This discretion assumes that the project is on or ahead of schedule, and that the changes do not make the project exceed the agreed-upon cost or duration. If the project is in any risk of not meeting its cost or duration commitments, this discretion should not be used – even for a one-hour change request. In this case, all changes should go through a normal scope change process to receive corresponding budget and schedule relief for any changes.
• Scope Change Contingency Budget. Your organization may recognize that a certain level of scope change is inevitable and you may be allowed to allocate a percentage of the total project budget to account for small changes. For example, you may have a 5% contingency added to your budget for scope change. If your total project budget was $500,000, your scope change contingency budget would be $25,000 for small scope changes. The customer must rationalize the budget to make sure all important scope changes can be accommodated. If the customer uses the budget up early on small scope changes, there will be nothing left for later change requests. This budget is used for change requests under a certain dollar or hour threshold. Larger requests can still be made but they would go through normal scope change management and be evaluated by the sponsor. 

5 Steps to Creating a Powerful Infographic

A lire sur: http://blog.slideshare.net/2013/12/16/5-steps-to-creating-a-powerful-infographic/

By Guest Author on December 16, 2013 

People love infographics, and the statistics prove it: In the past five years, Google searches for “infographics” have increased 25X. Sharing an infographic can improve website traffic by 12%. Some analysts even claim that 100% of businesses can benefit from sharing an infographic.

But you can’t just slap together an infographic and expect success. To be successful, an infographic needs resonant content and great design.  Here are 5 tips for creating an effective infographic:

1.    Listen: First, think about the topic you want to cover. What questions are important to your target audience?  What surprising, useful or informative information can you provide? Also, select a topic that has high-quality research and data that can be used for the creation of  visuals.

 2.    Focus: Your infographic topic should be clear enough to be communicated in a short sentence.  If, for example, you have a broad topic like cookies, narrow it down to something such as: “How do cookie flavors rank around the world?”

3.    Edit: Most people will only spend three-minutes reading an infographic — be selective when choosing which information to feature. Delete any information that does not add value to your message.

 4.    Organize:  Your content outline should start with your most powerful piece of data so that readers are hooked immediately. Order your supporting information so that it has a surprise in the middle, and builds towards a clear conclusion and a call-to-action at the end.

5.    Visualize: Infographic designs should be inspired by the topic and data. For some great examples of visualization, check out Gareth Cook’s The Best American Infographics 2013. For more inspiration, see Peter Orntoft’s designs, which each feature a single photograph, and are a great reminder that the best infographics are customized for the content theme. Some more tactical tips: In the “largest scale visualization study to date,” researchers discovered that memorable infographics typically use multiple colors, have more curved lines than straight lines, and are busy instead of minimalistic.  The research does not explain why exactly these features are memorable, but the results are still valuable for infographic designers.

Remember to collect feedback on your infographic from people who are representative of your target audience.  Once you are confident in your creation, share it with the world!

Deux tiers des DSI misent sur la virtualisation pour réduire leurs coûts

A lire sur: http://www.itchannel.info/articles/145476/deux-tiers-dsi-misent-virtualisation-reduire-couts.html

Dimanche 22 Décembre 2013

La virtualisation est clairement source d'économie. C'est ce qui ressort de l'enquête menée à l’initiative de VMware auprès de 102 DSI français d’entreprises toutes situées en province. Spécialement conduite à l'occasion du VMware Tour 2013, cette étude sur les enjeux IT révèle que 64% des décideurs s'appuient sur la virtualisation pour maîtriser leurs dépenses IT dans les organisations de 100 à 500 employés. Une part qui atteint 67% dans les entreprises de plus de 500 employés. Il en ressort également que 73% des DSI sont sensibles à la combinaison virtualisation et technologies mobiles.


Les pistes pour maîtriser les dépenses IT

"Sur quels leviers comptez-vous vous appuyer pour vous aider à maîtriser vos dépenses informatiques pour les 18 mois à venir ?"



L'externalisation est également une piste envisagée par les DSI des plus grandes organisations pour répondre à la pression sur les budgets. 39% d'entre eux ont déclaré poursuivre cette orientation. Toutefois, cela ne bénéficie pas directement au Cloud dont l'adoption se fait plus rapidement dans les plus petites entreprises. 11% des entreprises de 100 à 500 employés sont ainsi 11% à en faire une priorité pour les 18 mois à venir, contre seulement 2% dans les entreprises de plus de 500 employés.

Enfin, la mobilité est un facteur clé pour nombre de DSI. 73% d'entre eux sont intéressés par des solutions leur permettant de transformer les applications, les postes de travail et les sources de données en services, le tout étant affiché sur n'importe quel terminal, sans avoir à se soucier de ce que ce qu'il contient, ni quel OS il utilise.

En conclusion, cette étude confirme l'intérêt que portent les DSI à la virtualisation. Avec 77% d'entreprises engagées dans un processus de virtualisation de leurs serveurs, cette enquête atteste également de sa généralisation.


Méthodologie de l’étude
Cette étude, réalisée par NetmediaEurope, en partenariat avec VMware, a été menée en France en septembre 2013 auprès de 102 DSI d’entreprises de 100 à 5 000 salariés, toutes situées en province. Pour consulter l’étude dans son intégralité : Rendez-vous ici

Et si on incubait aujourd'hui le SI de demain?

A lire sur: http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/et-si-on-incubait-aujourd-hui-le-si-de-demain-39796528.htm

Sommaire : Une centaine de DSI membres de CIOnet France se sont retrouvés autour du thème de "comment favoriser l'innovation?" Et d'explorer de nouvelles approches de co-innovation avec des partenaires ou des startups. Pourquoi ne pas incuber dès maintenant le SI de demain?

Par Frédéric Charles pour Green SI | Samedi 21 Décembre 2013

Jeudi 19 décembre, une centaine de DSI membres de CIOnet France se sont retrouvés dans les locaux de Google, autour du thème de "Comment favoriser l'innovation?"

A un moment où la capacité à innover est de plus en plus considérée comme un différenciateur fort des entreprises, notamment dans l'étude récente du cabinet PwC, Global Innovation Surveyconduite dans 25 pays.

L'écart se creuse entre la croissance sur 5 ans envisagée par les moins innovants (+20%) et les plus innovants (62%).

Une question de l'innovation qui concerne donc a DSI a double titre:

• déjà parce que la DSI participe à la construction de l'entreprise numérique, quand le SI devient un puissant moyen de relations clients et de nouvelles offres commerciales. Et que cette construction repose souvent sur des innovations de ruptures.
  
• mais aussi parce que l'innovation offre une alternative aux évolutions "mécaniques" (ou incrémentales) du SI et peut ouvrir de nouvelles voies pour contourner les impasses qui se présentent régulièrement à lui;

Incuber le SI de demain?

Au lieu d'aborder l'évolution du SI comme un processus linéaire, est-ce qu'on ne peut pas incuber aujourd'hui les idées qui nous permettront demain de contourner les multiples ruptures et impasses qui se présentent tous les 10 ans.

Des impasses comme la bascule du mainframe au client-serveur, l'arrivée de l'internet, du mobile, du cloud, du social, et demain du BYOD, des objets communicants...

Et puis là où on dépense 100% de son budget pour une V1 puis au moins 20% par an pour maintenir l'application jusqu’à son obsolescence, pourquoi ne pas miser 1% de son budget sur des idées, sans vouloir écrire un cahier des charges mais juste un problème à résoudre.

Puis y consacrer 5% en prototype. Et si elles sont prometteuses, elles pourront peut-être se révéler une alternative que l'on aurait certainement ratée en cherchant plus tard à juste résoudre la rupture.

Comment passer à l'action?

Et pour illustrer et passer à l'action sans attendre, plusieurs startups ont été invitées à ce congrès pour "pitcher" en 10mn leur projet et ce en quoi il répond à une future impasse du SI actuel :

• Satelliz qui part du principe de la complexité de la supervision des SI dans un monde hybride (Cloud public, privé, ...) et du besoin d'extension 24/7 du support même pour des applications non critiques. Son approche réinvente la supervision en s'appuyant sur le Cloud, vous alerte en cas de besoin et vous propose même un service d'assistance pour la résolution des incidents.
  
• Wikipixel qui part dela faille actuelle de nos SI a gérer les droits associés aux fichiers multimédia que ce soient des photos ou des vidéos. Alors que leur nombre augmente avec le développement des mobiles, et que le stockage interne commence a poser problème. Son approche s'appuie sur le SaaS pour proposer une gestion efficace et sécurisée, connectées aux terminaux mobiles,
  
• MoTwin qui part du besoin d'avoir de plus en plus d'Apps reliées au SI en temps réel, comme pour passer des ordres de bourse ou faire un pari sportif depuis son mobile. Son approche réinvente la plateforme mobile et prend en charge les données temps réel et la gestion des contextes.
  
• BIME qui part des besoins du décisionnel et de soninadaptation à l'ère de l'internet et demain du big data. Son approche propose ce que personne ne pensait possible, une "business intelligence" sous la forme de services, comme en SaaS.
  
• Stormz qui part de la difficulté à faire un brainstorming efficace avec un grand nombre de personnes et développe une plateforme accessible sur internet ou sur tablettes, pour réinventer la collaboration.
  
  C'est cette solution qui a été utilisée par les DSI du congrès annuel pour produire et enrichir les idées sur la mise en place de dispositifs de co-innovation. A la fin de la séance, l'ensemble la matière produite était disponible au format électronique. Ça change des paperboards et des odeurs de marqueurs pendant des semaines en attendant de faire le compte rendu...

Car gardons en tête qu'une Startup n'est pas une entreprise comme les autres. Elle est fragile mais surtout agile, car elle doit trouver le modèle rentable avant d'avoir utilisé tous les fonds de son financement.

Cette agilité la DSI peut en bénéficier en travaillant dans cette phase de recherche avec elle. Une façon pour la DSI d'incuber des idées dans son environnement et avec un partenaire qui veut réussir, et vite.

En retour, la startup va mieux comprendre un besoin opérationnel, le fonctionnement des entreprises (de nos jours beaucoup de créateurs n'y ont jamais travaillé) ou pouvoir utiliser la référence d'une entreprise pour en convaincre d'autres.

Mais c'est surtout une rencontre entre femmes et hommes qui partagent une passion commune pour la transformation. Chacun avec ses propres armes. Une rencontre qui ne peut se faire que si on fréquente les mêmes lieux et parle le même langage.

Alors pour GreenSI, il est peut-être temps pour la DSI de laisser un peu de côté ITIL et CoBIT, et d'adopter les mots de l'innovation ("pitch", "networking", "Moonshot thinking", "Open Labs", "brainstorming"...) et de fréquenter les lieux où les startups poussent (incubateurs, pôles de compétitivité...)

Car il est temps aujourd'hui de commencer à incuber le SI de demain.