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Outsourcing

6 Steps to Close the IT Skill Gap

August 28, 2010
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Guest Post by Rob Boudrow and Bob Audet Recent research reveals that 72% of executives place above average importance on talent management, yet only 44% of their companies have done an above average job in building the foundational capabilities to manage and improve talent.  During a recent project with a health care CIO, we observed this gap in practice and want to share some of our observations. Early-on, we saw four major issues: higher reliance ...

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Can You Outsource Innovation?

August 13, 2010
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I’m writing this as I finish up a great week of vacation on the Baltic Sea with my wife and some friends.  While our main destination was St. Petersburg, Russia, an unexpected surprise was our visit to Tallinn, Estonia.  As you can see in the photo above, Tallinn has many old churches and a well-preserved walled old town.  What you can’t see in the photo is the energy and positive outlook in its people, much ...

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Is the Cloud a Key to Sustainability?

May 20, 2009

The MIT Industrial Liaison Program holds an annual conference for its sponsors focused on technology and telecommunications.  This year’s event had excellent breadth, featuring Esther Dyson, the CTO of Blue State Digital (developers of Obama’s online social media platform), the director of MIT’s game development lab in Singapore and several others.  The one presentation that really got me thinking was by the IT Energy Coordinator for MIT’s own infrastructure, Laxmi Rao. Her presentation centered on ...

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IT’s Keystone Skills

April 16, 2009

Process issues are not alone in contributing to IT’s success or failure. People (and their skills) are also part of the “holy trinity” of People – Process – Technology, the three interrelated building blocks of any business capability, IT included. With the dramatic uptake in outsourcing over the last several years, CIOs have been faced with a new set of organization design challenges and skill needs. In fact, many IT shops have remade themselves to ...

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The OpenCloud is Hazy

March 31, 2009

The Open Cloud Manifesto effort is admirable.  It seems like a lofty goal but one centered on making this cloud thing better for all (ok, maybe not the vendors).  It also shows most of the major old school players in support – although Dell is not on the list.  As far as the newer players – Google, Amazon, Yahoo – cue the crickets.  However, before they get some serious traction, the Manifesto authors (who are they, ...

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