by Peter High, published on Forbes.com
10-14-2013
Gartner just concluded its Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2013 in Orlando, gathering tens of thousands of IT executives. Among the most anticipated aspects of the gathering are the ruminations from the Gartner pontificators regarding IT trends. Among several trends shared were the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2014. Here is a summary of those trends:
1. Mobile Device Diversity and Management
Gartner suggests that now through 2018, a variety of devices, user contexts, and interaction paradigms will make “everything everywhere” strategies unachievable. The unintended consequence of bring your own device (BYOD) programs has been to render much more complex (by two or three times, Gartner estimates) the size of the mobile workforce, straining both the information technology and the finance organizations. It is recommended that companies better define expectations for employee-owned hardware to balance flexibility with confidentiality and privacy requirements.
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by Peter High, published on Forbes.com 09-09-2013
I recently caught up with Aaron Levie, the Box CEO, as he and his team prepared for BoxWorks, the company’s user conference, which will kick off this Sunday in San Francisco. (To listen to an extended podcast interview that I conducted with Levie, please use this link.) I asked him for a preview of what he plans on sharing with the thousands of gathered technology executives and enthusiasts. He offered an overview of Box’s strategy going forward, advice he would offer technology executives who are still in the early stages of adopting the cloud, and he could not help but mention how delighted that he was to have his favorite band, Blink 182, playing the after party on September 17. In many ways, Box has been the very epitome of consumerization of technology. Box began as a consumer service, helping individuals share data securely across many devices. Consumers liked the service so much that it quickly penetrated the commercial space as these individuals began to use it at work just as they did at home. In Box’s continued evolution from consumer to commercial player, now that it has penetrated the overwhelming majority of multi-billion dollar companies in the U.S., Levie has been focused on developing industry verticals to focus its services on. When I asked him how he has chosen the verticals that Box has focused on to date, he indicated that he looks for “the best mix of a complex, highly regulated industry that is benefiting from much cheaper, much simpler technology like Box.” Levie’s recipe for success has been a combination of luring leading technology talent with depth of experience in the relevant industry verticals to join Box for this journey, partnering with leading technology companies whose focus is squarely on each of these verticals, and he the company has made a number of key investments to broaden Box’s offering in each of these spaces….
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Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal describes his personal journey as a technology journalist and what excites him about the future.
05-27-2013
Walt Mossberg has been called the most influential technology critic in the world. As I prepared for our interview, I was interested in the similarities between Mossberg and the famous wine critic, Robert Parker. Each is a powerful commentator whose opinions can make or break product launches, whose field of criticism is dominated in this country by activities in Northern California. Yet each chooses to live in Maryland, each refuses to accept gifts or perform advisory roles to those companies whose products he critiques, and each relishes the role of criticism even if greater remuneration would follow from joining such companies. Mossberg made quite clear that the mantle of “most influential technology critic” was not one that he chose.
Mossberg’s office is adorned with articles he has written, articles about him in various languages, and a healthy dose of memorabilia from his beloved Boston Red Sox. As I sat down, he graciously walked me through a book that was produced a year ago to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the D:All Things Digital conference. There were photos of people from each of the ten events, and it would have been difficult for me to come up with a technology luminary of great import in the U.S. who has not spoken or at least attended the conference.
This was also the first interview I have ever done where I felt self-conscious about pulling out my personal technology, curious what he might think of the technology choices I have made. As a means of expanding upon an opinion about how he evaluates personal technology products, he used my PC as an example. He said that if one judged by technical specifications alone, my PC would seem no different from a variety of other PCs on the market. Since he had spent significant time with my PC and with its equivalents, however, he indicated that mine was among the most rugged, had a good screen, and also had the best keyboard. That put my mind at rest.
I began our conversation by asking how someone who had made a name for himself as a journalist covering national and international affairs, with a Rolodex filled with a who’s who in those fields would be audacious enough to make a dramatic change in his 40s into a field where he had no educational or professional background. What followed was an interesting conversation about his own professional evolution, as well as some thoughts on what excites him as he looks to the future.
Peter High: Walt, I wanted to begin with the genesis of your journey. Your educational training is in journalism. You were at the Wall Street Journal for 18 years covering national and international affairs before you made a major change professionally and elected to focus on consumer technology with the commencement of your “Personal Technology” column in 1991. How did it occur to you to make this change?
Walt Mossberg: It dates back to 1981 and the purchase of my first computer, a Timex Sinclair. From an early stage, I was hooked. I spent more of my personal time as a tinkerer, training myself. What I found as I looked for technology advice was a dearth of technology writing that spoke to average users, not just hobbyists like me. Most of the writing was geared to people who were much more sophisticated, and it tended to use jargon that was foreign. I saw the need for something for a broader audience.
PH: Was it controversial when you proposed the idea?
WM: I originally proposed the column in 1990, when I was covering national security. With the end of the cold war, and a lot of the changes that were afoot in Eastern Europe, the idea was accepted; the timing was not right given my focus at the time. A year later, however, the timing was better, and “Personal Technology” was born.
Even more interesting was the reaction from friends and government leaders with whom I was regularly in touch at the time. I recall telling then-Secretary of State James Baker about this change, and he could not fathom why I would want to do it.
The prevailing reaction was either that I had been demoted, or that I was sick in the head. Washington, then even more than now, was not a tech-centric community. When the major focus is government, people can’t understand why one would wish to get out of that game and into something so foreign. Fortunately, I was neither demoted nor ill, and I am quite pleased with how things have gone ever since.
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Tan Chee Hong, Chief Operating Officer of Hactl, the world’s busiest air cargo terminal, explains why he believes this is the “decade of the CIO”
04-22-2013
“The decade of the CIO is here.” So says Tan Chee Hong, a CIO multiple times over who is now a COO. As he explains in my interview herein, the CIO is primed to be the path to the COO and CEO roles. Tan has the ideal background for the IT executive who would rise to a larger role. He has an MBA, he was educated on multiple continents, and he has worked on multiple continents, both as a consultant and as a CIO multiple times over. He was CIO of Jardine Cycle & Carriage when he was plucked by Hong Kong Air Cargo Terminals Limited (Hactl), one of the largest and most sophisticated air cargo terminals in the world, which operates as a gateway for air cargo to and from China. He joined Hactl as Executive Director of Information Services (CIO equivalent) & Operation Development. He was hired as a CIO-plus at the outset of his time with the company, which is a rare feat. No one had ever had that role simultaneously, but in Tan, Hactl had found a rare leader who could connect the dots between creative use of technology to stabilize the operation, and to delight an intricate web of customers and partners.
In March 2012, Tan was elevated to chief operating officer of Hactl, acknowledging his accomplishments in his prior role, and highlighting how deep the operations part of his role had become. He is yet another example of an executive who has moved “Beyond CIO.”
(The “Beyond CIO” series kicked off with this article, and the all past interviews in the series can be found here. If you are interested in future articles in the series with executives from companies like HP, Symantec, Schneider National, Fifth Third Bancorp, Ameristar Casinos, and Aetna, among others, please return to the Technovation column in the coming weeks.)
Peter High: Chee Hong, having toured your facility, one really must see it to understand the scale and complexity of the operation. It is a colossus on an edge of Hong Kong International Airport and as one walks around and in the facility, one sees some of the largest planes on earth, a variety of machines used to carefully move freight into and out of those planes, and a particularly sophisticated web of technology used to sort out the cargo to ensure that it gets to the right place as efficiently as possible. Can you provide an insider’s overview of the operation, as well as your role in it?
Tan Chee-Hong: Hactl is the world’s busiest air cargo terminal. We have been in business since 1976, and in 1998, we built SuperTerminal 1 – one of the most advanced air cargo facilities in the world, which we own and operate. Representing an initial investment of $1 billion, and capable of handling 3.5 million tons of cargo per annum, this massive six story facility covers an area of 390,943 square meters.
SuperTerminal 1 was designed and built to do one thing: manage our customers’ cargo in the smartest way. Employing state-of-the-art logistics technology and automated handling systems to control cargo precisely, efficiently, reliably and securely.
Hactl provides seamless, integrated logistics services throughout Southern China – enabling our customers to capitalize on the highly-attractive commercial opportunities presented by the vibrant Chinese market. We partner with more than 100 international airlines and over 1,000 freight forwarders.
As for my role, I am the chief operating officer of Hactl, and my primary role is to work and lead what we refer to as the “One Operation Team” of over 2,000 professionals from service delivery, information services, and operation services. Leverage the best of our people, technology, as well as the facility to serve our customers.
Additional topics covered in the article include:
As CIO and Corporate VP of Product Development, Mike Capone of ADP drives business innovation through IT.
01-28-2013
Automatic Data Processing’s Mike Capone is someone who has long had a foot in information technology and a foot in the business. He has a bachelor’s degree in computer science, but he also has an MBA. He spent time as a vice president of IT at ADP, but he went on to be a General Manager of a global HR & payroll outsourcing business within the company. In July 2008, he became ADP’s first ever global Chief Information Officer. When he took on that role, he did so as a business executive would, however. He pushed IT ever closer to the rest of the organization. He developed a mandate for innovation during the heart of the economic malaise. He also accompanied sales executives on sales calls with customers, and pushed his team to do the same. In so doing, IT’s value to the company grew. Therefore, in the second half of 2012, Capone added the role of Corporate Vice President of Product Development to his CIO title, adding a very business-centric role to his one in IT. His is an example of an IT executive who successfully amplifies the value of IT to the point where it is only logical that he take over a key business role. As Capone points out in my interview with him, nearly all ADP products have IT components to them, so having an executive who oversees both worlds provides tremendous synergy and efficiency.
(This is the eighth in the CIO-plus series. To read the prior seven interviews with the CIO-pluses from Waste Management, McKesson, Merck, Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, Ameristar Casinos, Owens Corning, and Marsh & McLennan, please click this link. To receive notice about future interviews in the series with CIO-pluses of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, the San Francisco Giants, and P&G, please click visit the column’s page. in the weeks to come.)
Peter High: Mike, you took an interesting path to become the first ever CIO of ADP, as you were the general manager of an GlobalView, a multilingual, multicurrency human resources outsourcing solution, prior to running technology. What did you do differently given that path than you would have done as someone promoted from within IT?
Mike Capone: Quite honestly, I cannot imagine ascending into the CIO role without having the line operating experience. The role of IT is always the same – driving business success while delivering the best possible user experience. But as a staff function, IT does not always get measured the way a client facing operation would – particularly in the areas of client satisfaction and market acceptance of your solutions. Having come from a business where many of my clients were Fortune 50 companies, including many top technology organizations, I knew that the key to success was to get very close to your clients and exceed their expectations. Driving this culture through the organization was priority one.
Also having come from a line operation role, I had some built-in credibility with the senior operating executives. I spoke their language and had walked many miles in their shoes. This was very helpful as we set out to develop our strategic plans.
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As part of Peter High’s Forbes Technovation Column, this CIO-plus Series interview with Randy Spratt, Chief Information Officer and Chief Technology Officer of McKesson, reveals how the dual technology-centric roles require different skills.
12-10-2012
Randy Spratt runs information technology for the largest company in the largest sector of the largest economy on earth. For most of the last decade, he has served as Chief Information Officer for the $123 billion healthcare behemoth, McKesson Corporation (NYSE: MCK), and in 2009, he assumed the Chief Technology Officer responsibilities. To the uninitiated, the CIO/CTO dual role may seem less dynamic than some other CIO-plus combinations we have covered and will yet cover in this series. However, that analysis would be wrong as Spratt tells us, these are distinct responsibilities, and they reflect both sides of the information technology landscape which become more complex the larger the company is.
(To read past articles in the CIO-plus series, please click this link.)
Peter High: Randy, you have been Chief Information Officer of McKesson Corporation for nearly a decade. In 2009, you added the Chief Technology Officer role. How do you distinguish between those roles?
Randy Spratt: The CIO role is fairly typical for a large, federated model company. I have overall accountability for the company’s infrastructure and business applications; some of this is discharged directly, such as USA infrastructure and global applications. Some is discharged through governance. Examples include enterprise architecture and business specific applications. Some of this is stewardship with board accountability, like IT risk and IT security. In this role, I set the strategic direction, and am ultimately accountable for the successful operations, of the company’s information assets.
The CTO role is not typical. You will find many different definitions of CTO, usually distinguished as either the CIO’s chief technologist or, for technology companies, the individual that sets the technology direction and charts the future of the company’s technology products. As our CEO said when he completed the market review of CTO roles for the board to consider compensation, “If you’ve seen one CTO, you’ve seen one CTO.” In my role, I am responsible for three major initiatives at the enterprise level, to be accomplished by working collaboratively with each of the businesses that develop and deliver technology products to McKesson’s customers:
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In his Forbes Technovation column, Peter High examines how RIM missed the boat on the consumerization of IT
11-08-2012
With the election in our rear view mirror, it is interesting to think about all that has come to pass over the last four years. Beyond the politics, however, I am reminded of how President Obama’s first election brought about perhaps the greatest product endorsement in history. Though Presidents are not supposed to endorse one product or company over another or appear in advertisements for any company, on January 7, 2009, days before his inauguration and in the face of having to give up his personal phone for security reasons as his predecessors had done, the President-elect said, “I’m still clinging to my BlackBerry. They’re going to pry it out of my hands.” This was a product that was of such great use to him, and represented his connection to the life he was leaving, that he would force his Executive Office of the President (EOP) to change protocol so that he could keep his cherished device. This is the sort of endorsement that companies dream about.
The truth is, as of early 2009, many business executives agreed that their BlackBerries were indispensable. RIM had done a wonderful job of securing their devices, making them business-ready, while also focusing on making BlackBerry the premier communication device. The keyboard made it ideal for emails and text messages in addition to being a robust phone. Moreover, these devices were available through a variety of carriers, so companies did not necessarily need to change plans in order to purchase the latest and greatest devices from RIM.
On June 28, 2007, around the time Obama was crisscrossing the nation trying to secure the Democratic nomination, a different kind of phone was released with quite a hefty marketing budget, as Apple released its first iPhone. Research in Motion (RIM – the maker of the BlackBerry) dismissed this new entity as a non-rival, as the iPhone was a personal device, and not something a serious businessman or businesswomen would deign to use for work purposes, to say nothing of a president. The iPhone had all kinds of “weaknesses”. In addition to the lack of a “real” keyboard, it was only available through one carrier, and a carrier that did not have the reputation for reliable service, especially in key business communities like New York and San Francisco. Moreover, what CIO would ever let the iPhone access the company’s most sensitive data? What RIM did not realize was that this was the tipping point of what has come to be referred to as consumerization of IT.
Though CIOs feared what a device like this would mean in terms of securing the network of the company, the truth is it was often they who were the first to play around with iPhone, as CIOs are always interested in the newest technology toy to play around with. The smart ones realized that it was so easy to use that it was a way to start a conversation with the rest of the organization. If Luddite CEOs could grasp the power of using apps for everything from seeing their appointments for the day, to checking into flights, to reading news and analyst reports, they might see an application of the device to their company.
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Tools deal in quantifiable information; they don’t possess the human virtues of discipline, creative thinking, or, most important, decision-making.
by Peter High
One of the most difficult tasks for IT departments is project portfolio management–and, of course, it’s also one of the tasks they most need to get right. The challenge can become particularly acute for companies that have experienced dramatic growth. CIOs can find themselves in the dizzying position of assessing the merits of dozens of projects and services, encompassing hundreds of employees.
Not unexpectedly, many business-technology executives trying to make sense of all the projects buy portfolio-management software, which can be very useful. They can aggregate project information into a portfolio-level picture, for example, and highlight where budgets or timeframes are being strained. But execs can’t forget that these tools are just that. They aren’t strategic thinkers or decision makers. IT departments have to lay the groundwork for a thoughtful, organized approach to their portfolio of projects before buying tools. Critical first steps include: instituting fundamental processes related to project decision-making, and paying close attention to the people involved in the projects themselves.
Take, for instance, the case of a Fortune 500 insurance company which had grown beyond its capacity to manage projects on an ad-hoc basis. Projects were increasingly running over budget and deadline, and weren’t producing anticipated benefits often enough. Alarmingly, the company was becoming less discriminating in its project selection. The portfolio was no longer clearly linked to corporate and business-unit strategy. While the company had a wealth of talented people able to develop projects, it had no processes to effectively manage and sort its ever-growing portfolio.
So, the company bought off-the-shelf portfolio-management software. Nine months and hundreds of thousands of dollars later, the CIO found that budgets and deadlines were only marginally better hit, and the strategic focus of the portfolio was no more clearly defined.
Furthermore, project managers need to provide project data on an ongoing basis, say, monthly. The nature and timing of the data should be established before turning to elaborate software to manage that data.
Portfolio-management software, then, is like any other app: It can be a powerful tool to organize data for analysis, but it has limitations. Tools deal in quantifiable information; they don’t possess the human virtues of discipline, creative thinking, or, most important, decision-making. These are hallmarks of good management and of strategic thinking, and are the essentials of successful portfolio management.
Originally published in Information Week, February 2, 2004. Copyright © 2004 CMP Media LLC (now UBM), republished with permission.
