Knowledge Gap on Business Process Management Hampers IT/Business Alignment
By Steve Lee and Lane F. Cooper
BizTechReports.Com
Lots of people are talking about business process management (BPM), but in a recent AIIM survey 57 percent of respondents knew of no group responsible specifically for BPM initiatives in their organizations. No surprise, then, that many IT managers are confused or even misinformed about the actual business process effectiveness at their companies.
Web 2.0 Strives to be Collaboration Software of Choice
By Steve Lee and Lane F. Cooper
BizTechReports.Com
Social networking, mashups and other Web 2.0 collaboration tools aren’t just fads – within a decade they may actually supplant today’s enterprise collaboration platforms. Companies that take steps today to make these tools central to their business processes can realize important benefits that can have a measurable, positive impact on ROI.
Lack of IT Governance Complicates Compliance with Costly Consequences
By David Almquist and Lane F. Cooper
BizTechReports.Com
According to a survey conducted by Enterprise Management Associates, nearly a third of IT and business managers indicated that the board of directors and senior executives do not properly support compliance initiatives. The stakes are high and the tools are often not up to the job. Automation can help reduce the risks, improve reliability and save time and trouble.
New content management practices ease information proliferation
By Steve Lee and Lane F. Cooper
BizTechReports.Com
A recent study from AIIM, the enterprise content management (ECM) association, reports that nearly half of businesses find it difficult to access the information they need to do their job. This “findability” problem can be addressed by a content management strategy that provides an architecture for managing and delivering digital data, including text, e-mail and multimedia.
Got data management risks? Data governance can help
By David Almquist and Lane F. Cooper
BizTechReports.com
The challenge is creating effective data governance processes that span the enterprise and uses assets that cross departmental boundaries. One of the keys to success is getting organizations to view information as an asset and maximizing its return on value.
Disaster recovery: does your management get it?
By David Almquist and Lane F. Cooper
BizTechReports.Com
In a survey by the UK-based Chartered Management Institute, less the half of the 750+ companies responding had a disaster recovery/business continuity strategy in place – and of those 75 percent reported that the plan was likely haphazard and untested. As examples in this report demonstrate, without a disaster recovery plan that supports both business and IT strategy - and encompasses the extended enterprise, including vendor-provided services – companies can fall victim to unexpected vulnerabilities.
Global Complexities Challenge How IT Managers Handle Distribution
By David Almquist and Lane F. Cooper
BizTechReports.com
Shifting business environments, global expansion and the growth of diffuse partnerships is making supply chain and distribution management more complex than ever. IT departments wrestle with integrating distribution operations in new geographies and across an ever-widening set of systems. One approach to solving these issues is to focus on those areas that deliver near-term value.
Is IT Ready to Spearhead “Green” Energy Efficiency Efforts?
By Steve Lee and Lane F. Cooper
BizTechReports.Com
Energy costs make up 71 cents of each dollar spent on enterprise IT, but according to Gartner, most IT shops still aren’t prepared to support an energy efficiency agenda for their organizations. IT departments are in a unique position to lead the process by developing a comprehensive understanding of actual IT energy consumption. But are IT managers ready to take on the task?
Enterprise application integration: Time to market imperative driving investment in EAI
By Steve Lee and Lane F. Cooper
BizTechReports.Com
The proliferation of new applications on top of layers of legacy systems and applications creates complexity that limits visibility and understanding of real-time business conditions. Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) helps unravel the complexity and create a more responsive application infrastructure and greater business agility.
Economic Climate Ups Ante for IT Cost Management
By David Almquist and Lane F. Cooper
BizTechReports.Com
More pressure on IT without more budget: It’s a common lament. In today’s economic climate, the problem is even more acute. An integrated simplification, centralization and collaboration strategy can be an effective way to reduce IT costs significantly while actually improving service delivery to the enterprise.
Systems Management Initiatives Tap SOA to Boost Systems ROI
By David Almquist and Lane F. Cooper
BizTechReports.Com
Traditional systems management practices have led to redundant investments, low resource utilization, minimal flexibility and mounting costs. Wintergreen Research reports that IT managers looking to optimize their systems are turning to Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) to consolidate and virtualize existing resources into a pool of reusable capabilities that can be brought to bear, quickly and cost-effectively, as enterprise priorities change.
Is Virtualization Still Only Virtually Understood?
By Steve Lee and Lane F. Cooper
BizTechReports.Com
Virtualization of the IT back-room has helped companies to simplify management, consolidate resources, and realize new flexibility and performance. Now IT managers are under pressure to spread the benefits of virtualization to applications and desktops – which promises additional significant gains, but leads to confusion of terms and methodologies.