|
| Recent
Articles |
The Perfect Security Product?
Still have not found the perfect security product, come close a couple of times, but no cigar. It is not for lack of looking, however, our way of looking at a security product is as a small security firm that needs to be up and running 24X7 and offer exemplary support for...
MDA And Business Rules
I was writing a book review on "Real-Life MDA" and I realized that many of my comments about the book were really about MDA or Model Driven Architecture in general. With this in mind I thought I would dump a few...
Technical Certificates Declining In Value
Monster.com is reporting that some IT Certifications are actually declining in value. Allan Hoffman, Monster Tech Jobs Expert is reporting tonight that some certificates might not be as valuable as the person getting...
IT Degrees: The Popularity And Broad Specialty Range
Information Technology degrees, or IT degrees are very popular for an excellent reason: the demand has never been stronger for individuals to keep today's...
Innovation, Maintenance And Open Source
A NetworkWorld article quotes Google's GM of Enterprise Business as saying: "insane complexity of technology is leading companies to spend 75% to 80% of IT...
Preventing A Brute Force Or Dictionary Attack
To understand and then combat a brute force attack, also known as a dictionary attack, we must start by understanding why it might be an appealing tool...
IT And Help Desk Customer Satisfaction...
IT and help desk customer satisfaction surveys provide information and insight for achieving breakthrough increases in IT and corporate effectiveness. This article describes the reasons for and benefits from...
|
|
|
05.11.07
CIO Panel W/ Disney, FedEx, Motorola & Unilever
 By
Ross Mayfield
After a bunch of big vendor stuff, we finally got to the keynote panel of CIOs at Software 2007.
In an earlier session, a WebEx executive pointed out that 80% of some IT budgets is people. That's my part of it, if I was to plug. But instead, sat and listened to take impressionistic notes:
Moderated by Ernest von Simson, Senior Partner, Ostriker von Simson
Panelists: Neil Cameron, CIO, Unilever; Rob Carter, CIO, FedEx; Patricia Morrison, CIO, Motorola; Tony Scott, CIO, The Walt Disney Company
What are the most innovative things you done lately?
FedEx: The wave of RFID that came and went was passive, now we are using active RFID. A smart sensor you install into the package: location, temperature, vibration, light (if detected the package might be open). Interfaces with broadly available services like Google Earth, or Geofencing for when something moves in and out of a perimeter and notifys you. Lots of innovation, most coming out of the Valley, at a price point that ultimately will be broadly distributed (today the financial vertical with high value data tapes {sneakernet} is the main use case).
Motorola: Speed in which we can repeatably deploy allocations, like in the Supply Chain. We have lots of partners and suppliers to orchestrate. Built an application library for each partner to reduce their integration from 4-6 months to 4-6 weeks. Worked hard on these integration platforms. Vendors we work with are incorporating this capability into their packages. The flexibility to change your sourcing models in our industry where manufacturing costs and other things are variable is needed to constantly evolve your business. Otherwise, lot of the changes are IT-related lead times.
Unilever: I'm a bit of a rose among thorns here. We we are bifurcated, have the traditional side which is relevation, not innovation, where we want to simplify and standardize. The other space, how we collaborate, is where we see innovation within our business. The Hot Chili program (named by one of our marketeers, we have lots of them), where we take all the new technologies, social or enabling, to change how we work and make decisions. Had to pay less attention to standards, longevity. Not looking at the unit costs that much as they don't matter for return. To get different Asian cultures to talk over a service in English isn't easy because they are very careful about how they are presented (how to be less formally). Challenges cross culturally, cross language and timezones.
Disney: Digitization of our business process. Across all of our businesses. In our media business putting TV shows on the web for free the day after the broadcast is a new business model, digitizing something previously well known. On Internet TV, we now say how long a commercial is and when it is coming, but the commercial is longer and more people actually watch it. People remember the commercials more than on TV, but ad willingness to pay is catching up. The next Pirates is coming out with live action and motion capture technology that is more than visually interesting, it changes how we make movies.
You haven't talked about traditional applications yet. How are your roles changing?
FedEx: Nothing happens in isolation, has to be integrated with the traditional apps. Looking for the next wave or layer but it isn't a complete departure from the core systems.
Motorola: How do you think about how your customers want. Living our own brand of seamless mobility. We have a major role in the expectation and understanding about how we can impact customers.
Disney: SarBox and how we are embedding so much technology in our processes -- we have the need for creativity but also protecting the brand from harm. One of my roles is adjudicating this battle. In our customer base, with children, we need to be extra-sensitive, a tension that gets harder all the time.
Continue reading this article.
About
the Author:
Ross Mayfield is CEO and co-founder of Socialtext, an emerging provider of Enterprise Social Software that dramatically increases group productivity and develops a group memory.
He also writes Ross Mayfield's Weblog which focuses on markets, technology and musings.
|
|
