But they'll never take... OUR PROJECTS!

Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you'll live... at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, 


for one chance,


just one chance, 


to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take... OUR PROJECTS! 

Timing was everything, William Wallace knew it, you should too.  There is blood in the water folks, for Gartner released a forecast calling for 3 percent growth in global IT spending to US$3.6 trillion, a figure revised up from Gartner's 2.5 percent growth prediction earlier in the year.  This was primarily due to survey results released Monday, that for the first time in eons, IT and sales were tied as the top two priorities among 175 board members, mostly in the U.S. and U.K., polled in March and April for the Gartner-Forbes 2012 Board of Directors Survey. Sixty-four percent said IT spending would rise during their companies' fiscal 2012.

Calling board members' attitudes "forward-looking and proactive," Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst Jorge Lopez added that more than half of the survey respondents said they are preparing for a market recession. "It underlines the fact that the investments they plan to make are essential to growth and even survival," he said in a press statement.

What to do...


Ok, so what should you do?  Well the survey revealed that companies in the US having a renewed interest in diversifying their companies' offerings.  So now are the time guys.  CIOs and other IT managers should take time now to analyze their strategies and revisit those strategic endeavors that were beyond economic reach.  Naturally you have to pick projects with a tangible ROI. 

Pipe

Suggestions for the unimaginable? Well, how about infrastructure for example.  Currently, the applications and technologies in queue are not only sophisticated, but behemoth and will make data choke on your network like a tennis ball through a garden hose, Savvy?

Telephony

Another novel idea is revisit that busted o’l Smithsonian Institute phone systems you have.  Do you realize the strides made in the telephony industry in the past 5 years rival the jump in technology displayed from the Apollo moon shot?  How you say?  Uh, maybe something call Interactive Voice Response (IVR), hello, is this mic on? The one-size-fits-all IVR that everybody hated is going away completely. New IVRs can tap into a company’s databases like CRM resources, and look at customer preferences and transaction histories, make your calls, leave a message, try another number, call you when they make a connection, coordinate concurrent updates to databases with web pages, avoid long distant charges, interact with your customers, act as your automated help desk, blah, blah…

In fact, today, you don’t even have to replace the darn thing to do the aforementioned.  There are hardware/software solutions that will layer over that busted up piece of iron you have and breathe new life into it extending its life for at least another 5 to 15 years.  Depending on how old some of your hardware is.  In other words, it’s low hanging fruit we are talking here. 

Security

Do I even have to say this?  Here is an idea, how about indoctrinating Information security as part of the system development life cycle (SDLC).  The information security folks should be involved throughout the development cycle. From the time that a new project is proposed, through requirements gathering, development, testing, accreditation, production and finally maintenance, the information security people should be integrated in the process. The information security professional should being an active development team member, This can keep costs under control by identifying controls early so they can be developed and tested prior to production. Stitch in time guys

Mobile Management  

Perhaps, Mobile Device Management (MDM) software, yah, for some this is old news, but for the majority of the Fortune 1000, this is newsworthy.  How does it work? Well MDM software such as MobileIron, Technology, Sybase, AirWatch, McAfee, and Symantec-- is loaded onto mobile Smartphone’s and tablets to allow IT managers to keep track of employee equipment, to remotely wipe these devices and to apply security controls.

Social What?

Social media monitoring services are powerful – honing in, listening, comparing, monitoring, recording and tracking what your customer's needs are – and they can yield powerful results. Below, you will see exactly what you should be looking for in the best social media monitoring services.

• Coverage range. Almost all cover the obvious, i.e., the major social networks, bookmarking sites and content-sharing sites; many cover at least the most popular blogs as well.  However, the most useful also monitor message boards and forums, which are especially critical for niche B2B products and services, e.g., the sites that rank or rate particular products or venues.
• Alert frequency. Social Networks communicate at "brushfire" speeds, so real-time or near real-time monitoring and alerting, so you can respond to critical items promptly.”
• Support & training. This is a new field for everyone; as a result, the more critical training and support are; know what is out there for support, training, and just plain help.
• Metrics & reporting.  Without reporting, monitoring tools are useless.  Make sure you can track change over time and provide some sort of analytics that will help you determine whether you should do more of a specific activity, or less, or something else.
• Workflow. As different categories of customer/prospect comments they should be rifled to the appropriate dept. e.g., marketing, customer support, finance, product management.  A good tool should make it quick and easy to direct the comment to the right person to take action.
• Geographic/language coverage. International companies need to track social media across borders and be able to categorize in multiple languages.  
• Integration with other applications.  If you have a CRM (e.g., Salesforce.com) or a marketing automation system, you’ll want to investigate if/how the social media tools you’re considering integrate with those apps.

So guys, you can read this and blink a couple of times and go on with your day and wonder why your company’s competition is doing better than yours next year, or you can take heed to these words and schedule a meeting with the powers to be and get your projects back on the docket.

Nuff Sed…

Source(s):

http://www.itnews.com/cio-role/47745/gartner-survey-says-it-spending-top-board-level-priority

So “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;”

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About Rick Ricker

An IT professional with over 20 years experience in Information Security, wireless broadband, network and Infrastructure design, development, and support.

For more information, contact Rick at (800) 333-8394 x 689