"Standardization, centralization and simplification are the three guiding principles to help managers and employees accept new technologies, the retiring CIO and CTO of the U.S. Postal Service says."

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"Doubt about the direction the economy is taking could force corporate executives to reevaluate their cost management strategies. A practive approach can save companies dollars and their executives a lot of distress."

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An excellent article at CIO Insight in their "Expert Voices" column concerning IT security.  The article is titled, "IT Security, Reconsidered":

Business people know risk and return are opposite sides of the same coin; you can't have return without risk. So successful companies learn to analyze, accept and manage risk…most kinds of risk, anyway. When it comes to IT risk, organizations tend to focus on avoiding risk instead of managing it, by preventing intrusions and preparing to respond to catastrophic events. But instead of protecting companies, this approach to risk has blindsided IT to a long stream of IT disasters, from system meltdowns (Comair, Jet Blue) and stolen credit card data (TJX, CardSystems Solutions) to pilfered laptops (Veterans' Administration) and stolen data (U.S. Department of Transportation). Putting IT security back in the context of risk management has been the focus of George Westerman's work.

This year at work I have spent close to half my time dealing with a lot of IT security.  I have not only been kept busy with locking down the network but  also with way too much paperwork certifying that our machines are secure.  When you spend so much time making the paper pushers happy that you're following the latest policies it hard to actually really identify the true risks that don't show up on paper.  More importantly, spending so much time on IT security not only locks out the would-be hackers but also locks your IT staff out from adding potential IT value to the operations.  There has to be a balance somewhere...

"IT today is supporting more business processes than backend processes.  Today, IT has earned a stake at the table, has gone away from the bits and bytes, and is, more than ever, a partner to the business."

-Frank Modruson, CIO of Accenture Ltd., "What's Next for IT?", The Wall Street Journal, July 30, 2007.

"CIOs say their role will shift sharply away from operational oversight and technical details so they can concentrate on setting strategy and innovation. But is that what the boss wants?"

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"Large-scale, inter-enterprise collaboration is on the rise, and maturing collaboration tools make it easier to support those efforts."

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From CMS Report's very beginning, I had every intention to talk about not only those content management systems (CMS) that are open source, but also those CMS that are considered propriety systems.  I personally don't have a problem seeing companies making profit for the products they develop and promote.  Yet, if you look at the majority of posts I have written in the past year you'll find that about 95% of the articles center around open source CMS and not propriety systems.  Part of the reason I don't talk much about propriety CMS is that I just don't have the same access to them as I do with open source software.  However, a tiny article in one of the IT trade magazines reminded me another reason why I talk so much about open source software.

In ComputerWorld's February 12, 2007 issue there is a small article on page 8 titled, "There’s lots of Web 2.0 talk...but where’s the real action?"  The article discusses how commercial Web sites are looking into AJAX and other Web 2.0 features, but never seem to go beyond the Web 1.0 search tools.  Siderean Software Inc. believes they have the answer with their Seamark Navigator search software.  Siderean claims that want separates Seamark Navigator apart from the rest of the the other search software is that it uses relational navigation as opposed to relying on keyword search or guided navigation.  What caught my attention though was how ComputerWorld described the product.

"Cost cutting is no longer the sole mantra of the day. Technology leaders are now being asked to help their businesses compete and grow.

Senior managers are pressing technology leaders to offer new services and grow revenue. What should CIOs do? Here are 10 cases where I.T. raised organizational effectiveness."

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"Why have IT report to accounting?  You show me a company where the CIO reports to the CFO, and I'll show you a company lagging in its industry in the use of technology."

Benjamin Salzmann, Acuity CEO, Quoted in "CIO to CEO: If You Want to Move Up", ComputerWorld, December 18, 2006