Project Management / News

Improving business processes is the number one priority of CIOs, according to analyst firm Gartner.

As the economic recession continues to deepen, double-digit budget cuts, hiring freezes and layoffs are becoming a fact of life in many IT departments. But some CIOs are managing to keep both their staffs and their rosters of ongoing IT projects largely intact - due partly to a desire on the part of business executives to use technology to reduce corporate costs and boost revenues.

With Microsoft increasingly talking up cloud computing it is not unexpected that Avanade, the consultancy dedicated to using the Microsoft platform, and which was co-founded by Microsoft, is starting to talk up the benefits of running services in the cloud. To get a little more of a local insight where he thinks the market is positioned and what Avanade can offer organisations, we spoke to Craig Dower, managing director, Avanade Australia.

Its CEO told his staff that it was akin to giving someone a heart and lung transplant while they are in the middle of a marathon -- without stopping. And that pretty much was what it was like for Jetstar last weekend as the low cost airline embarked on its largest IT overhaul since it took flight in 2004.

The Open Group, a technology consortium focused on interoperability and "boundary-less information flow," on Monday is launching version 9 of TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework), which provides a framework and method for enterprise architecture available to any organization.

Improving the performance of all involved in a project's delivery is key

The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) has implemented an award-winning Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) deployment to improve internal IT service and performance.

The dismal US economy has made many companies ripe for takeovers, so it's important for IT managers and CIOs to be prepared in case their company is involved in a merger, an expert warns.

Enterprise software is sure to remain a buyer's market during the economic downturn next year, but assuming you've got a budget, be careful to avoid boondoggles while in pursuit of a bargain, say analysts, consultants and IT executives.

Compuware this week released Changepoint 2009, the latest version of its IT project portfolio management software, amid an economic environment where CIOs everywhere are looking to drive down costs.

With support for three of the major pillars of application development and deployment -- Oracle 11g, Microsoft SQL, and open source MySQL -- under its belt, Amazon.com appears to be anticipating a major move by the enterprise into the cloud.

HP's David Cannon, co-author of the Service Operation book for latest version of ITIL, talks about why Australian adoption outstrips the US, what’s new in ITIL v3 and how to avoid common pitfalls

Building materials manufacturer Boral has won an award for the best ITIL implementation for 2007 at the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF) of Australia's IT service management awards.

David Farris, IT manager at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal Plant Health Inspection Service, has been working for five years to change some of the processes within his 300-employee organization. He hopes the changes will lead to significant savings in the IT department, which now spends about US$100 million annually.

Most speakers at the Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco last week agreed that Web 2.0 tools will make their way into the enterprise, propelled by user demand for tools that can make them more productive.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have come up with a way to measure visual clutter, a breakthrough that could help everyone from fighter pilots to Web site designers.

National welfare agency Centrelink has initiated quality level agreements (QLA) for its in-house developed software resulting in better visibility of work done by service providers.

Local businesses are wasting up to 50 percent of software development budgets because they lack the resources, tools and knowledge to conduct efficient software testing, according to market analysts.