Everybody loves a hero, particularly in IT-that talented professional willing to twist himself in knots to please his users and work overtime to get the job done. Most corporate IT organizations actively recruit, reward, and retain those willing to repeatedly save the technological day.
Emerging IT roles for application developers, IT-business hybrids, cloud vendor managers and data masters signal a profound shift in the IT unit's value proposition. (For more about emerging roles in IT, see " Four Kinds of IT Professionals CIOs Need to Hire Now.")
For years, IT departments struggled with iPhones and now iPads coming into the enterprise-but Android devices will blindside them. Even worse, the fragmented world of Android is coming quickly.
Apple is screwing with screws, again.
Are today's CIOs more innovative than they were 10 years ago?
One of my favorite panelists of all time was something of a discipline problem. He made funny faces at the other panelists. He slumped theatrically when he disagreed with someone. He got so animated when his turn came that he nearly fell out of his chair.
CIOs have been slow to adopt Twitter-in one survey, 65 per cent admit they have never used the microblogging service. But those who have joined Twitter say they are tweeting more than they did last year, are seeing a tangible return on investment and view Twitter as a useful business tool. This, according to a new survey by Diamond Management and Technology Consultants, which surveyed 75 CIOs.
"Android is exploding on the app scene," says Jonathan Carson, CEO of the telecom practice at Nielsen Company, adding, "like a rocket ship over the last year." Carson was speaking to a few hundred mobile app developers who gathered at the first AppNation conference in San Francisco's Moscone Center earlier this week.
Whenever I talk to CIOs these days, I test their reactions to what I call the "mega-trend trio" of mobility, cloud computing and social media.
All signs from Apple's jaw-dropping quarter point to even greater times ahead, says analysts. Even businesses are riding this wave. Eighty percent of the Fortune 100 are either deploying or piloting the iPhone, boasted Apple COO Tim Cook during the quarterly earnings call, and 50 percent are doing the same with the iPad.
Apple's iPhone 4 received another blow this week when Consumer Reports said it could not recommend the new smartphone because of reception problems.