There are two types of tech support professionals. There's the one who, responding to a call for help, brusquely shoves the individual aside, fixes the issue, then leaves without saying a word. Or there's the type who takes time and understands that computers are something the client simply doesn't get.
Superpartners is the backbone of many superannuation funds. The name may not be immediately familiar, but chances are most Australians have spoken to one of their contact centre operators. Providing customer call centre services is only one of the company’s functions, but being the largest superannuation administrator in Australia, CIO Gary Evans and Head of IT Operations Sinan Erbay knew the importance of getting customer relations right.
Novell has released a new version of its Zenworks PC management suite, consolidating separate applications through a new unified administrative console, and adding a range of features including awareness of the end user's identity and location.
Business executives have a poor understanding of IT for two main reasons. IT is not incorporated as an intrinsic business function and this is often the result of poor leadership structures. Enterprises have struggled to understand the value of IT-based initiatives because this value can not always be demonstrated through a cash flow type of analysis. They can’t see the actual results and the process improvements that come through this type of process.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has built a private cloud in three months, choosing Citrix’s XenServer virtualisation hypervisor over the incumbent VMware ESX.
In an effort to ease the complexity of system administration, Oracle has expanded its Enterprise Manager software to include servers, operating systems, networking gear and virtual environments, the company announced Tuesday.
The debate on whether program managers would make effective senior executives is one that has gained attention in recent years. However, for this article we thought we would pose this question and contrast it with the muses of a well respected Management Guru, Peter Drucker. Drucker, who is often referred to the as the “father of modern management”, signaled out eight characteristics of effective executives “What Makes an Effective Executive?, Peter F Drucker, Harvard Business Review, June 2004.
The power and pervasiveness of social networks has been further thrust into the public consciousness in recent weeks with the huge critical and commercial success of the film ‘The Social Network’, which chronicles the turbulent rise of Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, from awkward student to internet billionaire.
Paper manufacturing company, Australian Paper, has completed a carbon assessment project to measure and analyse IT-related carbon emissions and align those with its wider environmental sustainability programs.
Creel Price is no stranger to innovation. The co-founder of Blueprint Management Group used it as the foundation stone of the business, selling the start-up for $100 million after investing only $5000 a decade earlier.
In order to assess whether a person has the potential to be an effective project manager in your organisation, we contend that you need to conduct specific assessments beyond interviews and references of previous work assignments.
How well will a particular application perform in a given cloud computing environment? That's a basic question for IT groups who are comparison shopping among cloud optionsand one that's tough to answer at the moment. Apples to apples comparisons prove almost impossible.
Everybody in our industry seems to love giving CIOs advice. How often have you heard those memorable bromides about understanding your business, thinking "more strategically" or connecting with customers?
When CIOs join a new organisation, or their current company changes direction, they have an opportunity to establish themselves as strategic leaders. It doesn't matter if their companies aren't large or if they work in industries that adopt new technologies slowly.
Roger Sessions, CTO of ObjectWatch and an expert in software architecture, argues that the increasing complexity of our IT systems will be our undoing. In fact, he just recently got a patent for a methodology that helps deal with complex IT systems. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix recently caught up with Sessions to get his take on the extent of the problem and possible solutions.