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Infrastructure - Job Descriptions
IT Infrastructure Cost Rising
03/05/2010
Many of the largest IT budget problems can be traced back to five big money drains:
- Storage expansion - IT departments are already stretching their budgets for storage, and the demand is only going to grow. The volume of data an average business collects and stores actually doubles every 18-24 months.
- System complexity - a survey of Canadian IT workers show that many DBAs already devote up to 80 percent of their time to routine systems maintenance. Add to that the work that needs to get done on strategic projects, and you may be looking at major overtime charges.
- Hardware sprawl - More systems usually mean more complexity and maintenance and more servers definitely mean more power and cooling costs. For most companies, data center hardware accounts for the bulk of the power and cooling bill. In some cases, power costs can even exceed the cost of IT equipment!
- Reliability and scalability - most enterprise information is contained within IT systems, it is absolutely critical that those systems be available whenever your employees or your customers need them. Now you're talking about 24x7 availability, meaning that your systems have to scale along with your workloads. But scaling out by adding servers raises hardware and maintenance costs, and the wrong storage configuration can cause major delays in delivering key information.
- Compliance - Organizations face large fines if they are found to be out of compliance, and bad press and security breaches can dissolve shareholde confidence, destroy customer trust and send stock prices plummeting almost overnight.
Janco has solutions for these IT Infrastructure issues
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Feds inches towards more control over Internet
03/04/2010
Homeland Security and the National Security Agency may be taking a closer look at Internet communications in the future.
The Department of Homeland Security's top cybersecurity official said that the department may eventually extend its Einstein technology, which is designed to detect and prevent electronic attacks, to networks operated by the private sector. The technology was created for federal networks.
Is this the camel's nose in the tent?
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VA revamps IT Infrastructure - cuts projects
02/25/2010
VA infrastructure is changed and projects are cut.
To improve management of ongoing projects, as of Feb. 15 every IT project in the department, and about 250 IT projects overall, are being managed through the Program Management Accountability System introduced in July. The system requires IT projects to deliver new functionality within six months and to meet project milestones. The VA also is using an online IT dashboard to identify and track troubled projects.
The Veterans Affairs Department has terminated its Enrollment System Redesign, Pharmacy Reengineering and 10 other failing information technology projects for a projected savings of $54 million this fiscal year, officials announced today.
The goal is to put IT projects on the accountability system as soon as possible, it took several months to identify and terminate contracts associated with the canceled projects.
The enrollment systems project was budgeted at $24 million, and the pharmacy project at $23 million, for fiscal 2010.
Other canceled VA IT projects included the Barcode Expansion, Delivery Service, Rights Management Server and VA-Defense Department Laboratory Data Sharing and Interoperability terminology support.
The 12 canceled IT projects were among 44 IT projects halted by VA officials in July 2009. Chief Information Officer Roger Baker today released the list of the 12 terminated projects and 32 restarted projects.
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Cost cutting continuing in many IT organizations
02/20/2010
No matter what the media says about the recession bottoming out, times are still tough for may IT organization - hiring is down and budget cuts continue. Over 200 CIOs interviewed by Janco associates say, many IT projects are delayed or stopped, layoffs continue and next year's budget will be lower.
Most CIO's continue to look for ways to reduce costs. Many no longer are willing to pay a premium for vendors to fix any problems in key software and hardware within four hours instead of a 24-hours. Sometimes things stay broken until IT staffers can figure out the fixes themselves.
Steps that CIOs are taking include:
However it is critical to not impact core infrastructure systems or those that are customer centric.
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Goverment to go after Oursourcers
02/16/2010
Populist rhetoric from U.S. leaders and President Obama has some in India outsourcing enterprises concerned about what kind of role its companies will have in future technology endeavors with the United States. The big question is, Will anything happen to the tax code and H-1B visa laws in 2010 that will negatively affect workers or companies?
President Obama's first official State of the Union address is a few weeks old, but its message to American companies that operate subsidiaries in Asia has some questioning what direction the United States will go with technology workers, tax incentives and H-1B visas. With an economy slowly grinding its way out of recession and a populist air of protecting jobs for American workers, Obama is giving Asian and American business leaders and companies something to chew on.
In the address, Obama attempted to restate his agenda on jobs and jobs growth; some have construed these remarks as "protectionist."
"To encourage these and other businesses to stay within our borders, it is time to finally slash the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas and give those tax breaks to companies that create jobs right here in the United States of America," Obama said.
What was the reaction in Asia? Well, they are not worried about the tax part.
"The whole issue about taxing companies which were shipping jobs overseas and taking away tax breaks actually does not relate to the work that is done out of India or other locations," vice president of trade organization NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Services Companies), said in The Economic Times Jan. 28. "That is really about U.S. subsidiaries which have set up plants overseas."
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Job Market Soft - Layoffs not as high as last year
02/09/2010
There is good and bad news on the job front: The bad news is that layoffs are still happening; the good news is that they are a lot smaller than last January, and workers who were laid off in the last year are getting back to some form of work in larger numbers.
Job cuts across all industries have reached a five-month high at 71,482, according to a Chicago-based outplacement firm . Retail, telecommunications and pharmaceutical companies are leading the pack in layoffs. The telecommunications sector announced 14,010 in January. Roughly 13,000 layoffs were announced by Verizon last week as the largest mobile provider continues to transition its business away from legacy landlines and move toward mobile- and Internet-only based business for consumers and enterprises.
Retailers announced plans to shed 16,737 seasonal and full-time employees; Pharma plans to eliminate 8,170 jobs which is the biggest number that sector has seen since last March when it lost 17,796.
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Google stops supporting older browsers
02/01/2010
Google has announced that Google Docs will drop support for Microsoft's nearly nine-year-old Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) browser starting on March 1.
Ironically, if Google had taken its anti-IE6 advice to heart before hackers broke into its corporate network last year, it might not now be mulling whether to abandon the Chinese search market.
"We're going to begin phasing out our support, starting with Google Docs and Google Sites," said the senior product manager for Google Apps, in a Friday entry on the company's enterprise blog . "As a result, you may find that from March 1 key functionality within these products -- as well as new Docs and Sites features -- won't work properly in older browsers." Google Sites is the search engine's free Web hosting service.
Google's new list of supported browsers omits IE6, as well as other older programs, including Mozilla's Firefox 2.0, Apple's Safari 2.0 and Google's own Chrome 3.0. IE6 is by far the oldest browser of the bunch, with an August 2001 debut. In comparison, Firefox 2.0 dates to October 2006, Safari 2.0 to April 2005 and Chrome 3.0 to September 2009.
People running older browsers should upgrade to a newer version, said the Google represenative, who posted links to downloads of IE8, Firefox 3.6, Safari 4.0 and Chrome 4.0. The latter is available in final form only for Windows ; Chrome 4.0 for the Mac is still in beta .
Google's move is only the latest in a year-long string of major Web properties dropping support for IE6 or urging users to ditch it for something newer. The campaign began in February 2009, when Facebook prompted IE6 users to upgrade. It then accelerated last summer when Google's YouTube did the same, as Digg announced it would curtail IE6 support and as a California site builder led nearly 40 Web start-ups to urge their users to dump the browser . An "IE Must Die" petition on Twitter, meanwhile, has accumulated more than 14,000 signatures.
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Productivity improvements are possible
01/31/2010
Similar to the explosion in regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley after Enron, many pundits expect new regulations in light of the financial industry meltdown. And industry experts expect that IT organizations in many government agencies will have to take on the heavy burden of the new regulations that are expected to emerge. Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 can help IT departments in public sector organizations meet today's demands for lower TCO, improved security, and delivery of IT services. Companies that want to cut costs, lower complexity, and increase agility need to embrace virtualization in their production environments, and Windows Server 2008 R2 supports high-availability virtual environments.
CIO - Productivity Bundle
Over 220 IT and Internet Job Descriptions, Disaster Recovery Template
IT Service Management Template - Sensitive Information Policy - Salary Survey - Security Template
The CIO productivity kit standard edition contains:
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- Over 220 job descriptions in MS WORD format
- Current IT Salary Survey for US and Canada (by city)
- Disaster Recovery Template which is Sarbanes Oxley compliant
- Security Template which is Sarbanes Oxley and ISO 27000 compliant
- IT Service Management Template (Change Management, Help Desk, and Service Requests)
- Sensitive Information Policy (Protect Credit Card Card and Personal Information)
NASA to redo IT Infrastructure
01/27/2010
NASA has issued a final request for proposal for a menu of information technology services such as e-mail, security management, instant messaging and mobile communications. Estimates have pegged the work as worth $2.5 billion.
The project, Agency Consolidated End User Services (ACES), is designed to consolidate services across NASA into one agencywide solution. The requirements are currently met through the Outsourcing Desktop Initiative for NASA, the ODIN contract.The ACES contract is expected to be biggest of five contracts that NASA plans to issue as part of its Information Technology Infrastructure Integration Program (I3P) acquisition to consolidate the agency's IT and data services.
Market research firm Input puts the total value for the five contracts, based on NASAs draft RFPs, at $4.3 billion. Input said ACES value is $2.5 billion based on information in the draft RFPs.
According to the final RFP, the winning contractor will be responsible for a range of services including:
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- E-mail and collaborative calendaring services:
- Active Directory services.
- Security management including IT security, emergency management and preparedness, and data at rest services.
- Software license management: The contractor shall provide a fully managed and supported shared license infrastructure.
- Instant messaging services.
- Mobile communications device services such as cell and smart phones.
Service-Oriented Architecture and IT Service Management Are Keys To Success in the Recovery
01/19/2010
SOA and ITSM drive success and productivity
One bad customer experience can cost you that customer for life. Hospitality, travel, retail, healthcare, and financial services are especially prone to losing customers who have a negative experience. It does not take much for a customer to decide that you and your company are not worth his time, effort, or money.
Customers like to feel loved, and they are turned off very quickly when they sense that you do not care about the pain they are feeling. Even if you cannot help them because the situation is beyond your control, acknowledge that you understand both the situation and their frustration.
No customer wants the person serving her to be distracted or preoccupied. Ever go to the local mall and try to get help from a teenager focused more on texting her friends than helping you find what youre looking for? On the other hand, being too focused can be a bad thing. Have you ever asked an innocent question out of curiosity and then found yourself stuck for an eternity while a customer support person hunts endlessly for an answer? This person is likely so focused on getting the answer that he does not realize that you really do not care that much about it and would rather not wait for an answer to an inessential question. Be sure your people understand the degree of focus required for the job.
Even if the employee has the right skill set and experience, his odds of being successful and remaining on the job are low if his core behaviors and tendencies do not line up with those needed for success in that particular role. This is especially true for customer-facing roles in which your frontline employees act as extensions of your brand and heavily influence the customer experience.
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