CIO Talk Radio

Guest: Suren Gupta Title: EVP of IT at Allstate Insurance Company Guest: Teri M. Takai Title: CIO, US Department of Defense With Cloud computing bringing disruptive and progressive approaches to business transformation, it would seem naïve to think we could adapt Cloud to traditional Enterprise IT norms. Any such attempts are certainly knee jerk reactions when we don’t know what else to try. So, how does an organization transform its enterprise IT to adapt to Cloud and realize its full potential? What people, process, policy, and pocketbook changes would be needed?

Guest: Michelle R. McKenna Title: CIO at Constellation Energy Guest: Simon Szykman Title: CIO at the Department of Commerce Guest: Thomas H. Murphy Title: SVP & CIO at AmerisourceBergen Traditional wisdom claims that working closely with customers will stimulate innovation but contrarians suggest that working closely with customers yields the predictable, stifles creativity, and misdirects resources into trivial innovation. Must we wait for lightning to strike or can we successfully partner with customers to innovate? What should a company do? And, in either case, how can IT further assist?

Guest: Bryan Ball Title: Vice President and Principal Analyst, Supply Chain Management, Aberdeen Group Guest: Jason Birnbaum Title: Chief Information Officer, Sirva, Inc. The old traditional supply chain “pushed products to market.” How achievable would it be to turn this around and make it into a “demand-driven” supply chain where all the supply chain partners were aligned to “pull product to sales?” Regardless of the business environment, a demand-driven supply chain could reduce inventory levels while providing flexibility to better respond to market changes. What would this kind of change cost and what challenges would it bring? Would it produce a positive ROI? Has it ever been tried? If so, what were the results? What are the opportunity costs of NOT moving to a demand-driven supply chain? How can IT assist in making demand-driven supply chain a mainstream well adopted reality?

Guest: Malcolm Jackson Title: CIO of the Environmental Protection Agency Guest: Martin J. Gomberg Title: Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer, A&E Television Networks Today’s tight IT budgets have not slowed the rush to adopt cloud, virtualization, etc.  But in our rush to spend money to save it, perhaps we may be overlooking the biggest question of all: “What is most important for Infrastructure and Operations (I & O) Management - technology or the operational excellence of our IT?” Do we have a balanced view as to what is needed to align with and meet business needs? What type of virtualization fits best? Which makes better sense, public or private cloud?  How do optimize legacy systems? How do we find the answers that are uniquely right for our organization?

Guest: Art Lofton Title: CIO & VP of IT Solutions at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems Guest: Maurice Tayeh Title: SVP & CIO at The Shaw Group Inc. Guest: Pablo A. Vegas Title: VP and Chief Information Officer, American Electric Power (AEP) Both IT and the business environment are changing fast! While the spotlight is on technology, what about the IT people who deliver the goods? Where is today’s workforce failing? Will traditional approaches to managing the skill, competency, and engagement of our IT workforce continue to be relevant, going forward? What changes in skills and/or competency do we need? Who are the stakeholders who need to come together to build an IT workforce for today and that will still be delivering tomorrow?

Guest: Clayton Christensen Title: Harvard Business Professor & Author Guest: Daniel Fallon Title: VP and Chief Technology Officer, Navistar Every company wants to innovate for growth & profitability, but is this at the top of business leaders’ agendas? Leaders and resources should be aligned to spur sustainable creativity and innovation, but doesn’t that require a framework for making innovation efforts measurable and results predictable? What does it take to make innovation a critical long-term capability of the enterprise?

Guest: Gregory R. Simpson Title: Chief Technology Officer, GE Guest: Jim Fortner Title: VP of Global Business Services, IT Development & Operations, P&G Guest: John R. Dick Title: SVP & CIO at Western Union Historically, IT value has been based on IT being able to deliver on-time and on (or within) budget. Now, business has new wants! …How do IT leaders rethink IT to deliver more choice, faster speed, and greater scale? What have we changed and what should we be changing in order to deliver on these new challenges?

Guest: Chris Smith Title: CIO for the US Department of Agriculture Guest: George Westerman Title: Research Scientist in the Center for Information Systems Research at the MIT Sloan School of Management Guest: Michel Janssen Title: Chief Research Officer at The Hackett Group In order to stay focused, we have always applied benchmarks and metrics to establish a baseline and measure progress against predefined goals. Are the same benchmarks and metrics still relevant? Is everything that we want to measure, measurable? Given the fast pace and fluidity of business and IT, will measurement get easier or more difficult moving forward? What challenges and opportunities lay ahead to establish effective benchmarks for predictable growth and profitability?

Guest: Mark P. McDonald Title: Group VP Executive Programs, Gartner, Inc. Guest: Mark Polansky Title: Managing Director, North America Information Technology Officers, Korn/Ferry International Guest: Thornton May Title: IT Futurist & Dean of the IT Leadership Academy The IT landscape, how it supports business, drives change and derives business value is changing rapidly. How are we redefining the role of future IT leaders to adapt? What are organizations looking for in their IT leaders as they hire or retain them? How hopeful should we be about future IT leadership based on the current pipeline of CIO aspirants?

Guest: Linda Cureton Title: CIO at National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Guest: Mike Relich Title: EVP & CIO at Guess? Guest: Sheleen Quish Title: SVP of HR and IT, Ameristar Casinos, Inc. What’s on the minds and wish lists of CIOs for 2012? What does business expect IT to focus on for next year? …Increasing enterprise growth, attracting and retaining customers, creating new products or services (read “innovation”), or improving operational performance? In the coming year, how much of IT and IT leadership’s investment in time and resources is going to be invested in building new competitive advantage as opposed to business as usual?

Guest: Dale C. Potter Title: SVP and Chief Information Officer at the Ottawa Hospital Guest: John Crary Title: CIO, American Red Cross Enterprises are expecting big results from Big Data. Mining Big Data sets (like web searches or twitter postings) is expected to help business managers leverage data-driven strategies to innovate, compete, and enhance productivity. Beyond the hassle of storage, how prepared are IT leaders, to fully exploit the potential of Big Data.

Guest: Allan Steele Title: VP & Chief Information Officer, Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) Guest: Gary Foster Title: CTO of Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA), Boston, MA Every day, those of us who depend on public transit expect it to get us where we’re going inexpensively, safely, and with the reliability and consistency of a utility. How has mass transit changed from the past? How is IT transforming public transit now and for the future with regards to offering real time statuses on arrivals/departures, connecting with riders via social media, offering information over the Internet, et al? What innovations are being contemplated or deployed to improve today’s commuter experience? What could our transit systems learn from global transit solutions? What transit system is doing the best job of moving people?

Guest: Lt Gen William T. Lord Title: Chief of Warfighting Integration & CIO, Office of the Secretary of the Air Force Guest: Wayne Shurts Title: Executive VP & Chief Technology Officer, Sysco Almost everyone is tuned into social media in their personal lives, so it’s no surprise social media is making inroads into the business world as well. While businesses are using SM to connect with new customers externally, could IT use SM for better communication with its own business customers within the enterprise, and to better align IT with the business? What is being tried, and what is working? What isn’t working?

Guest: Dan Lohrmann Title: CSO, Department of Technology, Management & Budget (DTMB), Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Protection, State of Michigan Guest: Elayne Starkey Title: CSO, Department of Technology and Information (DTI), Delaware Three security issues loom large over the future of Cloud Computing: 1) Will corporate IT security policies still apply to the applications and services delivered via the cloud? 2) How will a CIO prove to management and clients that the company’s applications and services are as secure as before the cloud and meeting all SLAs? 3) Will security be robust enough to pass any compliance audits required? Only when each of these 3 concerns can be answered with a resounding “YES!”, will cloud computing be finally considered secure. Meanwhile, what will IT leaders and vendors have to consider, change, revamp, or manage differently in order to achieve this end goal?

Guest: Carl-Magnus Hallberg Title: SVP of Global IT Services, NASDAQ OMX Guest: Peter Cook Title: Chief Information Officer Europe, Global Shared Services, Wolters Kluwer N.V. Cloud Computing has been around long enough for us to have ironed out most of the kinks and is quickly becoming part of our enterprise computing DNA. But does that mean most of us have aced the Cloud Computing paradigm or that we use the mature technology to its best advantage? If we fail at using it properly, then where are we and what do we need to do to get to the next level? Is there a clearly defined ONE cloud maturity model we can follow, that has established benchmarks?