Phil Ayres

We all know the joking, and sometimes snide comments about the IT department that come out around the water-cooler. Fredric Paul on the Enterprise Efficiency blog relates an interesting story that highlights how easily the CIO and the IT team can make themselves not only the butt of jokes, but truly disliked. Fredric's example is a light-hearted, but imagine the result if IT reacted the same way to a new process improvement solution proposed by a senior manager. While around a collection of after conference IT bods, Fredric's relates his story: What bugged me, though, was that no one -- not one person -- bothered to ask what the business benefit might be of using iPhones in the enterprise. It didn't even occur to them to think about the possible benefits of the device to the users or to the company, just about the hassles it might cause them! But then came the kick... (more)

Embedded processes are a temporary fix

A sponsored IDC paper, "Embedding Additional Value into Applications: What Enterprises Need Most from Application Vendors" talks about the results of a survey on why application vendors need to ensure their applications can integrate and operate effectively inside and alongside other applications. Ignoring the obviously sponsored tone of the paper, one chart showing the results of the survey jumped out at me:   Of the optional responses to the question, "Please rate how important it is to your organization that each of the following features be embedded within your application... (more)

Don't Force Cultural Check-out When Building Shared Services

Shared services is a delivery model for business processes and information systems that has proven itself to be a great fit for insurance companies and many other organizations that have multiple lines of business and distributed offices. A shared services model can allow a company to better reuse information systems and expertise than when every group tries to fend for itself. And it provides a better feeling of control than completely outsourcing the operations to a third-party (I talked about outsourcing of claims operations in a Claims Magazine article in 2008, when gainfully... (more)

Yet Another Security Regulation - Does This One Have Teeth?

Following hot on the heals of the new HIPAA HITECH Act, the new Massachusetts regulation for data security and information privacy came into effect at the start of this month. It has seen lots of activity from the software security vendors, as it gives them another opportunity to scare the dollars out of corporate wallets. The full regulation is 201 CMR 17.00: STANDARDS FOR THE PROTECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION OF RESIDENTS OF THE COMMONWEALTH The document doesn't make a particularly exciting read, although it is not that hard to get through the barely 4 pages of content. The stri... (more)

Your Digital Wallet and the Open Identity Exchange (OIX)

The US government has put its weight behind a new framework for certifying online identity management providers, so that they can be trusted to assign individuals digital identities that can be used to access a range of websites and transfer personal information. According to Finextra: Google, PayPal, Equifax, VeriSign, Verizon, CA, and Booz Allen Hamilton have announced the formation of the Open Identity Exchange (OIX), a non-profit organisation dedicated to building trust in the exchange of online identity credentials across public and private sectors. [...] Google, Paypal, and ... (more)