IT Management
Computerworld, 12/22/03: Ten Stories That Rocked (OK, Touched) Your World
Story by Marc Ferranti
After a three-year roller-coaster ride, the IT industry settled down a bit in 2003. The year seemed to provide a respite from history-making corporate scandals, monopoly-busting, and the exhilarating but scary boom-and-bust cycle.
Not that anyone was operating on cruise control, as this roundup makes clear. Here are the top 10 IT stories of the year, not necessarily in order of importance:
Offshore Outsourcing: One Worker's Gain Is Another's Loss
Stories about U.S. companies outsourcing work to India have been reported for years. But this year it became apparent that Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, China, Ghana, the Philippines and dozens of other countries are also clamoring for, and getting, business from the U.S. The value of IT services provided to U.S. businesses from offshore labor will double to $16 billion next year and then almost triple to $46 billion by 2007, according to market research firm IDC. Forecasts such as this sparked fears that Western IT workers would face increasing competition and prompted politicians and trade unions to raise the specter of protectionism.
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Gartner, 12/19/03: Priority Resolutions for CIOs in 2004
CIOs and other IT executives will have to spend the next 12 months holding down costs while innovating for the future. Here are 10 resolutions that will help them perform this difficult juggling act.
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Gartner, 12/17/03: Real IT Strategies: Steps 1 to 4 — Laying a Foundation
The first four steps of Gartner's nine-step IT strategy creation process lay the foundation for creating a truly effective IT strategy — one that will serve the needs of the enterprise's business strategy, even where such a strategy has not been clearly defined by business leaders.
Management Summary
"Strategy" is among the most abused and misunderstood terms — both internally, by those working for the business, and externally, by investors or business observers. For the purposes of this report, the following simple, clear definition of "strategy" will be used:
• A strategy takes a vision or objective and bounds the options for attaining it. Without a strategy, all roads may lead to the future; with a strategy, a selected set of roads is open for travel.
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Gartner, 12/17/03: Real IT Strategies: Steps 5 to 8 — Creating the Strategy
Once the foundation has been laid, the next four steps in Gartner's nine-step IT strategy process focus on strategy creation — defining and documenting the strategies for application change, IT operations and sourcing.
Management Summary
The first four of these steps were examined in detail in the second report in the series, "Real IT Strategies: Steps 1 to 4 — Laying the Foundation”. This report, the third in the series, addresses the next four steps, which comprise the core of the strategy creation process:
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Customer Service
C|net, 12/23/03: Open letter to Michael Dell
December 23, 2003, 4:00 AM PT
By John Dickinson
Dear Michael,
Just before Thanksgiving, you announced that Dell is pulling back its commitment to overseas customer service. That's a good thing, because my recent experience with your once-vaunted customer service demonstrated that it has deteriorated remarkably.
Part of that deterioration must surely be the result of your company's remarkable growth, but no small part of it is due to the overseas talent that you have enlisted for this crucial function.
I think that customer service is crucial, and I take it personally that yours has deteriorated so much, because for years, I have recommended Dell computers to friends and family, and in computer magazines and computer Web sites, in large measure because of your personal commitment to high-quality, highly responsive customer service. I'm sorry to know that that commitment seems to have waned so much.
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Collaborative Technologies
The Wall Street Journal, 12/23/03: Networking Web Sites Present New Arena for Job Searchers
By KRIS MAHER
Tina Mitiguy remained unemployed after exhausting most traditional job-search techniques earlier this year. Then she was invited by a friend to join LinkedIn.com, an online networking site. A few days later, a manager using the site spotted her online profile and contacted her about a job opening. The next week, she was hired.
"I felt just incredibly fortunate at the time, because not only was it a job but a really good fit for my background," says Ms. Mitiguy, who is 31 years old. She joined RedMedic Inc., a San Jose, Calif., start-up that creates portable medical records for patients, as director of member services.
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