cio

Links of the day (food poisoning edition)

I caught a touch of food poisoning yesterday and I'm not still not totally right. While generally not a great experience, something about pulling over in the Tenderloin to hurl felt all too comfortable.

Some links for your enjoyment:

10 Reasons Enterprises Aren't Ready to Trust the Cloud Gnip: Grand Central Station for the Social Web GPLv3 One Year Anniversary Edition 06/29/08 9 Reasons Why Application Developers Think Their CIO Is Clueless

Is ignorance open source's biggest enemy?

I really like Simon Phipps' comments about CIOs who eschew open-source software because of a perceived lack of support. The problem is not a lack of support. The problem, as Simon indicates, is a lack of understanding about the quality and availability that open-source vendors provide:

Phipps claimed that the "commercial strength support" available for open source is comparable with that provided by proprietary vendors. He also explained that administrators have the option of "hiring experts to train their staff".

"The reason that open source works well for businesses is that it puts you back … Read more

Spend less, get more: A CIO's guide to a rough economy

CIOs are looking for ways to stretch their IT dollars further through the economic slowdown. IDC expects global IT spending to increase by 5.7 percent in 2008, down from 7.2 percent in 2007. (Gartner's numbers come in below this, with 3.3 percent growth this year on top of 3 percent growth in 2007.)

To that end, a Wall Street Journal article suggests several ways to lower costs - defer hardware upgrades, virtualize hardware, etc. - but overlooks a key way to spend less while getting more from software: Open source.

Open source is a great way … Read more

Google's CIO hire: Match made in nerd heaven?

Google found its new chief information officer, Ben Fried, on Wall Street--and at least on paper, it looks like a good fit.

Even though Google is a Silicon Valley company thousands of miles away from the buttoned-down brokers of lower Manhattan, the two domains have more in common technologically and culturally than one might think.

Wall Street companies and Google have different objectives, but both have a similar modus operandi. They use lots of cutting-edge computer equipment, often with plenty of in-house customization, to get ahead of the competition.

Most companies buy off-the-shelf software, but Wall Street firms like to … Read more

Morgan Stanley exec named new Google CIO

Google has found its new chief information officer, CNET News.com has learned: Benjamin Fried, a programmer who rose through the ranks to run much of Morgan Stanley's computing infrastructure.

Fried, a managing director who led Morgan Stanley's Application Infrastructure group, will take the new post in May, Google spokesman Matt Furman confirmed Thursday.

According to an internal Morgan Stanley memo seen by News.com, Fried will leave Morgan Stanley at the end of the month "to pursue opportunities outside the firm."

The memo also indicated that Fried is no stranger to Google. While at Morgan … Read more

The rise of the open-source billionaire

Bernard Golden almost certainly hits it spot on when he suggests that we won't have any open-source billionaires, per se, but rather billionaires built on the foundation of open source. He doesn't come out and say it, but I suspect he has Google, Digg, and others like this in mind - companies that depend fundamentally on open source, yet aren't open-source companies, per se.

Because the cost of software has plummeted, new companies are being formed that take advantage of open source to create new offerings -- and these new companies will build enormous fortunes on the back of open source. I refer to this phenomena as "the migration of margin."… Read more

Google to get Morgan Stanley veteran as CIO?

A week ago Google lost its CIO, Doug Merrill, to EMI. Word on the street is that Google has already found a replacement, and it's Ben Fried, divisional CIO at Morgan Stanley.

How relevant is Mr. Fried's experience to Google? Consider his role:

A Managing Director in Morgan Stanley's Information Technology department, Ben Fried manages teams in New York, London, Tokyo and Hong Kong and is responsible for Morgan Stanley's Institutional Securities Web infrastructure and client connectivity. His purview includes numerous Internet sites and a global, multi-platform application-hosting environment running over 1,000 applications, services and … Read more

Report: IT budgets expected to have a steady hand in 2008

Despite gloom and doom hitting the economy, the fear factor largely hasn't eroded IT budgets for this year, according to a Gartner CIO study to be released next week.

IT budgets worldwide are expected to grow 3.3 percent this year, and 62 percent of those surveyed by Gartner expect their budgets will remain unchanged despite the changing economic winds.

And surprisingly, 15 percent of the CIOs surveyed said they plan to increase their budgets this year, by 15 percent on average. Woohoo.

While all this may cause a sigh of relief among IT providers, the industry isn't … Read more

Economic downturn = Financial upturn for GroundWork and open source

We are or shortly will be in a recession. While perhaps not cause to celebrate, it's also not cause for alarm as the best companies will emerge all the stronger for the experience.

Good open-source companies will be primary beneficiaries of a downturn, as Stephen Elliot of IDC points out with regard to open-source system management vendors like GroundWork:

With economic uncertainty building on IT organizations, we are seeing enterprise IT organizations tightening their belts when it comes to IT budgets and initiatives. As open source management solutions continue to mature and increase their functionality, they will see more opportunities on the enterprise scale.

I single out GroundWork because I had the opportunity to talk with Dave Lilly, CEO of GroundWork, in advance of next week's Open Source Business Conference 2008 (March 25-26, San Francisco), and got the inside scoop on how the company is doing. GroundWork exemplifies the "unfair advantage" that open-source vendors have when IT buyers actually need the software to work at a reasonable price.… Read more