the Production Operations Execution Test Simulator, a tool that simulates the manufacturing plant floor operations and vehicle production, which won a 2008 CIO 100 Award.
-Jarina D'Auria
With Economy in the Red, Green IT Suffers
CIOs have significantly reduced or cut their budgets for green IT initiatives since May, according to a recent survey of 3,500 CIOs and corporate executives by the Brown-Wilson Group, a market research company.
In May, 18 percent of respondents reported that they were designating funds to implement green IT initiatives. As of last month, that number dropped to just seven percent, due in part to the economic crash.
"What we're seeing is that tangible funds that were budgeted for green projects in May have now been reallocated" to other projects, says Doug Brown, managing partner of Brown-Wilson Group and coauthor of The Black Book of Outsourcing: How to Manage the Changes, Challenges and Opportunities. "It's indicative of the economy right now."
However, the survey found that more than 97 percent of CIOs consider green computing an important part of their overall IT strategy. And finding green outsourcing partners was considered a key priority by 26 percent of those surveyed. However, dealing with budget cuts was the top priority (61 percent).
The report also found that the majority of U.S. IT executives (61 percent) and their U.K. counterparts (85 percent) believe that outsourcing vendors should be innovating and leading sustainability efforts on the client's behalf as a value-add.
Vendors disagree: 95 percent of outsourcing vendors in India believe that sustainability demands should be at the expense of the customer, as do 23 percent of U.S. vendors and 16 percent of U.K. vendors.
Brown-Wilson also compiled a list of the top green outsourcers. Hewlett-Packard/EDS leads the list, followed by IBM Global, CSC, Oracle and Atos Origin.
-Kristin Burnham
IT Strategy, the Internet and Leadership
Travel today-especially around the holidays-often means cooling your heels in some airport lounge waiting for a flight. Put that time to good use with one of these recent books by CIO's contributors.
FruITion Creating the Ultimate Corporate Strategy for Information Technology By Chris Potts Technics Publications, 2008, US$18.95
The business novel is a popular format for probing the intricacies of leadership and decision making. Chris Potts, a consultant with Dominic Barrow (who writes occasionally for CIO), uses it to explore the process through which a CIO learns to create a business strategy that "exploits IT" to its competitive advantage.
Potts's hero, 44-year-old Ian Taylor, has a CEO who thinks his IT strategy is incomprehensible techno-speak. She challenges him to replace it with a single page describing how the company will use IT to achieve its business goals-or look for work elsewhere. It's not easy: Ian's IT portfolio doesn't account for investments that others in the company must make to get the full value from new systems; nor has he mapped IT projects to high-level business objectives.
Sound familiar? Few CIOs today are wholly business strategists, but the role is changing. Potts's narrative spells out how you might change with the times.
-Elana Varon
The Future of the Internet And How to Stop It By Jonathan Zittrain Yale University Press, 2008, $30
Will cloud computing kill the Internet? That depends, says Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard Law School and Oxford University. Zittrain observes that we're ceding control of our devices (think iPhone) and software (anything Web 2.0) to vendors. The impulse to do so stems from the headaches consumers encounter with technology.But locking down devices and software inhibits innovative tinkering. Vendors can control, for example, whether you may modify their code or use someone else's-and change their minds anytime. Plus, they know everything you do and can pass that information to law enforcement on demand.
Zittrain (a moderator at CIO events), says solutions include ensuring data portability, privacy protections and new legal frameworks to protect third-party developers. But will we insist on them? That's an open question.
-E.V.
Lead By Example 50 Ways Great Leaders Inspire Results By John Baldoni Amacom, 2008, $21.95
Whether great leaders
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