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Running IT as a Business – Especially Challenging in the Silicon Valley
The Bay Area is without a doubt home to thousands of the brightest technical people on the planet. No other enclave comes even close. One only needs to take a peek at our customer list to get an idea of how truly amazing this place is.
Many of the enterprises that we support today began as startups and grew organically. In recent years they’ve grown even larger via mergers and acquisitions. Many of my clients joke that they operate like “a very large startup.” Often times the head of IT was hired more for his or her technical acumen rather than their business acumen, resulting in organizational structure and a culture that lacks the business and organizational skills that are required to properly run IT like a business. But this is starting to change.
This newsletter is the first of a series of newsletters that will be focused on the topic of running IT as a business. I’m glad to present you two articles this month. The first one comes from our fearless OCIO leader Mark Johnson. True to form, Mark challenges the reader a bit by asking them to answer a list of questions on a scale of 1 to 10 and to “acid test” themselves with several provocative questions.
A second piece is provided by Carina Ferrel, Vice President of Information Technology at Serena Software. Her Article, titled “ITIL Service Support and The Business of Change” gives a very nice overview of ITIL’s Service Support framework. This article is a follow up to a great talk that she gave to Taos customers a few months back where she talked about her experiences in implementing ITIL Service Support at Serena. This is a great article as it not only gets the reader familiar with ITIL but it also is borne from her personal experience of running her IT organization utilizing ITIL as her framework. In one section she warns the reader to not take ITIL implementation lightly as it is a cultural shift as opposed to a “project.” Read on, I’m sure you’ll enjoy both articles.
We hope you find these perspectives interesting and useful. As always, we welcome your feedback on the Newsletter, and suggestions for future topics. Taos is privileged to be involved in numerous IT initiatives with a "who's who" of IT leaders in the Bay Area. If you would like to talk to me and learn more about our "Office of the CIO" or about our broader services, feel free to contact me directly at ric@taos.com.
Sincerely,
Ric Urrutia
CEO & Founder
"delivering excellence in IT"
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