IT Strategy

The development of strategic and operational plans for effective provision of information services to support business objectives.

Planning paramount for high growth companies

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Recently, BDO Kendalls published its quarterly business briefing.  An article I co-wrote (with Sharyn Richardson, an Associate at BDO Kendalls in Brisbane) discussed the issues of business growth and its impact on planning for capability within the business.

The article is reproduced in full below.

 

 

While the importance of planning is generally impressed upon companies that want to grow, companies growing exponentially in the current boom economy cannot undervalue the planning process to ensure their growth remains sustainable.  

Growth is generally seen as a positive for any business, but the consequences on businesses processes, systems and infrastructure is often overlooked, leaving many business owners struggling to keep up. Simply, quick growth may mean that some areas of your business will not work as well as they used to or they may not work at all.

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IT outsourcing – selecting the ‘best’ infrastructure model

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This article was published on CEO Online a month or two ago, and I did promise I would post it here eventually.  And as I am of course absolutely certain that there is a raft of readers out there who would like to see the full article on the basis of that promise (delusionment is a wonderful thing) I am posting the article here.

In order to keep us all sane, you will need to click through to see the full article.

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SQL, SQL, SQL, SQL all the way…

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Microsoft launched SQL Server 2005 on November 7 2005, and a month later it is a good time to see what people are saying about the new member of Microsoft’s flock.

Microsoft clearly likes it – no surprises there. OS News noted the event in passing but did point out that Visual Studio 2005 is a strong companion product. SQLServerCentral.com has an article recording its correspondent’s first impressions of SQL Server 2005. SearchWin2000 advises people to upgrade – eventually.

InfoWorld notes that there are marked improvements in programmability and manageability, whilst ZDNet notes that Microsoft is likely to speed up its server upgrade cycle somewhat.

That’s a small wrap-up, anyway, so it is interesting to see where this newest release of SQL Server will take us. I haven’t received my copy yet, so I cannot make any real comments yet. As usual, though, I am sure it will be a product that is easy to use and has some new features, probably somewhat incompatible with the previous versions. We will see what the Microsoft shepherd has brought to this area of activity.

Disaster Recovery Planning Made Simple

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Disaster recovery and contingency planning have been highlighted in the past week as the biggest issue since sliced bread started getting mouldy, as Hurricane Katrina hit NOLA hard and fast. In its wake was left the startling realisation that even the richest country in the world can have infrastructure devastated and destroyed by the forces of nature. The cost of the disaster is $US100 billion and climbing, with a significant part of that the IT Infrastructure.

And the week prior to that was the Zotob worm, which shut down Holden’s processing plants for a day (estimated costs: $A6,000,000 and yes, I checked the zeros).

In the IT context, both these events show that there is an increasing reliance upon information technology, and clearly business continuity plans are going to be top of the charts again for a while for our clients. This also comes back to IS Strategy and Governance procedures for clients. The facts bear out the old adage that luck is the residue of good planning – good IS Strategies and Business Continuity planning will help business A survive and business B not.

Probably a future cause celebre fot IT Disaster Planning – although some would perhaps suggest that it has worked too well – has been www.directnic.com, which is an ISP operating in a New Orleans downtown skyscraper that has maintained its connection to the internet throughout the disaster. Its biggest problem now is that it is getting many hits from around the world because people are blogging about it (just as I am now) which is causing some stress on their connectivity.

They have also maintained a blog about the disaster throughout, as reported by The Register and located at /mgno.com.

Interestingly, at least partly because of this blog, the ongoing debate about the issues related to blogs and their journalistic integrity has now tended to swung in favour of the humble blogger who, as johnny-on-the-spot in a time like this, tends to report what they see rather than filter it through the eyes of a journalist – which is both its strength and its weakness, clearly.