Technology Management  -  IT Management - News Portal

New with this version are updates that specifically define the mandates of most recent federal (Gramm-Leach-Bliley) and state (Massachusetts and California).

Skills with a high demand

• Project Management - especially large projects with short time frame for delivery
• Security -  focus on mandated compliance issues
• Network Administration - wireless and cloud administration
• Virtualization (Cloud) - new applications and management of the IT infrastructure
• Business and Operational Analysis - focus on business change
• Productivity Improvement Analysis - metrics and operational analysis
• Web 2 - interactive applications that add value
• Database Management - applications that leverage enterprise assets
• System Administration - Windows and UNIX management
• Desktop Support - standardization and change management

Skills with a declining demand

• COBOL
• HTML
• System Network Architecture - SNA
• Siebel
• Rapid Application Development - RAD
• ColdFusion
• Wireless Application Protocol - WAP
• Visual J++
• Novell NetWare
• Asynchronous Transfer Mode - ATM
  

As of last October, IBM employed 105,000 workers in the U.S., compared to 115,000 in 2008. In 2007, IBM had 121,000 U.S. employees. It employs about 400,000 globally.

IBM isn't commenting on its latest round of cuts and information about it comes from the Alliance union which gathers its data directly from IBM employees.

"IBM is clearly offshoring things where they can," said one IBM employee who received his notice and spoke on the condition of anonymity because he didn't want to jeopardize his severance. A 10-year veteran and UNIX administrator, this employee said his customer support team once had 15 U.S.-based workers. That staff was reduced over time to just three workers in the U.S., with other members of the customer support team now in Brazil, Argentina and India.

The employee said he was not given a good reason for his layoff. "Higher ups made a decision that a certain percentage had to be cut - it was not performance-based at all," he said. Although the employee said he's uncertain about the job market, "my sense is that it is not horrendous but I'll have to assume that I'll have to take a cut in pay."

The guide is delivered electronically and is available in MS - Word and industry standard PDF.

Service level agreements are set however costs need to be reduced.

The only areas where cost savings can be made are in hardware and software maintenance.

• Implement a  Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan. This is the traditional solution for mitigating exposure to information loss. However it has grown more complicated as 24/7, global economy, and open source have become standard business mantras. Of paramount importance is overcoming the hurdles associated with backup window requirements, application performance, reliability and consistency, and recovery time.
• Streamline IT Infrastructure and Increase Productivity. As staff and resources become overburdened, companies are refocusing on infrastructure management. Easing critical pressure points is often the catalyst to surviving a difficult fiscal climate.
• Manage Storage and Server Costs  Closely. Controlling cost of operations has become a top priority for many organizations. With data growing at exponential rates, these costs can easily mushroom.
• Support IT Infrastructure Consolidation. Today's data protection architecture seems to be intrinsically broken - as characterized by slow backups, complex recoveries, compromised application performance, and difficult resource administration. IT infrastructure consolidation including server virtualization magnifies the problems and elevates the rearchitecture of storage and data protection as a priority. Finding high performing, easy-to-use, scalable data protection remains a key imperative. Further, system migration of production servers and critical applications to a virtual environment are likely to be costly and painful unless an easy and minimum-impact solution to migration is built into the rearchitecture.

	High Growth Companies	Low Growth Companies
Are members of most-senior management team	62%	46%
Integrate business and technology to innovate	64%	33%
Focus  time on enabling the business and corporate vision	28%	15%
Focus your time on providing core technology services	23%	40%
IT team uses collaborative tools	53%	33%
IT team provide collaborative tools across the enterprise	41%	22%
Aggressively turn data into actionable information	58%	36%
Give customers excellent data integrity and transparency	68%	44%
Seek active input from your customers	87%	70%
Co-create business strategy with fellow execs	74%	61%
Co-present business strategy to senior management	66%	53%
Part of the team setting the organization's strategy	62%	46%
Business models unique and hard to imitate	63%	49%
Business models include partnering alternative sourcing	60%	52%
Create IT centers of excellence	44%	26%
Data readily available for relevant users	67%	51%
Data reliable and secure	81%	66%
Manage change successfully	61%	43%

This bundle contains the following policies:

• Backup and Backup Retention Policy
• Blog and Personal Web Site Policy
• Internet, Email, Social Networking, Mobile Device, and Electronic Communication Policy
• Outsourcing Policy
• Record Management, Retention, and Disposition Policy
• Sensitive Information Policy
• Service Level Agreement Policy
• Telecommuting Policy
• Travel, Laptop, PDA and Off-Site Meeting Policy

Many federal employees were 100 percent on BlackBerrys during the outage.  With power losses to homes car chargers were the only way to keep the devices charged.

This is a strategy that gained attention during the one-two punch of blizzard conditions and multiple power outages in the Washington area. For three days in a row, the federal government and many local governments are closed while a second major snowstorm blew through on the heels of a historic snowfall Feb. 8. Utility companies in Washington and Baltimore reporting about 17,000 homes without power in the afternoon.

Many federal employees are relying on their BlackBerrys haven't slowed down one bit.

The Obama administration has proposed increasing the number of major IT projects. Last fiscal year, the administration proposed handling 781 major IT projects with $40.3 billion. In fiscal 2011, it's proposing 809 major IT projects at $40.4 billion, according to the budget proposal.

Despite modest increases in the budget request, Obama wants IT efforts related to open government and technology modernization to continue in 2011.

For example, work on the General Service AdministrationÂ’s Citizen Engagement Platform would continue under the 2011 request. Designed to be a resource for all federal agencies, that platform is a collaboration between GSA and the Office of Management and Budget. It is intended to increase the governmentÂ’s ability to interact and collaborate with the public and provide a cost-effective way for agencies to access tools and guidance related to engagement.