Data Warehouse Design Best Practices

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Guest Blogger

Author Introduction: Jennifer Marsh is a software developer, programmer and technology writer and occasionally blogs for Rackspace Hosting.

Data warehousing is an expensive project with high costs and a great return on investment — if executed properly. Data warehousing isn’t for the faint of heart. It is a process that connects several databases together in a single data center for higher performance output, low energy use, cost savings and terabytes (and sometimes even petabytes) of data storage space. Continue reading →

Posted in Cloud Computing | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Managing a Growing IT Department

Posted on March 22, 2013 by The Higher Ed CIO

Growing IT DepartmentCan any of you imagine being the CIO of a growing IT department? Maybe you imagine it to be the land of endless candy, rainbows, and pastel glitter. A land where there are no IT budget cuts or hassles getting an additional FTE. Funny though, the grass isn’t always greener in a growing IT department. And by grass I mean the headaches of IT staffing and fighting for funding or the complexities of developing and executing an IT strategy. Continue reading →

Posted in IT Risk Management, IT Strategy | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

4 Steps to Improving IT Value Realization

Posted on March 18, 2013 by The Higher Ed CIO

IT Value RealizationImproving IT value realization is clearly top of mind for many executives these days. Sadly, IT value realization is more of a focus among CEO’s and CFO’s than it appears it is for CIO’s. The reasons I am hearing for the interest in IT value realization in the executive suite often start something like “IT seems like a black hole” or “we just know what value we are getting for our IT spend”. Continue reading →

Posted in CIO Job, IT Financial Management, IT Risk Management | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Hire Slow to Achieve Excellence

Posted on March 17, 2013 by The Higher Ed CIO

Hire Slow Fire FastHire Slow is absolutely the single most important strategy to achieving excellence. That is because excellence starts and end with the people you hire and the team that you build. Therefore, hire slow is the first part of an overall staffing strategy to hire slow, fire fast. So if you read the last post Fire Fast: Fixing Bad Hiring Decisions and have your own issues with firing people, the solution is to do a better job in the hiring process. Continue reading →

Posted in CIO Job | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Fire Fast: Fixing Bad Hiring Decisions

Posted on March 17, 2013 by The Higher Ed CIO

Hire Slow Fire FastHire slow, fire fast is both a strategy and an encouragement for fixing bad hiring decisions. Fire fast should also be taken as permission to use firing more often than other approaches to fixing bad hiring decisions. Fire fast not only applies to fixing bad external hiring decisions, it applies to fixing bad internal promotions too. Continue reading →

Posted in CIO Job | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

What’s Your Risk Appetite?

Posted on March 10, 2013 by The Higher Ed CIO

I just finished a great article on risk appetite. Now that isn’t something you here everyday, but you may here someone mention risk appetite or risk tolerance fairly regularly these days. The article was in the current issue of CSO magazine entitled “How to determine your company’s real risk appetite“. Continue reading →

Posted in IT Risk Management | Tagged | Leave a comment

IT Scorecard Shows Green While Customers Are Seeing Red

Posted on March 8, 2013 by The Higher Ed CIO

IT ScorecardDoes your IT scorecard show nothing but green while your customers are seeing red? Take a minute before you answer. Is it possible your IT scorecard is committing the classic IT sin? That is, publishing an IT scorecard that your customers don’t accept or worse, are offended by the impression you are trying to create. Continue reading →

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