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2011-05-05 LDR Dates for 2011 Announced

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·         May 5th and 6th

·         June 16th and 17th

·         September 8th and 9th

·         October 20th and 21st

Leadership Development Roundtable

The Leadership Development Roundtable (LDR) is based on the very successful Regional Leadership Forum’s (RLF) learning model, which is highly participative and very open in its nature. It continues to address such items as Integrity, Leadership and Results. It’s objective is to provide a continuous learning experience for RLF graduates to pursue the development of their authentic, personal leadership style. It is a process, which allows the RLF graduate to “sharpen his/her own saw”.

The LDR program is sponsored by the Boston chapter of the Society for Information Management (SIM) and is offered to all RLF graduates regardless of which year or forum they attended. It is designed to allow one to enroll as many times as one wishes whether that person graduated last year or more than ten years ago. Approximately a third of LDR participants have attended multiple years in the five-year history of the program.

The curriculum is designed with input from the participants regarding the books, topics and guest speakers with more time devoted to each than was in the RLF. The scope of coverage extends from Harvard case studies to exploring Personal Leadership Moments of the participants themselves. It is aimed at a better understanding of how one applies his/her leadership style in life and on the job.

Newsletter: May 2011

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May Monthly Meeting

Panel Discussion: Acquisition Integration

Facilitator:
Martha Heller, President, Heller Search Associates

Panelists:
Dan Abushanab, CIO, Art Technology Group
Michael Healy, President of Yeoman Technology Group
Christine Putur, SVP of IT for North American Delivery and Supply Chain, Staples
Larry Rowland,VP, Acquisition Integration at Nuance Communications

Date:    Thursday, May 19, 2011

Location:     Café Escadrille
26 Cambridge Street, Burlington, MA

Schedule:
5:30 – 6:00 PM: Registration & Networking
6:00 – 6:45 PM: Dinner
6:45 – 7:00 PM: Welcoming Remarks
7:00 – 8:00 PM: Panel Discussion

Topic: Panel Discussion –Acquisition Integration

The Good, Bad and the Ugly is not just western movie starring Clint Eastwood, it can also describe the merger or acquisition of a firm.  While the level of success of M&As depends on many factors, it is clear that technology integration is emerging as a key factor.  As the reach of technology has permeated all aspects of business operations combined with the greater reliance on technology to support the business, the smooth and successful integration of technologies employed by both firms is a critical success factor.  Even with virtualization and the cloud, the successful integration of disparate platforms and/or systems is still a challenge.  The human capital side of M&As also plays an important role in the outcome of the M&A.

As the economy is slowly recovering and M&A activity is accelerating, the successful integration of IT systems has never been more critical.  Our four panelists, each of whom is a veteran of the acquisition process, either as the acquirer and/or as the acquiree, will share their experiences and lessons learned.


Martha Heller is the President of Heller Search Associates, LLC and a Contributing Editor for CIO magazine.  Martha and her team at Heller Search Associates specialize in helping companies hire CIOs and other IT executives across multiple industries. Prior to founding Heller Search Associates, Martha was managing director of the IT Leadership Practice at ZRG Partners, a global boutique executive search firm.

Before establishing her career in executive search, Martha was co-founder and managing director of CIO magazine’s CIO Executive Council, a professional organization for CIOs.  During her seven-year tenure at CIO magazine, Martha wrote a weekly column on IT leadership and led a series of executive events on IT staffing, career development, and leadership.

Martha continues to write for and speak to CIO audiences. She is CIO magazine’s CIO Paradox columnist, author of CIO.com’s Movers & Shakers blog and has recently published an article in The Corporate Board magazine that addresses the value of CIOs serving on corporate boards and in CFO magazine that advises CFOs on CIO hiring strategy.

Martha is an active speaker for executive audiences. She has presented at executive events run by CIO magazine, the CIO Executive Summit, CIO Decisions, MIT’s emerging technology conference, SIM, the United Nations Forum on Women and Technology, and numerous academic executive programs. Martha is also a judge for CIO magazine’s prestigious CIO 100 awards.

Dan Abushanab was the CIO at Art Technology Group (ATG) in Cambridge for 8 years, during which time the company came back from the depths of the dot com bust to become a growing and profitable enterprise.  Revenues more than doubled, and headcount grew from about 280 to 650.  Part of the growth happened through acquisition.  ATG acquired four companies in that time, ranging in size from 15 to 200 employees.  Dan and his IS team were a key part of the due diligence and integration for each acquisition, developing a checklist and template methodology that served them and their colleagues well.

In January of this 2011 Oracle acquired ATG.  Again, Dan was heavily involved in both the due diligence and integration efforts, this time from the other side.  Having been on both sides of the process Dan brings a unique perspective to what works and what doesn’t.  You can visit linkedin.com/in/dabushanab to learn more about Dan’s background.


Michael Healyis the President of Yeoman Technology Group, an engineering and research firm focusing on maximizing technology investments for organizations, and a Senior Contributing Editor at InformationWeek. He has more than 23 years’ experiencein technology and software integration.

Prior to founding Yeoman, Mike served as the CTO of national network integrator GreenPages. He joined GreenPages as part of the acquisition of TENCorp, where he served as president for 14 years. He has been directly involved in a dozen acquisitions and integrations as a buyer, seller, and as a contracted integration partner. You can read Michael’s full profile at linkedin.com/in/michaelarthurhealey.


Christine Puturis theVice President of Information Technology for North American Delivery and Supply Chain at Staples.  Chris and her team are responsible for identifying, developing and maintaining technology for the North American Delivery business and the US Supply Chain operations.  Chris also led the information systems integration efforts following Staples’ acquisition of Corporate Express in 2008.

Chris joined Staples in 1999 as an IT Director, managing the project services organization for the Staples.com business.  From there she went on to hold a number of roles in the areas of technology strategy, project services, technology services, and retail systems.

Prior to coming to Staples, she was with Digital for 15 years and participated in the merger with Compaq.  Chris holds a BA in Administrative Science and Math from Colby College and a MS in Management Information Systems from the Boston University Graduate School of Management.

Larry Rowland, for the past three years, has been the VP of Acquisition Integration at Nuance Communications, the leading provider of speech and imaging solutions around the worldwith revenues of $1.4B and over of 5000 employees.  During this period, Larry has managed the integration for over 40 acquisitions.  The success of these acquisitions and their related integrations has been instrumental in Nuance’s Market Cap increasing 21X from $280M in 2002 to over $6B today.

Prior to his current position, Larry was the CIO for Nuance as well as the CIO for Macromedia, Allaire, and Teradata.  You can view Larry’s complete profile at linkedin.com/in/larryerowland.

Click here to register

Tangled Up in Clouds –
Interdependency lessons from the AWS outage

Question:  Amazon’s recent AWS outage affected a surprisingly large number of sites.  What can we learn about cloud resiliency and how can we minimize these outages in the future?
AWS, Amazon’s hosted web services offering suffered a major outage with some data loss at one of its data centers on April 21, 2011.  It was not the first such outage and I rather doubt it will be the last, but it was the one that was exposed what I call the dirty secret about cloud computing: the illusion of low cost high availability, systems backup and protection, and how quickly so many cloud services have become interdependent.
Ultimately, data protection and high availability boils down to having multiple copies of your data and IT systems in multiple locations with good reliable bandwidth connecting them.  Traditionally, high availability (that is 5 nines and up) has been expensive due to the cost of the bandwidth and hardware needed to deliver the level of service required.
On the surface moving your IT infrastructure to the cloud looks and sounds very attractive.  In theory, the cloud offers a great solution.  By purchasing cloud services, anyone can leverage the investments of Amazon, Google, Rackspace and the other major cloud vendors in state of the art data centers with full redundancy, and big network pipes for a tiny fraction of the cost of doing it in-house.  By moving IT infrastructure to the cloud you can take advantage of the redundancy and resiliency of using multiple vendors and multiple data centers and get enterprise class data protection at rock bottom prices.  Reading between the lines of the standard service level agreements for the low cost cloud services paints a very different picture.  Amazon guaranties 98% uptime, hardly earth shatteringly difficult to achieve.  Once you add in all those pesky asterisks and interdependencies, it is unlikely that anyone is going to be able to collect on this incident or any downtime at all.
Setting aside the issue of Amazon services level agreements, all of this assumes that you have control over most if not all of the systems and services in your IT stack.  What this outage highlighted for many companies is that even if they had built in the best failover and high availability into their systems, they were still dependent on vendors and services that might not have been quite so diligent.  As more companies take advantage of the increasingly specialized cloud services built on top of the cloud utility vendors’ infrastructure, insuring uptime is going to be increasing more difficult to determine through the maze of inter-dependent services.
The bottom line for a business that wants to gain the advantage of high availability at low cost is that you need to make sure you have not only architected your own service to have a full failover solution, but you will also need to spend time doing diligence on all of your vendors’ policies and architectures as well.  No matter how good the SLA is, if one of your upstream service providers does not have a good policy in place, your site will still be affected by their lack of planning.

Visit the Blog at:
http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/it-consulting/tangled-up-in-clouds-interdependency-lessons-from-the-aws-outage/

About the Author
Beth Cohen, Cloud Technology Partners, Inc. Moving companies’ IT services into the cloud the right way, the first time!

NE HIMSS 6th Annual Public Policy Event (May 11th) – “The Healthcare Trilogy:  Improving
Patient Care / Payment Reform / Healthcare Technology”

For those in healthcare technology, the New England Chapter of HIMSS is holding its 6th Annual Public Policy Forum on May 11th at the Four Points Sheraton in Norwood, MA. Presentations and panel discussions will focus on the impact of Payment Reform on the healthcare system and specifically on healthcare technology.  For more information, go to  http://nehimss.org/events/events34.html

 

Boston SIM Consultant Roundtable
Topic: Leveraging Global Resources to build an
IT ConsultancyDear Boston SIM Colleagues:

You are invited to join us at the next scheduled meeting of the Consultant Roundtable on Thursday, May 12th. Join us as we discuss how access to global IT resources has forever changed IT consulting and service delivery.

We will start things rolling at 4:00PM with networking at the Microsoft Northeast District Office on Jones Road in Waltham. We have the room reserved starting at 3:30PM. After our discussion, there will be more time to network in a more relaxed environment as we repair to a local Waltham venue for a meal and good conversation.

The schedule is as follows:

Thursday, May 12, 2011
Microsoft Northeast District Office
201 Jones Road
Waltham, MA

4:00PM – 4:15PM: Networking and introductions
4:15PM – 6:00PM:  Program and discussion
6:15PM: Dinner at local Waltham restaurant TBD

To register for this event, click here.

Golf IT – Career/Golf Mentoring Event, May 24th from
12:30pm to 2:30pm – Registration Closes May 10th!
SIM Boston is excited to announce a new event in partnership with TechBoston Academy (http://techbostonacademy.org/), a technology-focused Boston Public School in Dorchester. On Tuesday, May 24th from 12:30p to 2:30p, 25 high school students will be matched with 12 adult ‘mentors’. The event will provide an opportunity to discuss career options in technology as well as provide exposure to and instruction in golf. If you are willing to share details of your own career path and have a decent golf swing, please contact Kate Carroll, Chapter Administrator, at kcarroll@bostonsim.org to reserve a spot as a mentor.   A limited number of mentor spots are available.  If you have additional questions, please feel free to contact Kate Carroll or Jim Whalen at jwhalen@bostonproperties.com.

Where:    McGolf Driving Range, Route 109, Dedham, MA
When:      Tuesday, May 24th from 12:30p to 2:30p

MIT Sloan CIO Symposium-
Beyond the Crossroads: How will the CIO role
evolve in the digital business world?
Following the success of the seven prior years, the MIT Sloan Alumni Club of Boston, in association with the MIT Center for Digital Business and the Boston Chapter of The Society for Information Management (SIM), will be hosting its annual MIT CIO Symposium on May 18, 2011.
As CIO and as a senior business executive, you embrace a technology vision to enable improved global business performance for your company. With pressure to do more with fewer resources mounting every year, your success increasingly requires tapping into innovative technologies and new ideas to get the job done. What sparks these ideas? How do you keep up with leading innovations?  Find out at the 2011 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium.
MIT is offering SIM members a special partner discount savings of 25%– Register with the promo code “mitciosim2011”.
Hear from IT business leaders and MIT professors. Network with CIOs and your SIM colleagues. Discover new technologies developed at MIT. This exciting symposium offers a day of presentations, panels, lunch, networking, a closing reception and a special Innovation Showcase featuring 10 carefully selected early stage companies, providing the most innovative and valuable IT solutions.
To become a sponsor of the event, click here to request a sponsorship package
Click here to submit an application to the 2011 CIO Leadership Award
Click here for the Call for Applications for the 2011 Innovation Showcase at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium
Time: 7:30 am – 7:00 pm
Date: May 18, 2011
Place: MIT Campus – Kresge Auditorium – Cambridge, MA
Register: www.mitcio.com
Contact: Graham Rong, MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Chair, grong@MIT.EDU

Golf Tournament date has been set!
One of our favorite perennial events is coming up!
This year’s golf tournament will be taking place on Wed. June 15th at Cyprian Keyes in Boylston, MA.
Player registration will be opening up soon and there are a number of sponsorship opportunities still available.

Anyone interested in sponsorship should contact Ray Barry at rmbarry@comcast.net.

This year’s confirmed sponsors to date for 2011 follow:

Practitioners’ Rountable – Social Media

Between the opportunities that businesses are seeking to exploit through implementing social media initiatives and the growing multitide of employees abusing access rights on the job, today’s technology practitioner is evolving in new directions.  On June 23, join with your fellow technology vice presidents and directors to discuss how they are they are addressing the challenges and opportunities of social media

Location TBD
4:00PM – 4:15PM: Networking and introductions
4:15PM – 6:00PM:  Program and discussion
6:15PM – Dinner at nearby restaurant TBD

To register for this event, click here.

Attention Boston SIM Members

To help us serve you better, please take a moment to review and update your membership information by clicking here.
If you have any questions about SIM Membership or if you have a colleague interested in joining Boston SIM, please contact Boston SIM Membership chair, Robert Johnson, at 401-595-7134 or rjohnson@atrion.net

Newsletter: April 2011

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April Monthly Meeting
Panel Discussion: Social Media

Facilitator:
Maryfran Johnson, Editor in Chief, CIO Magazine & Events

Panelists:
Tom Catalini, VP of Technology, William Gallagher Associates
Matthew Karlyn, Senior Counsel, Foley & Lardner LLP
Kevin More, VP of Information Systems, May Institute, Inc.
John Refford, VP Strategic Marketing Technology, Natixis Global Associates

Date:          Thursday, April 14, 2011

Location:    Sheraton Needham Hotel, 100 Cabot Street, Needham, MA

5:30 – 6:00 PM: Registration&Networking
6:00 – 6:45 PM: Dinner
6:45 – 7:00 PM: Welcoming Remarks
7:00 – 8:00 PM: Panel Discussion

Last year, Boston SIM hosted twopresentations on Social Media, “CIOs and Social Media” by John Sviokla and “Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest Challenges” by Andy McAfee.  These presentations addressed the “Who, Where, Why, and When” of using Social Media tools in the enterprise.
To answer the “What and How” Social Media questions, we have secured four panelists who will discuss what Social Media tools they are considering/implementing/using, what are/were the business drivers/issues, how they are going about it as well as sharing any lessons learned and issues that may need to be addressed up front.

Maryfran Johnson, Editor in Chief, CIO Magazine & Events, brings more than 20 years of experience covering IT leadership, technology and business trends to her role, along with an extensive network of CIO contacts built during previous leadership positions as Editor in Chief of Computerworld (1999-2004) and Founding Editor of CIO Decisions magazine (2004-2007). In January 2009, Maryfran was named Editor in Chief of CIO Magazine & Events. This unique dual role combines strategic direction of the leading publication for chief information officers with all editorial content for CXO Media’s extensive portfolio of national and regional events.

Since the mid-1990s, Maryfran has been featured in media interviews as an expert commentator on IT/business leadership issues. She frequently serves as a guest speaker and moderator at industry conferences, where she is known for her engaging stage presence and deep knowledge of IT executive issues.

Tom Catalini is the VP of Technology at William Gallagher Associates (www.wgains.com), a leading provider of insurance brokerage, risk management and employee benefit services to life sciences, technology, financial risks, healthcare, aviation, renewable energy, clean tech, environmental services and other companies.
Tom is a member of the Boston SIM Board of Directors, where he is responsible for the bostonsim.org website and is an active member of the marketing and social media committee. He also serves as Boston SIM’s liaison to outreach partner Common Impact, where he has acted as a technology mentor for a Boston area nonprofit, assisting in website design and social media strategies.

Tom’s blog, “People & Technology”, can be found at www.tomcatalini.com and contains writings about leadership, communication, productivity, and technology. You can view Tom’s complete profile at linkedin.com/in/tomcatalini and connect with Tom on Twitter at @tomcatalini.

Matthew Karlyn is a partner with Foley & Lardner LLP, an international law firm started in 1842 whose practice areas encompass the full range of corporate legal services, including corporate governance and compliance, securities, mergers and acquisitions, litigation, labor and employment, intellectual property and IP litigation, and tax.CIO magazine has named Foley to its CIO 100 list six times for our client-focused technology.Matthew is a member of the firm’s Information Technology & Outsourcing Practice and the Privacy, Security & Information Management Practice.
Mr. Karlyn is a national speaker and frequent writer on outsourcing and information technology law and policy, and issues pertaining to drafting and negotiating outsourcing services, information technology and professional services contracts, statements of work and service level agreements. He has published over 20 articles (including chapters in two books) and given over 50 presentations on, among other topics, IT contracting and procurement, outsourcing policy, federal and state laws affecting outsourcing, negotiation strategy and techniques, essential elements and risks associated with cloud computing, drafting and negotiating outsourcing agreements, enterprise use of social media, and privacy issues facing companies.


Kevin More is theVice President of Information Technology at the May Institute, Inc., a national healthcare and human service organization with over 200 service centers in the Northeast, Southeast and West Coast. Kevin is the senior most IT executive and responsible for the organization’s overall technology strategy, execution and direction. He holds an MBA from Bentley University and is a 2005 graduate of the SIM’s Northeast Regional Leadership Forum.

Kevin More is the current President of Boston SIM. Over the past four years, he has been a very active participant and contributor in the SIM National Marketing Committee where he has given multiple presentations on social media, marketing and program best practices.  In 2010, he chaired the SIM International Social Media Team with the primary objective of integrating Social Media into the society’s overall communication and collaboration strategy. Currently, he is actively growing the “SIM Connect” LinkedIn group to improve cross chapter collaboration and in 2010 authored the SIM International Wikipedia entry where he was able to research and document the history of SIM International as well as the Boston Chapter. Kevin can be followed on Twitter at @kmmore


John Refford is the VP of Strategic Marketing Technology at Natixis Global Associates,an investment management firm that offers both institutional and retail money management solutions across a wide selection of asset classes and vehicles.  Natixis Global Associates is an affiliate of Natixis Global Asset Management, an international investment firm with $719 billion in assets.

John is a Financial Service professional with 17 years of experience, including 13 years management experience.  As the leaderof his company’s social media team, John will share with us his insights about the studies and attitudes related to social media at a regulated firm.  In addition, John leads efforts on segmentation, campaign process and corporate innovation.  John writes about Marketing Technology at his personal blogrefford.comand at his personal twitter account@iamreff.

 

Click here to register

Outreach Partner Spotlight – Year Up

BOSTON CHAPTER MEMBERS OUTREACH OPPORTUNITY
For ten years the Boston Chapter has been associated with Year Up.  Year Up was the Chapter’s first Outreach Partner and it has been a wonderful relationship.  It has been a triple win – a win for the Chapter, our members company and, of course, a big win for the Year Up students.  As a result of events like our annual Golf Tournament we provide a scholarship, leadership awards and intern briefcases but there is still one BIG thing missing in our relationship – YOU!
Year Up management and the students appreciate those things but they would like to see more of our members visiting their site and getting to know their students.  Below is a description of a great opportunity for you to get involved and personally ‘give back’.  I have had the pleasure to speak with the students on Fridays many, many times and I can’t really express the joy it brings to talk to them and with them in their environment.  They sit quietly and listen to your every word, ask great followup questions and hang around after to engage in more conversation.  It is an exciting opportunity and one that I hope you will consider.  Stuart Childress coordinates the series and is very responsive either via email or phone – just mention Boston SIM and you will be welcomed.  Please call her or if you have other questions, call me, Brad Sweet, Chapter Trustee. 508-477-9576 or bradsweet2 @aol.com

YEAR UP’S GUEST SPEAKER SERIES
Every Friday, Year Up hosts a guest speaker series from 12:30-1:30.  It is a one-hour lecture style format where we bring members of the professional community to share stories about their education, any mentor they might have had, and their overall career experience.  We ask speakers to talk for approximately half the time and leave ample time for questions and answers.  The Wednesday before the session, Year Up will contact you via phone to talk about what the students are currently work on in their classes in order to provide additional context for the speaker.

SAMPLE QUESTIONS STUDENTS MAY ASK GUEST SPEAKERS

  • What do you do on a day to day basis?
  • What was one moment or instance that had a significant impact on your life/career?
  • How have mentors played a role in your life?
  • How important is the ability to receive and give “feedback” in the corporate world?
  • What personal values have helped you succeed?

CONTACT STUART CHILDRESS at schildress@yearup.org or 617-542-1533×1012


MIT Sloan CIO Symposium-
Beyond the Crossroads: How will the CIO role
evolve in the digital business world?
Following the success of the seven prior years, the MIT Sloan Alumni Club of Boston, in association with the MIT Center for Digital Business and the Boston Chapter of The Society for Information Management (SIM), will be hosting its annual MIT CIO Symposium on May 18, 2011.
As CIO and as a senior business executive, you embrace a technology vision to enable improved global business performance for your company. With pressure to do more with fewer resources mounting every year, your success increasingly requires tapping into innovative technologies and new ideas to get the job done. What sparks these ideas? How do you keep up with leading innovations?  Find out at the 2011 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium.
MIT is offering SIM members a special partner discount savings of 25%– Register with the promo code “mitciosim2011”.
Hear from IT business leaders and MIT professors. Network with CIOs and your SIM colleagues. Discover new technologies developed at MIT. This exciting symposium offers a day of presentations, panels, lunch, networking, a closing reception and a special Innovation Showcase featuring 10 carefully selected early stage companies, providing the most innovative and valuable IT solutions.
To become a sponsor of the event, click here to request a sponsorship package
Click here to submit an application to the 2011 CIO Leadership Award
Click here for the Call for Applications for the 2011 Innovation Showcase at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium
Time: 7:30 am – 7:00 pm
Date: May 18, 2011
Place: MIT Campus – Kresge Auditorium – Cambridge, MA
Register: www.mitcio.com
Contact: Graham Rong, MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Chair, grong@MIT.EDU

Golf Tournament date has been set!
One of our favorite perennial events is coming up!
This year’s golf tournament will taking place on Wed. June 15th at Cyprian Keyes in Boyleston, MA.
Player registration will be opening up soon and there are a number of sponsorship opportunities still available.

Anyone interested in sponsorship contact Ray Barry at rmbarry@comcast.net.

Here is a list of this year’s confirmed sponsors to date for 2011
o   Cognizant
o   Comcast
o   Compucon Systems, Inc.
o   Coresite
o   Kforce
o   Meridian Leasing Corp
o   Navisite
o   New Horizons
o   Whiteridge
o   Apps Associates
·         Outreach Partner sponsor:
o   Unitiv

2011-05-05 SIM Silver

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Boston SIM Silver is an organization dedicated to members who are approaching traditional retirement by assessing, planning, evaluating and discussing the transition from their professional careers to a new stage of life.

The goals of SIM Silver are to:

  1. Facilitate discussion in the transition to a post professional career stage of life.
  2. Provide a forum for helping its members conduct an assessment of their life in preparation for a post professional career stage.
  3. Provide a forum to review and assist its members in developing a post professional career plan.
  4. Share its members’ experiences as a method to gain insight into a variety of struggles, setbacks and successes in a transition.
  5. Facilitate a social network of post professional career Boston SIM members.

Membership in SIM Silver is voluntary and defined as first being or having been an active member of SIM and currently a member in good standing. Those wishing to participate will contact the Boston SIM Chapter Administrator to be placed on the SIM Silver mailing list. Meetings are conducted 4 to 6 times a year.

In addition to meetings, SIM Silver has a collaborative web-site where members can share information, ideas, and thoughts. Relevant information from a variety of sources are available at that site. For more information, contact the Boston SIM Silver facilitator, Les Ball, at lesballscituate@gmail.com.

Registration

Visit our new Members Area to learn about the new Member and Event Management System and then login to register for this event.

Photo credit: Chris Brooks Photography

2011-03-30 Future Potential In IT at Northeastern University

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Schedule of Events:

12:00 – 1:00      Pizza and soda compliments of Boston SIM (Society for Information Management) and New England HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society)

1:00 – 1:05        Welcome:  Mary Meadows, Boston SIM Trustee and FPIT Facilitator, Corporate Manager, Partners Healthcare and Lisa Ewing, MSHI, BSM, CPHIMS, Team Lead, Project Director, Boston Medical Center/Boston HealthNet, Adjunct Professor, Bunker Hill Community College, President-Elect, New England HIMSS

1:25 – 1:55        Keynote speaker:  Marie Maloney, CIO, Senior Whole Health

1:55 – 2:25        Panel Discussion/Q&A

Download the flyer for complete details:

Future Potential in IT – Northeastern

Photo credit: Lorraine DiSabato

Newsletter: March 2011

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March Monthly Meeting
The monthly meeting for March is a special event that offers an exciting opportunity packed with industry leaders discussing today’s hot topics in technology.  Boston SIM members are invited to attend this fantastic event for the cost of a normal meeting registration fee: If you have a Membership Meeting Subscription, you are already pre-paid for this event – no additional cost!
If you don’t have a subscription and register now, you can attend the whole day, or just the evening portion, at our standard rates: $50 Member rate (non-members will pay $100).
Finally, this is a great event to bring a friend to – a great way to introduce them to Boston SIM and to CIOs and IT executives in the Boston area.
March 10th, 12 noon – 8:00PM at the The Westin Boston Waterfront, Boston, MA
Topic: The Transformational CIO: Strategies for Success in a Reset World

The CIO Executive Leadership Summit will attract many CIO/IT leaders and C-level executives from the greater Boston Metro area. The Summit is designed to deliver world class thought leadership in an intimate setting. Attendees will receive unique insights into best practices and will hear success stories involving leadership, management, technology and career development.
Highly interactive sessions will provide many opportunities for attendees, speakers and panelists to be engaged in both learning and discussion. The objective for the day is to deliver high quality useful information that attendees can develop into an action plan.

Key Areas of Focus Include:

  • Strategy, Process Improvement and Alignment
  • Innovation and Technology
  • Career Management and Leadership Development
  • Key Topics Will Include:
  • Transformational Leadership
  • Creating and Maintaining Trust and Relationships with CXOs
  • Career Management and Development
  • The Cloud
  • Social Enterprise
  • Mobile Workforce
  • Security
  • Strategic Sourcing
  • Business Analytics

Reasons to Attend:

  • Learn What Companies are Doing to Innovate and Transform their Businesses
  • Engage With Top Executives in an Intimate Atmosphere
  • Hear from Leading Executives and Industry Thought Leaders on How to
  • Leverage Technology for Competitive Advantage
  • Expand Your Network of Peers
  • Gain Key Insights to Help Your Career and Your Organization
  • Leave With an Action Plan

You can find more details on speakers and other specifics at the event website.

Click here to register

Please note – Attendees will need to pay for parking.
The parking rates at the Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel on 425 Summer Street are $22/day.  There are several parking lots at various prices within close walking distance to the hotel.

 


Technology Blog:
Fog Ahead – Migrating Corporate Applications
into the Cloud
Question:  I am interested in moving some of my applications to the Cloud.  How can I preserve my software investment while taking advantage of the efficiencies of the Cloud?
One of the many touted reasons for moving applications to the Cloud is to avoid vendor lock-in, so virtual environment independence is essential for any cloud migration.  However, today all the cloud stacks available, EC2, Cloud.com, Terremark, etc., assume that anyone moving into the cloud is creating new servers, building new systems and applications, not migrating their existing application and systems to the cloud.  Yet, many companies interested in cloud migration do not want to incur the costs associated with application level porting of their existing IT investment.  As many companies have discovered, migrating physical or virtual servers and applications directly to the Cloud is not as simple as it might seem on the surface.
The good news is that there are a number of good ways to address this issue.  Which one is the right one for your company is going to be dependent on your specific requirements.  However the basic choices are a full migration of the existing set of systems to a PaaS (Platform as a Service), moving some of the systems to the cloud to create a hybrid environment, or creating a virtual data center in the cloud.  In more complex environments, a mix of the different approaches might be the right answer.
Full migration – This is the approach you would choose if you need to preserve as much of the existing systems as you can.  While you will need to change the IP addressing schemes and not all platforms are supported, this can be a very cost effective method.  The downside is that each cloud environment is somewhat different, so migrations require tools need to have flexibility and are aware of the specific environment.  The number of migration tool products or applications available on the market is surprisingly small.  Once you ignore the specialized migration tools written by the virtualization platform vendors (VMware vCenter Converter and Citrix XenConvert for example), which are obviously not going to work in a cloud environment, and the repurposed backup tools (Acronis Backup and Recovery v10 Advanced Server Virtual Edition and Double-Take Move for example), the number of tools that have automation and multi-platform support is limited to two.  The RiverMeadow Networks Shaman™ Appliance and PlateSpin Migrate are the only two products on the market today that are both automatable and support virtualization platforms other than Hyper-V and VMware.
Virtual data center in the Cloud – Another product on the market, Cloudswitch takes a different approach to complex existing data center environments.  CloudSwitch encapsulates the VM and preserves all of the existing network architecture/topology, including the IP addressing schemes.  The CloudSwitch solution can be very elegant for companies that are not ready to give up on their existing data center infrastructure but want the capability for transparent cloud bursting.  They also offer a great solution for companies that have reason to keep their networks completely private, yet still move their workloads into the Cloud.  Be aware that since the solution adds another layer of abstraction there is some extra overhead.  Of course, the issue of network capacity and the ability to move large data sets across the WAN remains.
Cloud bursting and hybrid environments – For companies that want to use the cloud for augmentation of their existing services the option of taking a portfolio approach to service locations might be the right solution.  The issue with this approach is the potential for incompatibility between the different environments and the limited management tools.  VMware recently announced Cloud Connector, a new tool to manage hybrid environments across venders, but it does require that all the environments be based on the ESX virtualization platform.
Ultimately which migration approach works best is going to be governed more by the existing environment, the business objectives and the limited number of tools to do it right.  As the Enterprise Public Cloud matures, the tools for migration will become more available and better matches to the needs of businesses. 

 

About the Author
Beth Cohen, Cloud Technology Partners, Inc. Moving companies’ IT services into the cloud the right way, the first time!
bfcohen@luthcomputer.com
Consultants’ Roundtable
The Consultants’ Roundtable previously scheduled for March 3rd is being rescheduled – new date to be announced.

Practitioners’ Roundtable
Mobile Computing – how it affects employers and consumers of technology.  Your children, nieces and nephews have them.  Your clients and vendors have them and will soon expect you to, as well. Your customers all have them.  Your employees are using them.  During work hours for things other than work.  Your competitors are reacting to them – perhaps gaining an edge on you.
Not since the telephone and the printing press before that has a disruptive technology created such a potentially giant shift in how people interact with each other.
Don’t miss this chance to meet with peers at the VP and Director level to discuss this challenge (opportunity).
Date: March 3, 2011
3:15PM – 3:45PM:  Networking and introductions
3:45PM – 5:30PM:  Program and discussion
6:00PM: Dinner
Location: Babson College, Babson Hall room 320.
Dinner to follow at the Babson Executive Conference Center’s Sorenson Commons Dining Room with cocktails and informal networking after that in the Babson Bottom Line Lounge – like other Roundtables, is all included in the registration price.
Note – if there are any topics that you would like to see addressed in a future Practitioners’ Round Table, please send an email to todd.connor@gmail.com or Rob.Daigneau@gmail.com.
Outreach Partner Spotlight
20 Years of Teen Voices

20 Years of Teen Voices
Teen Voices’ mission is to support and educate teen girls to amplify their voices and create social change through media.
is our annual gathering to honor and celebrate our achievements and our dreams. On April 14, 2011 at the Hotel Marlowe we celebrate our 20th anniversary of publishing Teen Voices print magazine – our theme is celebrating 20 years of girls speaking truth to power in Boston and beyond. This year, we will bring together our community of dedicated supporters and new friends to celebrate and support our core mission and programs.

Donna Brazile is our keynote speaker for 2011.

If you or members of your organization would like to attend or sponsor the event, click here

 


MIT Sloan CIO Symposium-
Beyond the Crossroads: How will the CIO role
evolve in the digital business world?
Following the success of the seven prior years, the MIT Sloan Alumni Club of Boston, in association with the MIT Center for Digital Business and the Boston Chapter of The Society for Information Management (SIM), will be hosting its annual MIT CIO Symposium on May 18, 2011.
As CIO and as a senior business executive, you embrace a technology vision to enable improved global business performance for your company. With pressure to do more with fewer resources mounting every year, your success increasingly requires tapping into innovative technologies and new ideas to get the job done. What sparks these ideas? How do you keep up with leading innovations?  Find out at the 2011 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium.
MIT is offering SIM members a special partner discount savings of 25%– Register with the promo code “mitciosim2011”.
Hear from IT business leaders and MIT professors. Network with CIOs and your SIM colleagues. Discover new technologies developed at MIT. This exciting symposium offers a day of presentations, panels, lunch, networking, a closing reception and a special Innovation Showcase featuring 10 carefully selected early stage companies, providing the most innovative and valuable IT solutions.
To become a sponsor of the event, click here to request a sponsorship package
Click here to submit an application to the 2011 CIO Leadership Award
Click here for the Call for Applications for the 2011 Innovation Showcase at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium
Time: 7:30 am – 7:00 pm
Date: May 18, 2011
Place: MIT Campus – Kresge Auditorium – Cambridge, MA
Register: www.mitcio.com
Contact: Graham Rong, MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Chair, grong@MIT.EDU

Sneak Peak at the April Meeting!
April 14, 2011 – Save The Date!
Boston SIM will be presenting a panel discussion on Social Media – Save the date!
Don’t miss this discussion on a hot topic by a panel of industry leaders!
Sharpen The Leadership Saw
Recap of February’s event
John Larkin Speaks at February SLS
John Larkin, co-founder of TPP Global Services, was the guest speaker at the February Sharpen the Leadership Saw Roundtable held at iRobot in Bedford, MA.  John shared his career path to CIO and beyond.  Early in his career while working for Deloitte, Haskins and Sells and initially at Millipore, John aspired toward General Management.  Once he became CIO at Millipore, having a business impact became his passion.  John’s current aspiration, which began while he was Regional VP of Oracle’s Consulting Division, is to work with IT Leadership across all aspects of leveraging IT within the enterprise and across the business ecosystem.
John then reviewed the role of the CIO, presenting and discussing data from Gartner about what the business wants from a CIO and what a typical CIO does in response.  IT and the CIO can be viewed along a continuum from Operating Manager to Business Partner to Strategic Differentiator.  How the CIO and the company position and perceive IT has an impact on the intent of IT, the technology mindset, the financial mindset toward IT, the role of the CIO, and metrics.  When IT is positioned closer to the Operating Manager, cost, quality, and industry standard benchmarks drive IT’s focus.  When IT is viewed as a Strategic Differentiator, IT and the CIO are engaged in enterprise strategy and transformative technology that impacts business performance.  This lead into a discussion about the expanding role of IT Leadership where the CIO acts as a bridge between business opportunity and IT capability.
Wrapping up, John encouraged the roundtable participants to think about their fit and vision in light of the information he presented.  He then closed with some “random thoughts”:
•    “Best place is where you are with what you have”
o    Where will the action be?
o    Are you a fit?
•    Plan rigorously, react to reality
•    The 5 person IT department
•    Stay close to your customers
•    Attach yourself to good people – your network is your worth
The book discussion was centered about The Real Business of IT: How CIO’s Create and Communicate Value by Richard Hunter and George Westerman.  The group reconvened for dinner and extended conversation at Macaroni Grill in Burlington.