IT Chargeback

“Chargeback is based on the premise that if CIOs make the cost of IT visible to people, they will buy less. They will naturally control their own demand. What we have seen out of chargeback is that all people do is wind up arguing about the price.”

Mark McDonald, as quoted in Supply demand IT vs. IT chargeback

Prince says the Internet is outdated

“The internet’s completely over. I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can’t get it.  The internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated.”

Prince as quoted in Prince - world exclusive interview: Peter Willis goes inside the star’s secret world

Overheard talking about business intelligence

“Business intelligence (BI) applications offer the promise to be the focal point to customer intelligence across multiple data sources. But, BI efforts often highlight how poor customer data quality really is — leaving users scrambling to fight a losing battle to keep customer data clean and updated.”

William Band, The Top Eight Customer Management Trends For 2010

Overheard talking about ITAR and EAR compliance

Organizations in certain industries will not tolerate the incursion of iPads and iPhones into their IT infrastructure because of compliance reasons. Kevin McDonald, iPads force their way into corporate IT

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is ITAR and EAR compliance.

“On the HIPAA side and in ITAR, [customers] were booting iPhones,” McDonald said. “We’re removing them in favor of the Blackberry.” (ITAR refers to the U.S. State Department’s International Traffic in Arms Regulations, which outlaw the export of critical technologies that could be used against the U.S.)

“You can’t centrally manage them or control the apps,” McDonald said. “You can’t remote-delete with any assurance. And in an environment where you absolutely must prove where the data goes and where it’s stored, if it’s encrypted, you cannot do that with an iPhone or iPad.”

In short, the strength of the iPad and iPhone — the availability of thousands of apps — is also their weakness when it comes to security. To be fair, Google’s Android phones fall into the same trap, McDonald said.

Overheard talking about noisy text

Text analytics — also known as text mining or text data mining — helps organizations identify and understand what people think about them, their products and their services. The software, which combines advanced search techniques with speech-pattern-recognition capabilities, allows users to quickly scour mountains of unstructured or free-form text in the hope of identifying trends in customer sentiment that will ideally lead to positive change. Mark Brunelli, Text analytics tools require serious devotion to customers

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is noisy text.

Overheard talking about N+1 UPS

Modular systems let you plug in UPS capacity as you need it. Incrementally enabled systems provide the same end result, but are shipped with the extra capacity already installed, but disabled. It’s activated via software or firmware when you’re ready. These systems all grow differently, but the principles are the same — add capacity and pay for it when you need it. Robert McFarlane, How to choose the right uninterruptible power supply for your data center

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is N+1 UPS.

Overheard talking about non-governmental organizations

ISO is a non-governmental organization. As such, its standards are voluntary, but many of its member institutes are part of the governmental structures of their countries, and ISO standards have found their way into many laws. Information technology professionals are probably familiar with the ISO/IEC 27000 series of standards for IT security management. Linda Tucci, FAQ: An introduction to the ISO 31000 risk management standard

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is non-governmental organization.

Overheard talking about the Library of Medicine

The Library’s main portal for consumer health information is MedlinePlus, available in both English and Spanish. MedlinePlus has comprehensive, up-to-date, easy-to-read information on nearly 800 health topics. It also provides interactive health tutorials and a collection of surgery videos, as well as information about thousands of prescription, over-the-counter and herbal medicines. David R. Donohue, M.A., NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE FACT SHEET

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is National Library of Medicine.

Overheard talking about the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act

Our reliance on the conveniences of remote access, and the ability of our networked control systems to reduce costs and manpower needs, have led to weaknesses that are being exploited daily by our opponents. Melissa Hathaway, Government Must Keep Pace with Cybersecurity Threats

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is Cybersecurity Enhancement Act 2009. Melissa Hathaway does an excellent job summarizing all the cybersecurity legislation efforts currently in place.

Overheard talking about federal portfolio management

The next time you start a project, begin by creating stakeholder groups, indentifying which stakeholder belongs to each group. Next, initiate the communications process with the main stakeholders before even launching the project. If you don’t have a solid communications link with your stakeholders, then your project is poised for failure. Danielle and Nelson Ruest, Communication with IT project stakeholders is key to success

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is federal portfolio management.