CIOs and IT leaders have a tough job. They need to deliver results, hire the right talent, make sure they have the right technology in place, and be relevant to the business. The worst thing in the world is when an IT organization has to use key resources and time to deal with a telecom issue that dramatically impacts their business.

Telecom is not perfect. In fact it can be chaotic. Most IT leaders don’t even like dealing with telecom. Unfortunately telecom problems will happen, issues will arise, and your business will be impacted. There are many things in the back of the IT leader’s mind, but some things are more dramatic than others. Let’s take a look at 5 Telecom Nightmares that Keep IT Leaders Up at Night:

5 Telecom Nightmares that Keep IT Leaders Up at Night – #1: Carrier Service Outages
Outages cause major disruption. It impacts customers, results in lost business and may lead to poor reputation. Service outages also result in critical IT resources spending valuable time trying to resolve these issues. Whether they are handling help desk calls or working with the carriers to get the issue resolved quickly, they are not spending time on more important IT initiatives.

As a preventative measure, it is important to have a disaster recovery plan in place or a backup connection. Make sure to do your due diligence to find the right provider who has a proven track record for uptime and getting issues resolved quickly.

5 Telecom Nightmares that Keep IT Leaders Up at Night – #2: Lost or Stolen Mobile Devices
The growth of mobility has spurred great opportunity for businesses, but it has also created potential nightmares for IT leaders. Critical customer data or company data can easily be lost if a mobile device is misplaced or stolen. BYOD has created many risks for companies who allow employees to bring their own mobile device (iPads, iPhones, tablets, etc).

Not having the right security policy or mobile device management platform in place creates risks to your organization, and a nightmare for IT leaders.

5 Telecom Nightmares that Keep IT Leaders Up at Night – #3: Fiber or Line Cut
Some things you can control, some things you can’t. When a backhoe goes through your fiber line, the only thing you can do is hope the problem is solved quickly and efficiently with little impact to the business (if that is even possible). Just as a carrier service outage causes a major disruption, so does a fiber line cut. Most companies have a plan in place to deal with this type of situation. Some companies do not, and they pay the price.

5 Telecom Nightmares that Keep IT Leaders Up at Night – #4: Data Security Breach
Imagine this scenario. An employee was let go or leaves your company and in the process takes critical company data with them. Whether an employee steals data, your network is attacked by a virus or malware, or someone hacks into your system – the nightmare is made real for the IT leader. Having a secure network and the right platforms/processes in place to protect your company data will mitigate (not eliminate) the risk of your data being breached.

5 Telecom Nightmares that Keep IT Leaders Up at Night – #5: Carrier Implementation
So you feel good about that three year contract you just signed with your carrier. You have confidence in their ability to deliver and they tell you time and time again everything will be “fine”. Think again.

Now it’s implementation time. You may feel like you did your due diligence in selecting the right carrier and technology, but if you 1) don’t have the right resources and plan in place to manage the implementation process and; 2) have not identified the risks involved in the implementation, you are setting yourself and your company up for failure.

Let’s face it, dealing with carriers is not fun and implementations do go bad. Having the right plan in place, resources who know how to work with carriers, escalate issues, and have the resources needed to solve problems when they arise will help mitigate implementation nightmares.

Preventative Measures and Expert Partners Help IT Leaders Sleep Soundly
The fallout from these types of real-life nightmares result in lost customers, poor reputations, lost revenues, lost confidence, and sometimes… lost jobs.

But having the right disaster recovery plan in place, the right technology to protect and secure data and mobile devices, and a plan to implement carrier services will help mitigate these risks in the future and more importantly – you will get more sleep at night! Not sure where to start with preventative action? No need to procrastinate. Enlist the help of a trusted partner to get you started in the right direction.

The following is our list of the Top 5 Midwest CIOs to Follow on Twitter. Criteria included Klout score, number of followers, amount of outreach, other social channels/blogs, and discussions.

Without further ado, Renodis presents … The Top 5 Midwest CIOs to Follow on Twitter.

The Top 5 Midwest CIOs to Follow on Twitter: #5 – Brian Miller, Davenport University

Twitter handle: @suydam

Why do we like his tweets?

In addition to thoughtful commentary on IT, Mr. Miller is a self-professed web geek which accounts for all kinds of cool tweets on comet watching, drupal, and instagramming. On top of CIO responsibilities, Mr. Miller is also City Commissioner of East Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The Top 5 Midwest CIOs to Follow on Twitter: #4 – Bruce Maas, University of Wisconsin

Twitter handle: @uwmadisonCIO

Why do we like his tweets?

Mr. Maas offers a wealth of information about IT leadership, strategy and innovation through links to articles, videos, and opinion pieces. His Twitter background in two words? Professionally rockin’.

The Top 5 Midwest CIOs to Follow on Twitter: #3 – Joe Topinka, Red Wing Shoes

Twitter handle: @ciomentors

Why do we like his tweets?

Many talk. Mr. Topinka practices. Well liked for collaborative styles of thinking, he embodies the disciplines of a transformational IT leader, embracing innovation and new ideas. Expect forward thinking, educational tweets. Also, check out his blog at http://ciomentor.blogspot.com.

The Top 5 Midwest CIOs to Follow on Twitter: #2 – Will Weider, Ministry Health Care

Twitter handle: @CandidCIO

Why do we like his tweets?

Mr. Weider’s communication style is honest and real, intermixing a highly adept understanding of all things technology leadership with music, entertainment and volunteerism. It’s no wonder this CIO has almost 5k followers. His blog at http://candidcio.com is a must read.

The Top 5 Midwest CIOs to Follow on Twitter: #1 – Ben Grey, Oak Lawn-Hometown District 123

Twitter handle: @bengrey

Why do we like his tweets?

Can we say Twitter communication harmony? Mr. Grey represents the ideal when it comes to responding to all @ tweets and comments which makes him approachable and professional. Being a photo hobbyist, you can always expect an inspirational image or cute photo opp. His blog is also a great read at http://bengrey.com/blog.

Okay, what’s the next step? We encourage you to connect with these innovative, forward thinking CIOs to keep up with the latest top IT initiatives and trends.

Have a suggestion for a CIO we should add? Comment below!

Top IT Challenges in 2013

• Containing costs while delivering increasingly more complex services and providing a consistently higher level of customer service.
• Enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of communications with customers and internal stakeholders
• Utilizing emerging technologies to improve staff productivity
• Ensuring the reliability, availability, survivability and security of all communications
• Implementing centralized administration of services.

Key Initiatives CIOs Must Consider in Transforming IT

There are several common yet key initiatives CIOs must consider in transforming IT as a strategic asset rather than a cost center or mere enabler of communications.

• Improve Collaboration
  • The technology for collaboration has arrived but how do we ensure adoption and effective use?
• Explore Cloud Computing
  • Most U.S. companies are looking to build hybrid clouds, capitalizing on the flexibility of cloud architectures while keeping their most sensitive or critical workloads behind their own firewalls.
• Accept and Support the Consumerization of Technology
  • Consumer technology innovation is outpacing business tech innovation, and many employees are using their personal devices and applications for work because they don’t like their company-issued technology.
• Leverage Social Media
  • Your customers, partners, and suppliers are talking about your company, its processes, and its products on some form of social media, whether that’s Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, YouTube, or more specialized forums and portals. Companies need to monitor and participate in those conversations, especially with customers.
• Find the Right People
  • Finding smart, skilled, talented people is not easy in any economic conditions.  Some of the top skills CIO’s are looking for are enterprise content management, business intelligence and data analytics, application development, and application integration.
• Prepare for the Post PC Era
  • We’re seeing a proliferation of complementary, sometimes replacement business computing devices, most of them of focused on mobility.  More and more, companies are investigating desktop virtualization.
• Improve the Speed and Versatility of IT
  • IT departments continually struggle to keep up with the ever changing demands of sales, marketing, product development and HR.  The result for IT is simple; be nimble or be blamed for failure.
• Make IT One with the Business
  • In order to have corporate relevance IT needs to be considered a strategic asset that will drive growth, profitability, and differentiation.  IT can only be effective in this manner with cross department collaboration.

The bottom line?  Technology is a solution-enabler.  CIOs must eliminate tactical management and legacy thinking and focus on IT projects and strategy that opens new markets and drives new business. Rather than just maintain the status quo, IT needs to be a strategic differentiator to the organization, customers, and industries it serves.

Be relevant or be gone!

Mike Belmont is a respected industry expert in Telecom Management and Enterprise Account Manager at Renodis.

Companies that embark down the road to SAP HANA should be aware of one sobering aspect of this technology: it utilizes disk space on a “pay-as-you-grow” basis and because in-memory blades are rather expensive, cost becomes a consideration. Keeping databases as lean and mean as possible will be a major priority for businesses pursuing a HANA strategy. Even with commodity servers, the performance and scalability that SAP HANA offers can carry a considerable price tag. While it is inevitable that many companies will want to pursue the road to SAP HANA because of the clear performance advantages gained by keeping data in memory, it is important to understand that the process is more involved than flipping a switch, especially around the critical aspects of optimizing performance and database size.

Since the extra cost to add sufficient capacity can be higher than expected, most businesses need a more cost-effective approach. This involves moving large amounts of static data to a lower-cost, high-performance “nearline” storage (NLS) environment that complements the in-memory SAP HANA architecture.  NLS is an inexpensive, scalable option for storing large volumes of data. When using NLS, it is critical to segregate frequently used, “high-value” information from data that provides lower business value, regardless of environment or current (or planned) platform. Data archiving is an essential part of this data management process and an NLS solution ensures the right balance between performance and storage costs. It also provides the ability to maintain size and growth of production environments through archiving processes, while protecting data for business and audit requirements.

Other considerations include what kind of database preparation and infrastructure is needed. For example, what data and documents should be migrated, what information is archived or purged, what are the access requirements, and what strategy should be adopted to maximize cost-to-performance ratio (which determines value to archiving efforts).

SAP is investing heavily in its partner and developer network and allocates resources for Web services and startups. This eventually will make the path to SAP HANA more straightforward, however, organizations currently weighing their options need a place to start.

To begin, evaluate current needs for streamlining infrastructure and accessing data. This first step identifies key performance indicators (KPIs) for system performance, and specific areas for cost reduction, management and avoidance.  It also allows CIOs to more fully understand their environments, especially as they consider a move to SAP HANA, and understand what could be if they decide to pursue that path.

Another important consideration when migrating to SAP HANA is a comprehensive database assessment or HealthCheck. The HealthCheck from Dolphin is a proactive audit that will help safeguard against costly system down time and ensure that the in-memory infrastructure remains lean and stable.

The HealthCheck incorporates standard SAP reports and specifically designed utilities to identify areas that need attention. Based on assumptions and a series of non-intrusive transactions from the system, data focusing on opportunities in three key KPI areas can be gleaned. These include:

• System performance
• Size and growth of production environments
• Cost reduction/containment

The resulting report will provide an overview of the health of the database on a monthly basis.

What can businesses hope to achieve from this audit process? In this context, the HealthCheck for SAP archiving provides insight into realizing significant opportunities for SAP systems improvement and a clearer path to SAP HANA. It includes:

• Increased Performance: including smaller database size, faster data load, queries, back up, refreshes and upgrades.
• Sustainable & Predictive Growth: including reduced storage and server growth.
• Reduced Total Cost of Ownership: including operational, system infrastructure and administrative savings.

The Dolphin’s HealthCheck for SAP databases is a structured examination into what areas need attention. Whether or not a company running SAP systems is considering moving to SAP HANA, the need to evaluate their databases, taking stock and assessing system performance, its design for capacity, and the business needs for data, may uncover specific areas where building an archiving strategy, engaging in database clean-up, or more aggressive data archiving to nearline storage makes sense.

The recommendations that come out of that evaluation become the foundation for making informed decisions for an efficient, more cost-effective footprint. The benefits for increased performance and stabilized growth can result in substantial cost savings. Add to that a lower total cost of ownership and lower risk factors IT has a business win-win for the critical business stakeholders – Finance and Compliance.

# # # # #

Dr. Hopf is responsible for setting the Dolphin’s strategic corporate direction and is the Archiving Principal. With more than 20 years of experience in the information technology industry, 14 focused in SAP, Dr. Hopf specializes in SAP Information Lifecycle Management initiatives including Data and Document archiving, SAP Archive Link Storage Solutions and Business Process solutions.

Operations responsilibites

• IT buying decisions
• Installation of server hardware and OS
• Configuration of servers, networks, storage, etc
• Monitoring of servers
• Respond to outages

Some other duties

• IT security
• Managing phone systems, network
• Internal help desk support
• Change control
• Backup and disaster recovery planning
• Manage active directory
• Asset tracking

Shared Development & Operations duties

• Software deployments
• Application support

Some of these responsibilities have changed a lot in the last few years. Virtualization and the cloud have greatly simplified buying decisions, installation, and configuration. For example, nobody cares what kind of server we are going to buy anymore for a specific application. We buy great big ones, virtualize them, and just carve out what we need and change it on the fly. Cloud hosting simplifies this even more by eliminiating the step of buying a great big server.

So what part of the Ops should developers do?

• Be involved in selecting the application stack
• Configure and deploy servers
• Deploy their applications
• Monitor application and system health
• Respond to applications problems as they arise.

In my opinion, that is the lifecycle of DevOps. Select the application stack, build it, deploy it, support it. The developers basically own the stack from operating system and up. If you have 5 development teams working on different projects, it makes a lot of sense for each team to be responsible for all of these things from start to finish. Make the developers completely responsible for their own application. Operations can simply be responsible for the physical infrastructure that supports it.

So what does the operations team do then?

• Manage the hardware infrastructure
• Configure and monitor networking
• Enforce policies around backup, DR, security, change control, etc
• Assist in monitoring the systems
• Manage active directory
• Asset tracking
• Other non production application related tasks

If your IT department is small, one of your developers can easily handle all of these tasks. In larger companies though I’m sure this role will be around forever. But… If you are using cloud based hosting, do you need operations at all? If you are embracing the DevOps concept of developers owning the deployment and production support of their applications, and you are using cloud hosting, you could probably say you are doing NoOps in your data center. But you still need at least a help desk person in the office to support your internal desktops.

DevOps to me is the concept of letting the operations team provide the hardware and letting the developers basically own everything from the OS up. Select the application stack, build it, deploy it, support it.

For many IT consulting firms, understanding resource across the business can be a real challenge. This is frequently due to a lack of appropriate project management tools that provide a true insight into which consultants are working on which projects and the resource and skills gaps across the business. Firms that do not have this information may also find that it is more difficult to make informed decisions when balancing teams, budgets and engagements – the main cause of client under or over resourcing.

Consulting firms must ensure that their project managers have one clear view of resource and skills across the business. This will help the company balance resource and project demands and ultimately help optimise profit margins.