Allan Alter

90.2% of CIOs say their domestic security measures are adequate82.2 % of IT executives say their companies have an information security policy28.4% of companies do not have a security officer43.7% of IT executives expect their companies security spending to increase40.2% have cancelled plans to increase security due to user complaints The vast majority of the […]

Midmarket companies need to attract and retain more technical talent, but dont have the deep pockets of their larger competitors. That isnt proving to be an insurmountable barrier, however. While large companies focus on pay-based incentives to recruit and retain employees, or turn to outsourcing and cut staff, midmarket companies are much more likely to […]

It seems no matter how many companies make the news because of IT security problems—recent victims and foul-ups include AOL LLC, AT&T Inc., Sovereign Bancorp Inc., the TJX Companies, UCLA and Verizon Wireless—the perceived state of security resembles Garrison Keillors mythical Lake Wobegon, the town “where all the women are strong, all the men are […]

Ineffective policies and careless employees leave plenty of openings for data thieves and cybercriminals. Yet most CIOs claim security is under control. Finding 1:IT Executives Say Security Is Adequate Despite Threats Security snafus often make news, but most CIOs arent rattled. As previous CIO Insight surveys have shown, very few IT executives think their companies […]

“Influential” will never have the air of rigor, however phony, that ROI enjoys. There is no equivalent in the IT world to baseball statistician Bill James, measuring CIOs by such metrics as NPCC Average (Number of Projects Copied by Competitors), PCOTAB Percentage (Projects Completed On Time and Budget) or LIF Index (Lifetime Industry Firsts). Still, […]

Welcome to the most comprehensive report on IT spending CIO Insight has ever produced. Unlike previous years surveys, where we tracked only project-related spending on applications and infrastructure, weve asked respondents about any and all spending on these technologies. Weve also broadened the field to 50 different technologies and services. With 429 respondents holding senior-level […]

Value scores: down. reliability scores: down. Customer loyalty: no surprise—these numbers are down, too. Increasingly, CIOs are disappointed and disgruntled with the performance of their most important vendors. In fact, the number of companies with lower scores in 2006 than in 2005 outpaces those with higher scores by a margin of two to one. /zimages/3/28571.gifHow […]

Robert Reich, who was secretary of labor under president Bill Clinton and is now a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, is one of the leading experts on economic policy in the Democratic Party. Executive Editor Allan Alter spoke to Reich the morning after the historic 2006 election and asked him […]

Business processes have plenty of room for improvement: IT executives say IT and finance, the most computerized of business functions, can be far more automated than they are now. And ITs potential for improving customer service is massive. But data integration is thwarting ITs ability to improve productivity, reduce costs and increase revenues. So, companies […]

Our first two findings presented evidence that IT organizations are growing. But where will the growth come? Our latest finding covers the hiring outlook for 18 different IT positions, and finds that the demand for new systems and infrastructure is leading to more hiring for IT professionals who can build them. But today, this requires […]

Partially outsourcing the Web-based application development project was supposed to make development of the order entry system faster and easier. Instead, it slowed development to a crawl. The project divided the IT staff at Chase-Pitkin Home & Garden. Tensions rose. In-house staff provided partial answers or none at all to the outsourcers developers, making it […]

Editors note: This is the first in a monthly series in which eWEEK excerpts original IT research from its sister Ziff Davis Media publication, CIO Insight. From a distance, it appears that IT spending is on track for growth. But behind the numbers, CIOs are troubled about the bottom line. According to the findings of […]