Choosing New Year`s Resolutions

The start of a new year is always a good time to resolve tomake both our professional and personal lives more efficient, organized andsaner. It?s a nice idea, isn?t it?

Unfortunately, when it comes to our jobs, many of us canbarely find the time to manage the things we have to do, never mind the thingswe?d like to do. We end up juggling too many tasks, which often results in aseries of fire drills that eventually end in mistakes, missed opportunities,chaos and burnout.

Establishing priorities can bring some order to the chaos.Of course, everyone?s job has different priorities, but, in this issue, we?vefocused on some key business challenges that should be on the must-do lists ofmany of our readers.

Take big data, for instance. Every organization, regardlessof size, has data stored in a variety of places, including PCs, mobile devices,email servers, storage devices, social networks and the cloud. Unfortunately, alot of this data?documents, presentations, emails, videos, blogs, tweets andother online information?
is not used to best advantage in supporting the enterprise and delivering valueto the business.

?Combining everything and making sense of it is thechallenge of the digital age,? Gary Curtis, chief technology strategist andmanaging director at Accenture, told Sam Greengard for his cover story, ?BigData Unlocks Business Value? (page 20). ?Currently, few organizations aretapping into the full potential of their data.?

If that?s true of your enterprise, then leveraging yourcorporate information resources more effectively should be high on your list of2012 priorities. Why? ?Organizations that use big data effectively,? Samwrites, ?are more likely
to realize a significant competitive advantage and open up new businessopportunities.?

Another to-do item should involve taking full advantage ofvirtualization technologies. In ?Leveraging Virtualization?s Business Value,?(page 16) writer Tony Kontzer points out that ?today?s virtualizationdeployments are about much more than efficiency. They?re about providing thekind of agility and availability that business demands in the 21st century.?

The ultimate goal of virtualization, Tony adds, is ?aboutgetting IT away from the business of managing hardware and software and insteaddelivering bottom-line business value.?

The virtualization article is the first story in Baseline?s neweditorial section, Bottom Line, which will illustrate through real-lifeexamples the business value provided by various technologies. In future issues,we will cover business solutions such as content/knowledge management, clouds,business process management, collaboration tools, e-discovery, tablets andgreen technology.

Our GamePlan section (pages 10 through 15) includes storiesabout other key challenges facing business and technology leaders this year.Fred Matteson of Alvarez & Marsal writes about the need for the ITorganization to transform itself in order to transform the business. He saysthat CEOs ?must drive a mandate for change and look to the CIO to implement thetechnology that enables transformation.?

Security is, as always, a major challenge. Ken Goldstein, avice president at the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, writes that manyorganizations ?still have not made cyber-security a top priority. Withoutrealizing it, these companies practically invite hackers to take their bestshots.? He lists potential targets of hackers and urges management to take aproactive approach to IT security.

With employees? growing use of social media tools such asFacebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, organizations will face another critical issuethis year: mitigating the risks the use of these tools creates. David Barron, alabor and employment attorney at Cozen O?Connor, writes: ?With new technologyand communication avenues come new obligations to police and regulate thosesame avenues in the workplace. ? It is critical for employers to recognize therisks and, at a minimum, provide some reasonable guideposts for employeeconduct.?

While there are probably many other items on your list of2012 workplace resolutions, I hope that the issues we discuss in this issue ofBaseline will give you helpful advice on establishing priorities and setting astrategy for dealing with what will undoubtedly be a challenging year.