How Indigo is embracing

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read on the future PAGE 18

When coworkers become tyrants

Strike the right balance between

enforcing policy and offering f lexibility

PAGE 26

Mark Roman has made the leap — he has gone from driving IT strategy for the University of Victoria to taking on overall business leadership at CANARIE. How he did it, and how you can, too PAGE 14

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contents

MEET continue on PAGE 6

IT STAFF continue on PAGE 6

INSIGHTS n OUTLOOKS n IDEAS trendlines

PHOT

O BY

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Gary Davenport, seen here talking with Region of Peel CIO Adam Hughes at last year’s CIO Exchange, will succeed Randstad Group CIO Andrew Dillane as the next president of the CIO Association of Canada.

A man who has lead tech-nology strategy for the country’s largest retailer

and currently occupies the chief information officer role at a major telecom firm is poised to lead the CIO Association of Canada’s efforts around mem-bership and advocacy.

Gary Davenport, vice-pres-ident of IT at Allstream, was announced as president-elect of CIOCAN recently. He will take over from Andrew Dillane, Group CIO of Randstad Canada, as the third president in the as-sociation’s young history.

CIOCAN is a not-for-profit

Next Issue Coming Up

Our annual reader roundtable discussion on IT leadership.

CIOS BECOME PEERS8 A new report from Deloitte

shows progress on the “align-ment with business” issue.

AVOID ‘NULL-EDGE’22 An excerpt from a book de-

signed to help survive the data deluge plaguing our society.

FRANKLY SPEAKING24 Tandet Group’s Corey Cox

on creating an ‘unstoppable’ network.

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE6 Follow this CIO: Steve Groves13 Laurier’s new Masters program

Meet CIOCAN’s new leader

IT staff may ask for more moneyIn 2011, IT profession-

als will have the oppor-tunity to negotiate for

higher compensation as the economy starts to look a little rosier and employers want to again start filling full-time positions instead of relying mostly on contractors in their IT departments.

This is in stark contrast to 2010, when employers had the upper hand of picking and choosing, during the reces-sion, specialized candidates at a wage about three to six per cent lower than normal, said Travis O’Rourke, the IT division manager with staffing firm Hays Specialist Recruit-ment Canada.

O’Rourke said that as em-ployers will want to lure candi-

dates away from more expen-sive contract rates, he expects about a five per cent rise in what will be offered in 2010.

The chance to negotiate will be available to both new hires as well as existing employ-ees because companies will want to keep the staff they’ve already invested in from leav-ing for greener pastures, said O’Rourke.

“The reality is they will have to give an increase to those on staff because they will still have to pay the market increase to new hires,” said O’Rourke.

Also revealed by the survey findings, based on responses from the IT recruiters for 470 companies spanning large to small, is that, in 2011, the rate at which companies will be

hiring for IT professionals will jump. Fifty-one per cent of employers expect their IT staff to grow in number. Last year, hiring in the IT sector was just 30 per cent.

O’Rourke explained that while the recession forced many IT projects to the back burner, relatively rosier times are allowing IT departments to refocus attention where funds may have been cut.

“All these ideas and proj-ects that were put on the shelf are coming off the shelf,” said O’Rourke. “And companies can re-invest in upgrading the operating system across the company.”

At a more granular level, recruitment across the coun-try varies. Calgary will lead IT hiring, with 70 per cent of employers saying they’ll add IT staff. Vancouver shows a

trendlines

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The Wall Street Journal recently hosted a roundtable with CIOs from Procter & Gamble, Qualcomm and Guardian Life Insurance Co. An edited transcript called “The View from the CIO’s office” sums up the conversation: http://on.wsj.com/ieLVT7

As part of its “Talking Shop” video series, Sunil Harji of consulting firm KPMG discusses the role that CIOs can play during a merger or acquisition: http://youtu.be/dsP56zKBSUw

Microsoft’s global CIO, Tony Scott, shares some lessons learned from his own experiences in adopting cloud computing on Forbes’ blog. http://onforb.es/lZSvox

Harvard Business Review blogger Robert Plant has written a thought-provoking piece about the role of IT executives in generating predictions called “The CIO as corporate psychic”: http://buswk.co/fuEL7N

Group blog No Jitter has an interesting post from Dave Michels called “The proliferating hats of the CIO” which touches on unified communications, cloud computing and more: http://bit.ly/lawn0Y

The CIO Retail Summit, which will take place in Scottsdale,

Ariz. in late August, is teaming up with the Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA) to add more value to the event: http://bit.ly/m6A9xI

Enterprise software firm Informatica has posted a YouTube clip with its CIO, Tony Young, who discusses the “80/20” rule and how his peers can contribute more to the bottom line: http://youtu.be/2jaNNxqBqxU

CA Technologies has hired Greg Valdez, who also occupied the chief information officer role at BMC Software and Veritas, as its new CIO: http://prn.to/j1s62I

And for sheer entertainment value, an animated clip brings new meaning to the idea of CIO translating to “Career Is Over”: http://youtu.be/_FjqM6HEkfk

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IT STAFF continued from PAGE 3

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MEET continued from PAGE 3

follow this CIO

follow us at twitter.com/ciocanada

Name: Steve GrovesTwitter: @SteveatGoodLife

organization that offers a num-ber of networking opportunities for senior IT executives, includ-ing monthly meetings and its annual Peer Forum, which was recently held in Vancouver. With more than 250 members, the association has chapters in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Ontario. (IT World Canada is among CIOCAN’s media partners.)

Davenport, who worked for years at the Hudson’s Bay Co. before joining Allstream in 2006, told CIO Canada the as-sociation’s board of directors are focused on three goals. These include increasing the value of being a CIOCAN member, im-proving operations and driving the influence of the association throughout the Canadian IT industry.

“We represent many differ-ent sectors, which means we can leverage not only generic knowledge of CIOs but industry knowledge,” he said, adding that the Peer Forum’s theme of

“Creating C-level Syngery” is an example of how the role of the CIO is evolving. “The notion of the CIOs being at the table – that’s not as much of an issue from my perspective these days. It’s how do we increase our influ-ence beyond the mechanics of running the business?”

Though CIOCAN has been active in discussions with similar associations outside the country such as Russian CIO, Euro CIO and CIOs in China, Davenport said the group’s emphasis will continue to be on the local mar-ket, identifying opportunities to add more chapters.

“Winnipeg, Ottawa and Mon-treal would be obvious targets,” he said.

At Allstream, Davenport said he has been concentrating on a major business process improve-ment initiative that has involved opening a centre of excellence and preparing for a more over-arching business transforma-tion project that will include renovating some of its back-office technology. These on-the-job

experiences are what excite him about working with the associa-tion, he said.

“My first career was in retail, the second is in telecom. Even though they’re very different, the challenges that CIOs face are absolutely the same,” he said. “The only thing that really changes are the acronyms – you have to figure out what people are talking about.”

Under Dillane, CIOCAN rapidly increased its member-ship and developed a research program that explored the potential career path of senior IT executives to CEO roles. This, along with the work of founding president Catherine Boivie, of-fers a strong foundation to build upon, Davenport said.

“I get a lot of energy with dealing with the external world in terms of ideas and new think-ing,” he said. “Underneath all this is I really believe in the role overall, and I believe in driving it. I want to give back what I’ve been given.”

—Shane Schick

Get up!! ‘Just How Dangerous Is Sitting All Day?’ http://mashable.com/2011/05/09/sitting-down-infographic/ #fitness 14 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply How on God’s green earth can there be an official Facebook app for the PlayBook before they have one for the iPad?! 14 hours ago Favorite Retweet ReplySteve Groves’s Bike workout on Mon, 05/09/2011 http://tpks.ws/8GND 18 hours ago Favorite Retweet ReplyGo Red Wings! http://bit.ly/jCs3N3 @GetGlue

#NHLStanleyCup Playoffs 8 May Favorite Retweet Reply The #Weddar in Port Stanley feels Perfect. 8 May Favorite Retweet ReplyWhy would Telus use the PlayBook and a Bb to showcase it’s new multi device data sharing plans? PlayBook can’t access 3G/4G data. 7 May Favorite Retweet Reply I just added ‘Create tax incentive for digital media businesses’. What do you think? http://uservoice.com/a/7GAqA #LDNont @lfpress 7 May Favorite Retweet Reply

rate of 50 per cent and Toronto a rate of 43 per cent.

O’Rourke said employers will also have to offer better compensation packages as a result of scarce specialized skills, the Hays survey found that positions requiring ETL, Murex and SAP expertise will be scarce, making the market for that talent competitive. Almost 50 per cent of busi-nesses will consider sourc-ing candidates from abroad because qualified local talent may have already found em-ployment in 2010.

Last year, expertise in business intelligence, SAP and project management with financial services experience was in high demand and also difficult to source by the close of 2010.

Staffing firm Robert Half International Inc. in Toronto, recently released results of a new survey that reveals pro-fessionals are more confident to ask for better compensation packages with existing and potential employers.

“The job market has definitely impacted the level of confidence people have in negotiating their salaries,” said Geoff Thompson, director of technology services with Robert Half.

Twenty-six per cent re-ported being very comfortable negotiating, and 35 per cent said they were moderately comfortable.

Thompson’s advice for professionals at the negotiat-ing table is to research the job position in question and know what other companies are offering. That, in turn, feeds confidence, he added.

But compensation is more than just salary, so other perks such as health benefits, vacation and flex hours are valuable components. “Look at more than just what the dollar figure is from a salary perspective,” said Thompson.

—Kathleen Lau

The CIO for Good Life Fitness uses social media to keep his followers up to date on health, new mobile devices and his own efforts to stay in shape.

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8 cio canada MAY 2011 www.ITworldcanada.com

trendlines

Deloitte report shows progress on alignment

Canadian CIOs may be more likely to be treated like a peer among senior

management but they must work just as hard as other chief information officers around the world to manage IT demands, according to a global study released by Deloitte this week.

The consulting firm’s IT-Business Balance Survey 2011: Finding Common Ground, sug-gests that CIOs are becoming more successful at being heard by the C-suite and included in the development of busi-ness strategy. But personality traits, the ability to measure performance in a business context and the degree to which collaboration happens between IT and other departments is critical to the future of all CIOs, the report said.

“The influence of the CIO should trickle down through the organization and pervade other levels,” according to the report. “‘Bonding at the top’” only works if it finds echoes below. This starts within the IT steering committee and in all management meetings.”

Although the sample size of 25 Canadian CIO responses was small compared to the overall rate of more than 2,000 glob-ally, the results indicated that Canadian IT executives were more tightly linked to business strategy, said Sébastien Blais, partner with the Technology Strategy & Architecture consult-ing practice of Deloitte Inc.

“In terms of Canadian re-sults, we see much more of the CIO as peer, whereas globally they’re more likely reporting to

the COO and CFO,” he said. “I don’t think it is a matter of (or-ganizational) size. It’s a reflec-tion of what we saw as a little bit more of a maturity in terms of IT management practices.”

In some cases the CIO’s position within the organiza-tion can be influenced by the industry within which they are employed. According to the survey CIOs were most likely a peer in three out of five finan-cial services organizations, the highest level of peer connec-tion, whereas real estate and manufacturing CIOs were less likely to have a seat at the table.

Blais said Canadian CIOs also reported more satisfaction with their outsourcing agree-ments. This could be because they update their service level agreements more often than their global counterparts.

“We don’t consider (out-sourcing) as a silver bullet,” he said. “It’s not a bunch of wish-ful strategies we put in place just to reduce our costs.”

One area of concern the report highlighted was “demand man-agement” – in other words, how well CIOs can keep up with all the requests from the business that are thrown at them every day.

“Articulated with a clear cost-ing and chargeback mechanism, demand management is a key ‘interfacing’ process,” the report said. “Interestingly, good IT demand management seems to open business doors to IT: in companies where IT demand management is highly mature, IT also plays a larger part in the defi-nition of the business strategy.”

—Shane Schick

Sebastien Blais, partner with Deloitte’s Technology Strategy and Architecture practice

IT departments shoulder ample responsibility in order to keep a business running,

not to mention the occasional fire they must put out. But how do some teams manage to stay content and fresh, ready to battle yet another set of chal-lenges a new day brings?

One IT pro and his team do precisely that with a variety of group activities that involve exercising, eating and generally being social. Paul Hurst, the network administrator for the City of Airdrie in Alberta, said an open concept office certainly helps de-stress everyone who works there.

Tear down those walls. “It’s very much that there are no doors closed,” said Hurst. The usual lack of interaction and col-laboration issues affecting most workplaces don’t exist with the City of Airdrie’s IT team of 15. The work environment, although professional, still allows every-one to get to know each other on a personal level. And that, in turn, fosters caring, said Hurst.

Group sport. City of Aird-rie’s IT team takes full advan-tage of a recreational centre in close proximity to the office. Lunch time basketball tourna-ments are a weekly occurrence and build team spirit besides just being plain fun. Team mem-bers also stay fit by working out together at the centre’s gym.

“Everyone experiences (stress) on one level or another and I think it’s something that, if you’re not aware that you’re stressed, others will see it,” said Hurst.

Social eating. Food is the glue that binds people, and the City of Airdrie’s IT team is no stranger to team-organized eating fests. The group arranges potluck lunches every couple of months. “Have fun, remember to laugh,” said Hurst. Part of what also helps keep his IT team de-stressed is fostering a good relationship with the entire organization of 300 staff by

extending some of those team-building activities beyond the IT department.

Build a good relationship with the business. For the City of Airdrie, the IT budget isn’t just for buying and main-taining software and hardware; part of IT spend gets allocated toward an annual hot breakfast of eggs, pancakes and sausages for everyone in the company. The goal here is to move away from the unfortunate portrayal of IT departments as “the big meanie” to whom users only speak when there is an issue to be resolved, said Hurst.

“IT is always seen as that department that you only go to for problems,” he said. “They never really see us a department to interact with on a social or personal level.”

Work/Life harmony. While the City of Airdrie’s IT team fol-lows the regular operating hours of the City, Hurst said IT staff is encouraged to take the time out to deal with personal crises before returning to the office. At the Ontario Lottery and Gaming (OLG) Corp., such de-stressing activities are bundled into a “monthly IT celebration.” The goal of this regular 30-minute bash, organized and hosted by different IT staff every time, is to celebrate birthdays, welcome new staff and engage in net-working, said Fariba Anderson, vice-president for Lottery IT at the Toronto-based organization.

“I think it builds a sense of community. It’s important to talk to people about something outside of projects and work,” said Anderson.

With a large IT department that numbers 400 people split across three offices, Anderson said each location has its own celebration.

The OLG’s IT department also has casual days and silent auc-tions for charities. “It’s a lot of fun,” said Anderson.

—Kathleen Lau

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10 cio canada MAY 2011 w w w . I T w o r l d c a n a d a . c o m

ICTC identifies skills gapThere will be a labour and

skills shortage in the infor-mation and communications

technology (ICT) field within the next five years, creating a need for more ICT professionals and thus a need for more people to study ICT at the post secondary level, according to a report by the Ottawa-based technology and communications councils Infor-mation Technology Asssociation of Canada (ITAC) and Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC).

“There’s a mismatch between education and (what) employ-ers (want),” said John O’Grady, a partner at Prism Econom-ics and Analysis, who also authored the report.

About 106,000 jobs will open up by 2016 especially for highly qualified ICT professionals such as computer and information systems, telecommunications and broadcast managers. There is a lack of skilled ICT workers to fill these jobs because not enough young people are going into ICT at post-secondary institutions and the ICT job requirements are quickly chang-ing, according to the report.

There are numerous solutions to combat the lack of qualified candidates in the ICT sector. One of those solutions is to encourage education in math and sciences for youth and to persuade them to pursue careers in ICT, said Terry Power, chair of the ICTC labour market intel-ligence committee.

At the post-secondary level, it is important for colleges and universities to offer blended programs with a mix of both college practical courses and

university theoretical-style courses to ensure graduates can apply what they learn at school in the working world. It is also important for these programs to offer co-ops and internships in collaboration with businesses. Businesses can do their part by hiring students, Power said.

Businesses are looking for new hires to be knowledgeable in cloud computing, virtualization, service-oriented architecture and legacy applications. However, there are a lot of partially quali-fied people, so it is important for businesses to compromise on hiring someone who is not en-tirely qualified and helping them develop the needed skills for an ICT job, according to Power.

Since there are not enough qualified candidates in Canada, businesses are outsourcing to other countries. Outsourcing will grow about five per cent each year, O’Grady said.

The problem with outsourc-

ing, aside from taking the jobs away from Canadians, is that foreign workers do not have necessary French and English skills necessary for work in ICT at Canadian companies, ac-cording to Paul Swinwood, the president and chief information officer at ICTC.

Another problem within the ICT industry is the lack of women and diversity in busi-nesses across the nation in these positions. Young women will be encouraged to go into ICT if they are able to see examples of successful women already work-ing in these types of positions, according to Power.

In cities like Toronto, diver-sity is not much of an issue when it comes to hiring for ICT jobs. However, this is not the case everywhere or for every group of people. “From a first nation’s perspective, it’s still there,” Power said.

—Selena Mann

It’s the little death in phone related tech support. When you hear the “our call volume

is higher than normal” mes-sage on a tech support line, it’s difficult for end users to not let the frustration get to them. According to a recent survey of chief information officers (CIOs) in Canada, that problem is not getting better fast enough.

In the survey, commissioned by Robert Half Technology, a provider of IT professionals in Canada, more than 270 CIOs for Canadian companies acknowl-edged a 38 per cent disparity between what they felt was the ideal amount of technical sup-port staff and the amount they were working with.

This means that the average amount of end users per techni-cal support staff is 85 to one. The ideal, according to CIOs, is 53 to one.

According to Lara Dodo, Cana-dian regional vice-president of Robert Half Technology “under-

staffing in the IT support depart-ment can result in a frustrated and less productive workforce,” says Dodo. “(This) may ultimate-ly have a negative impact to the company’s profitability.”

If that logic is sound, it means that companies who cannot reach the ideal ratio of support staff to end user are at risk of undermin-ing the morale of that staff, frus-trating end users and actually reducing bottom line profit.

Independent technology analyst Carmi Levy thinks the survey itself might stem from an outdated way of thinking. “Old-style IT loves to throw bodies at a problem. Indeed, even the methodology for this survey is somewhat questionable because it uses a straight ratio of end-users to technical support employees,” says Levy.

So, if hiring isn’t the only so-lution, what else can you do? If you ask Levy, he’ll say that “ser-vice management frameworks like ITIL, self-service portals

and centralized monitoring can all be leveraged to reduce the load of inbound requests.”

This means, essentially, a combination of streamlining IT practices to reduce wasted time and diverting a portion of tech support callers to self-service routes. Apple, for example, has an incredibly deep support forum to direct users towards

before booking time with a Genius.

It’s also important to under-stand where the answers to the survey come from. According to Levy, “CIOs will always want more than they have. You main-tain your position at the top of the corporate IT food chain by striv-ing to control more resources.”

—James Speedy

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12 cio canada MAY 2011 I T W o r l d C a n a d a . c o m

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The Greater Toronto Market-ing Alliance feted co-founder George Fierheller,

a Canadian ICT veteran and tireless charity fundraiser, at a gala at Toronto’s Four Seasons Hotel last month.

Plaudits came from friends, colleagues, politicians and na-tional figures for “the man who can’t say no,” so-called for his willingness to take up any chari-table cause put before him.

Fierhellen joined IBM Can-ada Co. in 1955, left to found computing services company Systems Dimensions Ltd. in 1968, then moved to Vancou-ver in 1979 to create Premier Cablesystems Inc. In 1980, Premier merged with Rogers Cablesystems Inc. Fierheller spearheaded the drive for cel-lular radio spectrum licences for what would become Rogers Cantel Inc. in 1983.

“One of the few businesses he didn’t bring to the west was the CPR,” joked Frank Scarpitti, mayor of Markham, Ont.

Markham, Fierheller’s family home, will name a street, Fier-heller Way, after him, Scarpitti announced.

“Truly, I don’t know why we’re having a tribute to George,” said GTMA chair and CEO Lou Milrad, noting Fierhaeller is the author of six autobiographical books. “He

does his own PR.” (The forward to one book, said Milrad, quotes Winston Churchill: “History shall be kind to me, for I shall write it.”)

Videotaped tributes came from Dr. Barry McLellan, president and CEO of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Anne Golden, presi-dent and CEO of the Conference Board of Canada, and Chaviva Hosek, president and CEO of the Cana-dian Institutefor Advanced Research, all of whom have worked with Fier-heller in his chari-table capacities.

Hosek called him “incedibly intellec-tual and very broadly curious” about every-thing from economics to the origins of the universe, “fearless” in pursuit of causes he believes in.

“He knows abso-lutely everybody and he never talks about it,” unless someone needs an introduc-tion, she said.

Golden added a tale about Fier-

A salute to ‘the man who can’t say no’

heller’s self-deprecatory sense of humour from when the two worked on the board of the United Way. Fierstein was at the time Rogers executive, and the company was embroiled in a very public backlash over its practice of upgrading cable customer packages, and their costs, without consulting them. At a United Way meeting, Fierhellen annonced he had an idea for increasing donations: negative-option billing.

Fawn Annan, president of IT World Canada, presented Fier-hellen with the first Comput-erWorld Canada IT Leadership Award for Lifetime Achieve-ment at the gala.

“I’m honoured to be so hon-oured,” Fierhellen said, accept-ing the award.

“I don’t recall hearing so many nice things said about me. So many, I thought I’d

died,” he joked, before promis-ing many more years of “The Fundraiser’s Handshake” – extended palm-up.

“We forget how lucky we are to live in a city region like this,” pointing to goegraphic and political stability, access to great agricultural land and huge bodies of fresh water, and being Canada’s centre of culture.

“We can’t take that for granted,” he said.

Fierhellen has held senior board positions with the Cana-dian Information Processing Society, Information Technol-ogy Association of Canada, the United Way (in Ottawa, Vancouver and Toronto), and numerous universities, hos-pitals, arts foundations and social organizations. His exten-sive charitable resume can be found here.

—Dave Webb

IT World Canada president and group publisher Fawn Annan presents Fierheller with the first ComputerWorld Canada IT Leadership Award for Lifetime Achievement.

cio canada MAY 2011 I T W o r l d C a n a d a . c o m 13

trendlines

Laurier offers Masters of Science for IT execsCanadian senior IT execu-

tives will be among the candidates considered

for the first participants in a Master’s degree program in technology management launched by the Laurier School of Business and Economics.

The Executive Masters in Technology Management (EMTM) began accepting ap-plications earlier this month and classes will formally begin in September. Though there will be some online compo-nents, most of the classes will take place live on campus at Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., on alternate weekends.

Core curricula for the

EMTM will consist of three modules: strategic and technol-ogy “roadmapping,” building innovative organizational capacities and fostering orga-nizational renewal.

According to Dr. Hamid Noori, director and chair pro-fessor of the Laurier EMTM, those who enrol in the program will most likely be C-level man-agers at the director-plus level who are the up-and-coming leaders in their organizations.

“When you get into of this program, you are subjected to many of the topics you need to know as a leader to run a fast-moving company,” he said, adding that CIOs may not be the only managers to benefit

from the EMTM. “Although we will have people from R&D and engineering groups, this is not only for individuals who are developing technologies. They’re coming from marketing and finance areas, too.”

Courses are spread over the full year, Noori explained, which means that students (or “learn-ers,” as he prefers to call them) may touch upon innovation, roadmapping and sustainability at different points of the 11-month program. At the end of each term, an integrated session will pull together what they learned.

“We’re hoping to start with about 15 (people), partially be-cause the program is new and to make sure we do it right,” he says. “We’ll be able to address any pos-sible issues, which is easier with a smaller cohort.”

Although Ryerson University and other schools have graduate programs in technology manage-ment, Noori said Laurier may be the first in Canada to offer a

Masters of Science in this area. “But we don’t want to scare off the audience to think they need math-ematics,” he added. “It is focused on practical issues of how to build an innovative organization.”

Noori is actively recruiting instructors for the program, who he said may come from a variety of disciplines.

“Some could come from consult-ing companies – we might do something on intellectual property that would be run by a lawyer, for example, who will have the exper-tise in this area. Others might be experts in mergers and acquisi-tions,” he said. “We want a blend of expertise, skills and knowledge from the outside world.”

The EMTM will cost $65,000 and applications need to submit their academic transcripts, a resume, references and a 10 to 20-page writing sample that could be related to their job, such as a project proposal.

—Shane Schick

IT management via QuoraT he funny thing about

Quora is that it doesn’t seem to offer itself up as

a topic to follow, even though its potential success has raised more questions than anything else on the site so far.

For the uninitiated, Quora describes itself as “a continu-ally improving collection of questions and answers cre-ated, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.” Think Yahoo! Answers with social media street cred. Although the hype around the service seems to have started just before the new year and hasn’t let up since, it’s really hard to bear predictions that this will be the new Twitter. I’m not go-ing to be using some Quora-Deck service to continually monitor the questions relating to topics that interest me, pose questions or answer them all day long. Instead, Quora

strikes me as a more efficient response to Wikipedia – who wants to write a Wikipedia entry when you can just get to the gist of what you’re looking to find out on Quora?

There is no doubt some IT departments will find Quora useful as a resource for sharing common kinds of troubleshoot-ing information, or perhaps, as the blog ReadWriteWeb suggested recently, crowdsource various reviews of enterprise

software. Quora could, in some ways, become a new sort of aggregated customer support line for IT managers, bringing

in answers to questions not only from the manufacturer itself but other users and even (most devilishly) competitors who prove through their responses that a migration is in order.

If its growth is even a fraction of what people are expecting it, IT managers may also find Quora a good place to create a different kind of relationship with their end users, who will no doubt be using the site for such questions as “What’s a good way to do an end-run around my corporate IT department, who doesn’t want me to connect my Verizon iPhone to the network?” Rather than leave it to the whole world to encourage deviation

from IT policy, technology pro-fessionals can also use Quora as a way to establish their authority and expertise, give clear and balanced reasons for the kinds of decisions they make and potentially, depend-ing on the kinds of questions they help answer, demonstrate a growing knowledge and un-derstanding of vertical-specific business issues.

Top-notch CIOs even take it a step further, tapping into Quora to ask, the next time a new consumer device takes the world by storm, what kind of business purposes early adopters see for it in the enterprise, and prepare ac-cordingly. They might provide answers on the best apps that provide a valuable user experience. Or they could test their annual user satisfaction survey before submitting it to actual employees. I don’t know whether any IT departments will actually do any of these things, mind you. That’s prob-ably a question for Quora.

—Shane Schick

Quora allows users to create a profile, add topics of interest and then either ask or answer burning questions.

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cover story

FROM CIO TOMark Roman managed major IT transformation at the University of Victoria, but those projects are nothing compared to his plans for CANARIE By Shane Schick

cio canada MAY 2011 w w w. I Tw o r l d c an ad a .c o m 15

In April, the University of Victoria’s CIO was an-nounced as the new CEO of the Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Investment and Educa-tion, otherwise known as CANARIE. By taking on the role, Roman will be leading an organization that has become the backbone for nearly 40,000 researchers and dozens of hospitals, government labs, schools and cultural institutions. He will also become one of the rare examples of CIOs moving in a career trajectory that takes them out of the data centre and puts them at the forefront of business strategy. Where many CIOs move on to similar roles elsewhere, or end up as con-sultants or working for the vendors they once managed, Roman will help prove that Canadian CIOs are capable of almost anything.

“I would say it’s always something I worked towards,” he says. He tried to further his prospects by earning his MBA from Queen’s University in the 1980s, “but there are many ways that working as a CIO build you towards senior management. You’re always trying to work with people and tap into the goals, strategies and passion for

Mark Roman is replacing an “I” with an “E” to lead an organization that starts with “C,” but the

story of how he got there – and what he’ll do next – is a lot more complex than that.

an organization. The CIO’s role is about understanding the impact of IT in the mission. A CEO’s role is about creating the strategic vision and developing the capabil-ity to implement it, which often involves IT.”

Roman’s IT credentials are pretty hard to question. In his time at UVic, he managed to oversee the successful implementation of a $20-million enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and the construction of $7-mil-lion green data centre, consolidated the e-mail platforms and launched a portal that lets professors and students share course material. This work made him a finalist in last year’s inaugural ComputerWorld Canada IT Leader of the Year awards.

When he wasn’t involved in projects that helped support the overall performance of the school, Roman was also helping with the more innovative work of its researchers that tied into CANARIE. Five years ago, UVic helped lead a project that established two undersea observatories, the North-East Pacific Time-series Un-dersea Network Experiments (NEPTUNE), and the Vic-toria Experimental Network Under the Sea, or VENUS. Located off the outer coast of B.C. and the Saanich Inlet near Victoria, respectively, NEPTUNE and VENUS use the Internet to pass information about the ocean, includ-ing seismic activity, seafloor ecology and animal move-ments, back to laboratories. CANARIE invested more than $2 million in funding for NEPTUNE and VENUS, part of which went towards software systems to support machine-to-machine interaction over the network and to manage the large volumes of data collected. CANARIE noted Roman’s leadership in enabling the infrastructure behind NEPTUNE and VENUS in its public announce-ment of his appointment as CEO.

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cover story

“There was a lot I was doing at the university from a technology perspective to get us back on track to sup-port our core function of teaching and learning, but I got pulled in and become more and more fascinated by the research side and the role that CANARIE plays in Canada,” he says. “NEPTUNE and VENUS are just really on the periphery of some really groundbreaking science.”

THE SEARCH IS ON In February, CANARIE said that Guy Bujold, who had been its president since 2008, was stepping down for personal reasons. Jim Roche, chair of CANARIE’s board became interim president and CEO while Mark Whit-more, past-chair of CANARIE’s board and dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Manitoba, became chair, as a search committee was formed.

Although a recruiter was engaged, Whitmore admit-ted that the hiring process was somewhat daunting.

“For this role, we really needed someone who will command the credibility and respect of three really diverse kinds of constituencies – the academic side, the private sector side, and then the government side, including our funding partners like Industry Canada,” he says, adding that academia has several sub-constitu-encies of its own.

The search committee met with a number of candidates from the private, academic and NGO sectors, Whitmore said, before settling on Roman, who went through days of interviews before he was finally selected.

“We wanted someone with the technical credentials, plus the ability to manage and lead a corporation, to be the person in charge of the financial, administrative, technical details and overall visioning. The sort of guy who knows how to put together the team to do that,” he says, “and I’m just delighted we found the right guy.”

A NEW CAREER PATH?Other CIOs may be interested in following in Roman’s footsteps, based on research conducted two years ago by the CIO Association of Canada (CIOCAN) and Ryer-son University. Titled “CIO To CEO: What It Takes to Make The Leap,” the study interviewed chief informa-tion officers who had successfully climbed to the top of the corporate ladder and identified 10 key factors that

contributed to the career progression of IT executives. These included the ability to build relationships, strong IT governance and whether or not the CIO had a mentor.

Catherine Koop, the report’s co-author, who sits on CIOCAN’s National Advocacy Committee, says those she interviewed deliberately orchestrated or choreographed their careers so they could take on broader roles in their organization. This combination of being good at the CIO basics but having more business savvy also helped give them the edge they needed, she says.

“Once you get more actively engaged in the business side, you start to see the organization differently,” she says. “You see it through the same vantage point that the CEO would.”

Doug Weir, a managing director at search firm Boyden who has occasionally been referred to as “Canada’s CIO recruiter,” says some of the candidates he talks to have the aspirations to be CEOs, but it depends a lot on the individual and the kind of organizations they join. There are reasons, however, that such a career path might make sense.

“I think that communication skills are a critical part,” he says. “The CIO is like the CEO – they should be exter-nally focused, talking to a variety of stakeholders at all levels and across all functions. If you don’t think about your message and how you’re going to deliver it, you won’t be effective in either capacity.”

The path is not always linear, however. Koop says those CIOs who take personal ownership for working towards a CEO job sometimes moved from managing technology to a more business-oriented position first. No matter how they fill out their resumes, however, they were partnering more closely with the business side to understand key deliverables and advancing their education.

“Some industries are more favourable to this migra-tion of others,” she adds. “If they have some level of reliance on IT to strategically position for the future, or where the CIO could leverage their technology strength and background to driving an organization, that often seems to make sense.” This was the case with CANARIE, where Whitmore said Roman’s IT credentials were a fac-tor in his appointment.

Weir agrees. “Most of the searches I do now – and

cio canada MAY 2011 I T W o r l d C a n a d a . c o m 17

WHY YOUR NEGATIVE OUTLOOK IS KILLING YOUR CAREERAll of us cynical, sardonic, too-smart-for-our-own-and-everyone-else’s-good IT professionals who think we can get ahead in our careers based purely on our blazing intellects will surely question the following stat: Only 25 percent of job success stems from intelligence and technical skills, according to research conducted in the field of emotional intelligence.

“Intelligence does predict some success, but it doesn’t predict even the majority of it,” says corporate strategy consultant Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology that Fuel Success and Performance at Work (Crown Business 2010).

So in the spirit of spoiling a sour mood, here are Achor’s five tips.

1. PRACTICE GRATEFULNESS. Every morning for 21 days, write down three things for which you are grateful. The list needs to be different every day. Achor had 200 tax audit managers at KPMG do this during the 2009 tax season, which was expected to be the worst tax season on record. After 21 days, Achor measured their emotional outlook using various psychological assessment tools and found that their levels of optimism rose.2. BE SOCIAL. Achor says that when he’s researched happiness inside companies, he’s found that the greatest predictor of happiness and success during a challenging time is one’s social support network. Meanwhile, the people who are the most productive or optimistic in organizations increase their “social investment”—the amount they invest in their social support network—when they get stressed, notes Achor. 3. PRAISE OTHERS. While consulting at Adobe, Achor encouraged the senior leadership team to write one positive e-mail each morning for 21 days when they opened their inboxes, praising or thanking someone for good work. 4. APPLY THE 20 SECOND RULE. To break a bad habit, add 20 seconds to the time it takes to engage in that bad habit. For example, if your bad habit is checking news sites or stock quotes instead of starting your work, make it more time consuming for you to access those sites by removing those sites from your browser bookmarks or by deleting your saved passwords to those sites, says Achor.5. SET SMALL GOALS. Goals that are too big paralyze you. They literally shut off your brain, says Achor. Breaking a big goal into smaller, more achievable goals prevents the fear part of your brain from hijacking your thinking cap and gives you victories.

“When you see you’ve been successful, your brain believes your action matters,” adds Achor.

—CIO (US)

there’s one in progress at the moment where this is certainly true – there’s a big emphasis on the business capability, a strong desire for industry experience,” he says. “I would argue you want the right ability more than the right experience, but organizations almost always err in favour of experience. I think that’s just human nature.”

READY, SET, GO!Experience may be seen as paramount because once CIOs take the reigns, they have to focus on a much larger set of priorities. Roman has some fairly major targets for his first year on the job.

“The big area is the renewal of our man-date,” he says. ‘‘We need to ensure our pro-duction operations are at the performance levels that are required by all our users. We also need to continue to focus on innovation and leading digital acceleration.”

Like any CEO, of course, beyond the vi-sion lies the bottom line, and Roman will be spending a lot of time on that, too. Because CANARIE is publicly funded, the organiza-tion will be making a fresh application to In-dustry Canada to ensure it has the resources to do its work.

“The funding is in five-year tranches,” Whitmore explains. “The decision point is the next federal budget in March of 2012. The No. 1 absolute strategic priority is to refine the vision of what we want to be and do for the next couple of years.”

Roman has already started thinking through these questions.

“We really see CANARIE as Canadas in-novation engine,” he says. “We can help boost productivity and enable new startups. We should be creating the next RIM, the next Nortel. If we’re successful, CANARIE is really about helping make Canada a better place for Canadians.”

Spoken like a true CEO.

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insight

When unexpected forces disrupt your industry or business model, technology can give you a way to improve decision-making. How Indigo Books & Music does it By Vawn Himmelsbach

ACHIEVE ANALYTICS EXCELLENCE

cio canada MAY 2011 I T W o r l d C a n a d a . c o m 19

Having a “big enough market insight” and being able to move to a different place because of recognizing a change in the mar-ketplace can be a game-changer. Toyota did this with its Lexus brand. The insight was the rec-ognition of a growing affluence (aka yuppies) that would create a whole new demand for luxury from a class that had never expe-rienced luxury before.

Perhaps Indigo Books & Music, Canada’s largest book retailer, has discovered its own “big enough market insight.” The book business is under threat, said Sumit Oberai, CIO of Indigo Canada. Book sales in general are going down, so it’s vital to replace that business with other product categories.

“We think there is an oppor-tunity to leverage analytics,” he said. “Indigo is changing, it needs to change. We want to help bring our customers along with that change.” Indigo spun out Kobo, its e-book division. It’s enter-ing new product categories and evolving store assortments. And it recently launched a new customer loyalty program, called PLUM, which allows customers to collect points on purchases (and targets customers who don’t want to pay an annual program fee).

While Indigo faces a changing

market, it has other challenges, such as the sheer volume of data it has to deal with. The book retailer has 30,000 to 50,000 SKUs in a single store, 3 million SKUs in its catalogue and mil-lions of customers.

A few years ago Indigo deployed SAS as part of an ini-tiative to drive better customer engagement with the brand. They rolled their online and in-store channels into one to gain a single view of the customer. And they started building models for customer relation-ship management, to recommend books to customers based on previous purchases.

Analytics help them deter-mine what to feature in-store, what to return to the publisher and how to manage markdowns to get a profit out of a declin-ing profit line, as well as what future investments to make in non-book areas. The challenge with the data, however, is that books and toys are often bought as gifts. “If I bought a book on knitting for my mother, that doesn’t mean I want a bunch of recommendations on knitting books,” said Oberai.

That’s still a challenge, as is

the sheer volume of data they have to deal with. But overall, they have a clear ROI path. “Unlike other technology invest-ments, it’s one of the easiest things to measure,” he said. For example, they can send out a highly targeted email to certain customers, and a general email

with discounts for the top best sellers to oth-ers. “We found spend is higher in highly targeted emails,” he said. “It gives us a direct measureable return, but it also gives us softer advantages.” This includes hap-pier customers (they

use Net Promoter to measure customer satisfaction).

Many companies, however, are resting on their laurels or continuing to do business the way they’ve always done business — and missing out on that “big enough market insight.” Over the past year, the media has picked up on this trend. InfoWorld stat-ed: “Microsoft is becoming your grandma’s computer company.” And Fortune magazine asked: “Is Google over?”

“Ninety-nine per cent of [Google’s] business comes from search,” said Jim Davis, senior vice-president and chief market-

hat has made your company successful throughout its history probably won’t make it successful

going forward. All too often, companies sit on their laurels and don’t

see change coming. Take Nokia. Ten years ago, the company owned the handset market. Today? Well, how many people do you know have Nokia phones?

ing officer with SAS, during SAS Global Forum in Las Vegas last month. “Search isn’t where it’s at today. It’s an important com-ponent, but it’s not what’s going to take them forward.” When it comes to display advertising revenue, Google has 2.4 per cent market share. Facebook, on the other hand, has 16 per cent.

In March, The Wall Street Journal ran an article about RIM, stating: “It should be evident by now that a corporate tragedy is underway … Perhaps the company should be called Research in Slow Motion.” Compare RIM’s Playbook, which doesn’t have cellular capabilities in its first iteration, to Apple’s iPad 2, said Davis. The magnetic cover for the iPad — a simple accessory — is expected to net Apple US$770 million in the next 12 months. Companies that we thought had it all, such as RIM, now have to rethink strat-egy and retool product.

In yet another magazine article, Newsweek talked about the concept of “brain freeze” and how the deluge of information paralyzes our ability to make good decisions. “We’re data obese now,” said Davis. “The more data you throw at a person, the more they lock up, and that’s what’s happening in a lot of companies.” And this is paralyzing business processes. Time passes as we wait to see what’s real and what’s not — and we often miss an op-portunity.

By 2013, 33 per cent of busi-ness intelligence functionality

Indigo Books & Music’s Oberaid

20 cio canada MAY 2011 I T W o r l d C a n a d a . c o m

Everyone is looking for that magic bullet. If you can use analytics to make your front-line people just a little more attuned, a little more aware of how they impact customer experience, that is astounding. You won’t need a silver bullet.

will be consumed via handheld devices, according to research firm Gartner. And 15 per cent of BI deployments will combine BI, collaboration and social software into decision-making environ-ments. But not all companies take social media seriously.

SAS worked with Harvard Business Review to ask 2,100 companies worldwide if social media was important to their future, and 69 per cent of respon-dents said the use of social media by their organization will grow significantly. But 60 per cent said their organization has a signifi-cant learning curve to overcome, and 50 per cent said that until they can measure social media it would not be taken seriously.

If you’re in the business of ser-vicing a customer base, then it’s critical to monitor what’s going on out there in social media and be responsive by dealing with negative sentiment, said Davis.

At the conference, SAS an-nounced Conversation Center, a tool that monitors Twitter feeds and the blogosphere in real time, allowing companies to not only measure sentiment, but also to take action on it. The idea is to help companies protect their brand, engage the most influential voices in the market, enhance market research, un-derstand the impact of industry trends, gather competitive intelligence and create a better customer experience.

This is where BI needs to go, said Davis. Companies need to improve the flow and flexibility of data, get the right technology in place and demand fact-based decisions, but they also need to get the right talent, transform the culture and continually revise their strategies. “You may have developed something brilliant but people will catch up quicker than you think,” he said.

No doubt, vendors such as Microsoft, Google and RIM have tools in place to measure perfor-mance. But the tools alone aren’t going to solve the problem,

said Davis. It’s about creating a culture that is innovative. The ideal scenario is a CIO who understands the importance of fact-based decision-making, but in many cases they may have to begin from a grassroots level and change a process that’s been around for years.

Charlene Li, author of Open Leadership and founder of Altimeter Group, a research-based advisory firm that helps companies leverage disruption, said Dell is a good example of a company with a transformative culture. “Back in 2005, remem-ber Dell Hell?” she said during SAS Global Forum. At the time, Dell was suffering from poor customer service and techni-cal issues — remember those exploding laptops?

But they started to use data to transform the culture of the organization, to see what needed to be fixed and to set up a centre of excellence to monitor customer feedback. CEO Michael Dell set

the direction on how quickly customer issues needed to be addressed. Now they’re looking at tweets and Facebook mentions and responding to those in real time. “See how long it takes for Dell to get back to you,” said Li. “Definitely within 24 hours.”

And this is changing the role of the IT leader, who is truly be-coming a business partner with marketing and sales. But one of the biggest challenges, said Li, is trying to create perfect analyt-ics. “So many organizations get hung up on a master data set, but there’s only so much time,” she said. “Strategize on the most impactful business decisions.”

Because t any given time, customers are on your website, reading customer reviews to better inform buying decisions, shopping in your store using a mobile device to ensure they aren’t overpaying for anything, or telling their friends on social media what they think about your brand. They expect a near-instantaneous ability to find what they’re looking for; if not, they’re only a click away to your competitors. So companies have to rethink how they interact with customers to meet new expectations.

To measure success, start by asking what kind of relationship you want with the customer, said Li, and the answer will tell you what you need to be measuring. Often companies see their cus-tomers in terms of a transaction, she said, but that commoditizes your value proposition. Under-standing customer behaviour can be achieved by structuring your approach to data gathering.

“Everyone is looking for that magic bullet,” she said. “But if you can use analytics to make your front-line people just a little more attuned, a little more aware of how they can impact the customer experience, that is astounding. You won’t need a magic bullet.”

Paul Nunes, executive director of research for Accenture’s Insti-

tute for High Performance, says it’s important to recognize that businesses have lifecycles — they start small, become successful, hit their peak and reinvent.

Zenith, for example, invented the car radio and the TV remote. And Zenith Data Systems was, at one time, the No. 2 maker of IBM-compatible PCs. What happened? The company wound up expand-ing production, but underesti-mated the Japanese threat. And management had an inability to let go, so they sold off the data systems business and went back to TVs. By that time it was too late and they sold off to LG.

Of companies that see their revenues peak, only seven per cent are ever able to recover to see normal revenue growth, said Nunes. Company life spans are growing shorter; now it’s down to about 10 years. Global competition is intensifying. And technology continues to evolve as consumer tastes continue to change, which hastens the need for reinvention.

And there are all sorts of disruptive market forces, includ-ing mobility, digital marketing, cloud computing, consumers in emerging markets, sustainability and smart infrastructure solu-tions — to name a few. “What insight is driving the business? How can we use analytics to convince folks of the trends that we’re seeing?” said Nunes. It’s not just about knowing what customers want, but knowing exactly what they want, and only entering the market once you can deliver on those thresholds.

Create a hothouse of talent, said Nunes, and establish hotbed conditions to create a surplus of talent. Hire for long-term fit, not short-term needs, he said. Give people assignments rather than jobs, and cultivate hardiness through variety. When companies focus on culture they seek to create a consistent mindset (at P&G they’re called Proctoids). Rec-ognize the need to break that,

insight

cio canada MAY 2011 I T W o r l d C a n a d a . c o m 21

CIOS INVESTING IN ANALYTICS

because you’re susceptible if the company becomes too insular. Get out there with real people to really understand the customer.

Many Canadian companies, however, are still struggling with strategy around their use of analytics. Bryan Robertson, senior analyst with OpenRoad, a Web application development company, works with clients to establish key performance indicators — and continued optimization of those KPIs.

“The tools produce a lot of data and you can easily get lost in that data and not get anywhere with it,” he said. “You need to be laser-focused in terms of what metrics you choose to look at and making sure they’re tied to strategy and they’re actionable.”

But the only way it’s going to work is if management has a clear strategy in terms of what it’s trying to measure and IT has a sound implementation strategy to get that data. “You can have a great strategy and a really good performance management measurement perspective, but I’ve seen several clients fall down on implementation,” said Robertson. “It’s going to work best when the organization is working closely together.”

As part of the measurement definition, however, companies have to decide who owns each metric. “It’s critical someone owns each one of these metrics,” he said. “That person is on the hook for acting on it.”

Some organizations still fear measurement, so this involves a cultural shift. No one should be fired for a metric that performs poorly, said Robertson. Someone should be fired, however, for fail-ing to act on that underperform-ing metric. “People are leery of stepping up toward a target, so it’s a bit of a balancing act be-cause you need people to be mo-tivated by the numbers, but you don’t want them to be paralyzed by the numbers,” he said.

Most leaders are skilled at

making decisions based on financial data, said Robertson. Traditionally executives who got involved in operational decisions were forced to make decisions based more on gut feel than available data and analysis. Over the years more analysis tools and processing power have become available and afforded more data-driven decision-making. The potential for the use of data to make decisions now exists in almost all areas of the business.

“The challenge for leaders more experienced with — or with a preference for — gut-based decision-making is to seek data and adjust decision-making processes accordingly,” he said. “The challenge for rank-and-file analysts is to stop talking gobbledygook and use data to tell stories to executives with financial outcomes.”

Thomas Davenport, author of Competing on Analytics, found that companies that are data-driven are seven per cent more profitable than those that are not. And new research from Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Manage-ment, found that analytically driven companies are five to six per cent more productive.

In a panel at SAS Global Fo-rum, Davenport said that IT can be a barrier, so IT and business analytic teams need to be joined at the hip. The best companies overlap in skills between IT and business analytics. “If the rela-tionships between the groups are bad, it will hold you back.”

He advised companies to prioritize data analysis projects and not try to tackle everything at once. Are you focused on customer attrition? Increased loyalty? Targeted promotions? “You can’t do it all. Trying to do everything can result in no real impact anywhere,” he said. And if you’re just generating insights, but not acting on them, it’s going to be hard to get any value from analytics.

Global spending on BI (business intelligence), analytics and performance management applications jumped 13.4 percent in 2010 to US$10.5 billion, according to figures released recently by analyst firm Gartner. The results reflect the BI market’s continued strength throughout the world’s economic downturn, as customers looked to such software to find efficiencies and gain competitive advantage.

Although enterprise software spending dropped 2.5 percent in 2009, during the height of the global recession, BI sales grew “in the low single digits,” Gartner analyst Dan Sommer said via e-mail. While customer demand played a role, aggressive marketing efforts of BI vendors were also influential, according to Gartner.

BI remains dominated by a handful of major players. SAP, IBM, Oracle and Microsoft alone control 59 percent of the market for BI and performance management software, according to Gartner, while SAS Institute holds the top spot for analytics.

While not able to provide specific percentages, Sommer estimated that “a fairly big portion” of new BI revenue came from existing users adding licenses, versus brand-new projects.

“But overall we did see a shift from ‘maintenance’ to ‘license’ and from ‘build’ to ‘buy,’” he added. “In 2009, most vendors found it challenging to sell new licenses, as discretionary spending in IT budgets was frozen. As a result, vendors came up with increasingly creative strategies to squeeze maintenance revenue out of their customers.”

Last year, improved economic conditions and some major product releases from IBM, Oracle and others “drove renewed license selling efforts and released pent-up demand,” Sommer said.

BI revenues could only grow further in coming years, as vendors pursue strategies meant to get the software into more users’ hands.

Recently, Microstrategy followed other companies in announcing a product that enables “self-service” BI, wherein business users can explore and analyze data on their own, without much help from IT staffers.

BI vendors such as SAS are also moving quickly to add support for mobile devices like Apple’s iPad and Android tablets.

Forrester Research recently predicted that the rise of tablets will significantly increase the prevalence of mobile BI since their larger screens are more suitable for the types of visualizations and navigation styles that make BI software most useful.

—IDG News Service

22 cio canada MAY 2011 I T W o r l d C a n a d a . c o m

excerpt

Back in the days of the agri-cultural era, multigenera-

tional families worked together on farms to grow crops that fed the population. In the early twentieth cen-tury, thirty million people provided food for 100 million Ameri-cans. But over the en-suing decades, guess what happened? The children of these farm-ing families learned to read, to write and to think. Seemingly over-night, there was an exodus of farm work-ers as young, bright men and women chose to pursue other profes-sional careers.

Did the world then starve? No. Technology came to the rescue with new farming equipment (e.g., bulldozers, genetically modified seeding systems, and irrigation architecture designed by these newly educated men and women that could more efficiently and effectively assist with food pro-duction). By the end of the twen-tieth century, ten million people could now feed over 300 million Americans. Who could argue that technological advancement wasn’t a good thing?

To a point, innovation is cer-tainly a wonderful thing. How-ever, at some point we begin to give away too much of ourselves in the process. Today, we have satellite and cable television

systems that provide us with dozens if not hundreds of channels to sample. We have satellite and Web-based ra-dio that let us choose a spe-cific genre of song anytime we want. Of course, with the help of Google, our ability to search for any answer with the tapping of a few keys places us in the midst of a sea of information. This all sounds good, right?

Let me pose a ques-tion to you: Do you think it is simply a coincidence that the rise in ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) over the last thirty years occurred dur-ing the same time that society experienced an explosion of information? I don’t. I remember how when I was a kid, there were less than ten channels on our RCA television set. If I wanted to change the channel, I had to get my lazy self off the couch and ro-tate the dial. As a result, I would endure long segments of time viewing one program without shifting my focus of attention. Today, with a universal remote control in my hand, I find I spend only a few minutes at best on a channel before moving to an-other. Or, better yet, my kids use the picture-in-picture functional-ity of a 1080p 3D LED display to watch five channels simultane-ously (of the several hundred available) in rich 9.1 Dolby digital surround sound.

The infusion of informa-tion into our environments has forced us to share our attention, and it has taught us to become

The false promises of technology

any little juicy piece of informa-tion or entertainment. There is always something better on television than what I am cur-rently watching! Technology has enabled us to have access to vast amounts of variety within multiple forms of communica-tion. Yet without the ability to filter and prioritize this infor-mation, the same technology is

causing our quality of life to decline.

Technology has always caused paradigms to shift, but some of technology’s promises have not always been true. Do you remember the big promise technology made when the computer replaced the typewriter? “Think of all the paper we will save. Everything will be stored and transferred electronically, so all that waste will disappear. We will all work in paperless of-fices!” This has hardly been the case. We currently use more than 100 million tons of paper each year in the US alone. When you check in at

the airport, in most cases you still must go to a kiosk to print out your boarding pass to get through security. Despite your medical records at your doctor’s office being electronically stored, health-care payers often still require paper documents to justify proposed charges. Instead of saving paper and allowing society to become paperless, elec-tronic technology has done the opposite. Even though we may print out a smaller percentage of the total stored information available, the entire quantity of information has risen exponen-tially. The end result is that we have more paper floating around than ever before.

While information bom-bardment and the demands of attention sharing are evident in recent technological advances, technology is also rapidly replacing—or displacing—many areas once thought to be ruled only by the human brain. Sto-ries about machines replacing factory workers are nothing new. Likewise, machines elimi-nating positions that primarily

The data deluge is a growing problem. Now a new book by a Canadian expert in knowledge management explores some possible answers By Nick Bontis

better multitaskers. But in addition it has taught us how to rapidly shift our attention from one item to the next. Did you know that most people can scan an e-mail’s sender and its subject line and decide whether or not to delete it within 1.2 sec-onds? Pretty cool skill, eh? No one taught us that in school. But while that is extremely efficient, the act enforces brief bursts of attention. It is becoming harder and harder to attain skills in focused and long-lasting periods of concentration. This is the kind of attention my wife and kids are craving.

Why do I keep clicking forward through the television channels even though I find a show that is somewhat intrigu-ing? The answer is the same reason why I am dying to get a signal from my BlackBerry on vacation: I don’t want to miss

Dr. Nick Bontis is an associate professor of strategic management at the DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University.

cio canada MAY 2011 I T W o r l d C a n a d a . c o m 2 3

organize, categorize or distrib-ute products are quite common. But what about machines that can actually think?

In 1997 IBM designed a ma-chine called Deep Blue that suc-cessfully competed against the world’s best human chess player. Compared to other computers, its processing power allowed it to calculate up to 200 million chess moves in a second, and it could anticipate all potential permutations up to twenty moves ahead. Garry Kasparov, the reigning world grandmaster, took on Deep Blue in a six-game match. In the end, Deep Blue successfully beat Kasparov after the champion made an early mistake in the last game. It was the first time a machine had ever accomplished this feat.

Do you think it is impos-sible for computers and their artificial intelligence to surpass the capacity of the brain? Let’s think about this in practical terms for a moment. The brain has approximately 100 billion nerve cells called neurons. At a base level, it is safe to assume that each neuron has a storage capacity of at least one byte of information. That means the average brain can store at least ten gigabytes even before we consider connections between neurons. If you then add the ability to store information between neurons in neural net-works, experts estimate the total brain capacity may be as high as 1,000 terabytes (a terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes!). That is a huge amount of storage ability and processing power.

Certainly there is no way a computer processor and stor-age device could house that much information. Wrong. The Library of Congress and many other large databases are rapidly approaching this figure. Ancestry.com reports a total storage capacity of 600 tera-bytes after it added US census data from 1790 through 1930 to its online database. Its total figure is rapidly approaching the theorized total brain capacity to hold and process information. It’s no wonder we are beginning to feel the deffects of informa-

tion bombardment. I’m getting a headache just thinking about it.

As nanochips get smaller and the devices we use become more powerful and faster, it is likely that these devices will begin interacting and communicat-ing amongst themselves. Not only will we have information from other people to digest but we will also have an entire new body of artificial intelligence to keep up with. Think about it: is your life better as a result of all the technology around you? Or has it simply provided a way with which to bombard you with more information in a shorter amount of time? If quality of life is truly better, then we should all be enjoying the pleasures and sunsets of Santorini.

We need knowledge to suc-ceed in our personal lives and in the workplace. The boundaries of geography and physical limi-tations no longer apply. It goes beyond these constraints and encompasses an ever-expanding body of information that is increasing at exponential rates.

But as knowledge expands, time does not. This leaves us having to decide how best to manage the information with which we are bombarded and to which fragments to lend our precious attention spans.

I see us at a crossroads of sorts, or perhaps the edge of a cliff would be a better anal-ogy. Each of us is confronted with endless bits of data second to second—the current tem-perature outside, the forecast for tomorrow, the exchange rate, the stock market level and whatever else we want to know. We thrive on it and have become dependent on it. But the costs have reached a point where we are suffering in the quagmire. Is it all necessary? Must we have it all at our fingertips right now? We obviously survived without it before, yet now we eagerly yearn for it and digest it bit by byte. All the while, our families, our friends and our health pay the consequences. This is the place I call null edge.

We can choose to embrace the knowledge era and gain control over the information bombard-ment that attacks us from every angle, or we can fall off the edge of the cliff and drown in an ocean of data. The digital chains of information bombardment will drag us over the edge unless we begin to prioritize and dis-cern what is most important.

There is an old adage that states that when you are young, you have plenty of time but no money; when you are mid-dleaged you have money but lit-tle time; and only when you are elderly do you have both money and time. I don’t think this has to be true. I am often shocked when I hear colleagues complain that they have little time to do task A or B. It is the number-one complaeint I hear in the work-place. Under my breath, I basi-cally scoff at how poorly they are allocating their attention spans. One of the main objectives in my life is to maximize wealth and quality of life while minimizing energy expended. This is what we all want, isn’t it?

I have been to Santorini many times now, but my vacations are

much different from before. I still check my e-mail periodi-cally, but I don’t let information control my life. I take in the treasures that the island has to offer and think about what my Greek ancestors might have thought as they walked on the same beaches, swam in the same seas and watched the same sunsets. Could they ever have fathomed that our world would exist as it does today? Would they believe the magnitude of in-formation each of us deals with on a daily basis? Despite all of this progress in technology, and despite bathing in bits and bytes, are we really better off?

No matter how you answer these questions, the fact remains that we all have to deal with information bombardment, and how this is done affects all of us at different levels. We now have no choice. We must do something about this yester-day. If not, we are in for dire consequences. On a personal level, our family lives and our health will be harmed. In groups and organizations, efficiency, productivity and profitability are at stake. Our nations and the global community continue to pay a high price. Information bombardment has already lead to catastrophic disasters like the failure to prevent 9/11 or to assist families quickly enough during Hurricane Katrina or the earthquake in Haiti. These are very real practical implications.

So what can we do? Plenty. But in order to understand how to tackle information bombard-ment, we first have to under-stand how we got to this point in our history. Our knowledge base hasn’t been steadily progressing through the generations. In fact, we have entered an exponential period of information explosion never before experienced. Un-less we start to develop the tools with which to manage ourselves in the knowledge era, we indeed may be looking to an era of null edge. The choice is ours.

From Information Bombard-ment: Rising Above the Digital Onslaught. http://information-bomardment.com

We can choose to embrace the knowledge era and gain control over the information bombardment that attacks us from every angle, or we can fall off the edge of a cliff and drown in an ocean of data. The choice is ours.

24 cio canada MAY 2011 I T W o r l d C a n a d a . c o m

frankly speaking

routers looked like and a net-work diagram that his employee was able to understand.

“I finally did something I never thought would happen: collaboration,” he said.

SPEND MONEY As Tandet begins to experience greater use of video and other multimedia across its network, Cox’s philosophy has been to build in the redundancy neces-sary to be ready for anything. That means spending real money, he warned the audience. “If you can get fibre, get fibre,” he said. “If you can opt for cop-per, do it. I’ve stopped trying to guess what kind of content is going to be on the network and to just make sure the network will work.”

This is a critical area, said Wendy Lucas, vice-president of sales at Dimension Data Canada and a sponsor of the Frankly Speaking breakfast who also spoke on stage with Cox. The ongoing consumerization of IT, where users bring in their own devices and connect them to the

Create an UNSTOPPABLE networkThe senior IT executive at Tandet Group is focusing on flexibility, choice and reliability By Shane Schick

QUOTES THAT SPEAK VOLUMES ABOUT SUCCESSFUL IT MANAGEMENT “The people who are holding the purse strings are people and they tend to want something slick and cool that will make their lives one click easier. “

“Partner is a word that we probably overuse. It often means you want your hand in my pocket and you want to keep it there. A true partner always leaves me with some real knowledge.”

“I’ve stopped trying to worry about what kind of content will be on the network and just to make sure that the network will work. It’s not about what the content is or where it’s going but will it work?”

“Some of the stuff we put in place may seem like a toy but the issue is whether it brings real value to the organization. With something like videoconferencing, if one of our guys uses it to close the sale, we know there value is there.”

Don’t bother looking for the phone on Corey Cox’s desk. It

doesn’t exist. That doesn’t mean it’s difficult

to reach Cox, the vice-president of information systems for Oakville, Ont.-based distribu-tion company Tandet Group. “I have one phone number that fol-lows me around everywhere,” he told an audience of fellow senior IT executives at a CIO Canada Frankly Speaking breakfast called “Create an Unstoppable Network” recently. “I could be using a tablet, a desktop, a smartphone – (the system) is completely ambivalent about where I am.”

Cox has taken a similar approach to the design and management of Tandet’s net-work, which helps support the company’s fleet of trucks and other operations. There are no hard phones in the organization at all, apart from a few that visit-ing customers may need to use. Instead, Tandet is using session initiation protocol (SIP) trunk-ing that runs through a colloca-tion facility in Toronto and uses a wide-area network (WAN) to deliver content across its branch offices. The system is also tightly integrated into Microsoft Office and Outlook, so that users can enjoy unified communications.

Cox said he has recently ben-efited from the system person-ally. When problems cropped up with a network link to the branch, he was having trouble explaining what needed to be done to a young new employee who worked out of Toronto. He realized he could bring up the system’s whiteboard feature and managed to draw, with nothing more than a mouse, what the

tent user experience regardless of the device.

RECALL THE RISKS Getting the budget necessary for this kind of transformation isn’t always easy, Cox admitted. It wasn’t really until senior man-agement realized they would be able to make a phone call

through Outlook using only their voices that he got some of the buy-in he needed.

“The people who are holding the purse strings are people, and they have a tendency to like something that is a little slick and cool and that makes their

lives at least one click easier,” he said. Many of them probably have plasma TVs at home and tablets already in use by their children and spouses. “They get it more than you think and if you approach them on that level, you can get through to them.”

It also helps to point out the potential costs of not doing something, he added, and ensur-ing that those in charge will be known by the decisions they make. “Remind them of a time they took a risk and it paid off,” he suggested. “You need to flush out their victories.”

While some CIOs might be cautious about any strategy that leaves the network less than perfect, Lucas warned against over-engineering an implementa-tion. “For a lot of our customers, what they need to spend more time on is thinking about what will happen on Day 2,” she said, adding that many organizations also need to devote more time and investment around training, particularly for older employees.

Even if no network is ever “unstoppable,” Cox said having a solid foundation in place can change the way you look at your company. “I’m beginning to won-der if it’s freight that we deliver, or knowledge.”

network, is causing CIOs to re-evaluate the way they plan their IT investments.

“The bandwidth simply has to be there,” she said. “The cus-tomer and the staff expects it.”

They also expect flexibility around device choice. Cox said Tandet has trucks with a device that handles tracking, messag-ing, integration with its enterprise resource planning (ERP) sys-tem, and uses satellite technology to commu-nicate. It works really well, but it costs more than $3,300. “That’s remarkably expen-sive for an endpoint device,” he said.

To reduce those costs and al-low greater productivity, Tandet has recently renegotiated with its service provider, Rogers, to allocate more money on its plan towards data and less on voice, given the forthcoming launch of Rogers’ long-term evolution (LTE) network later this year. And those costly endpoints will be replaced.

“The plan is for employees to use a tablet – and we’ll let them choose the one they want,” he said, adding that virtualiza-tion technology from Citrix and Cisco will help create a consis-

Tandet VP of IS Corey Cox

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“T yranny of the user” is how a CIO recently de-

scribed his users’ ex-pectations for IT sup-port of their consumer devices for corporate activities. Tyranny is a strong word. The real complaint is that the mass market, the handheld device, and internet access everywhere, have replaced the days of tyranny by the IT department. Technology is no longer the pre-serve of corporate IT to parcel out. It has become a major part of how we live, work, and play. The “free” with a 2-year plan 16GB Smartphone has more processor power in it than the mainframes of two decades ago and an interface that is intuitive and friendly to even the most technophobic. The pervasive-ness of the technology has made the marketplace the leader, with corporate IT trailing far behind. What isn’t IT leadership is focus on XP, prohibiting Facebook and

Twitter on the corporate net-work, and ignoring the reality of the personal device being used as a corporate tool.

There are compelling reasons for corporate IT standards and mandating use of corporate de-vices. IT provisioned equipment is configured for appropriate ac-cess, security, and supportable applications. That said, with the rise of the remote employee, many of these standards have already eroded. Employees use their own systems at home with increased potential for access by non-company staff and greater risk of data leakage should the system be hacked, a memory key lost or file sent home via public email. For the most part, this is tolerated as being an accept-able trade-off. No need to buy everyone a company laptop or maintain expensive office space for “bums in the seats.”

Mobile devices are now enter-ing their second generation – a full functioned PC constrained by its phone or tablet format. For corporate IT, mobile device sup-

George Gorsline has been an IT leader at Interac Association, Toronto East General Hospital and CIBC. He is now a consultant with IT Initiatives.

action item

Who’s the boss?

port is complicated by multiple standards and tough integration issues for even simple things: sending and receiving email, calendar synchronization. For documents, what about SharePoint integration, which was to be the answer to secure document access with appro-priate controls on revisioning and access? With four families of devices – RIM Blackberry, Apple iPxx, Google Android, and Microsoft Windows mobile – support is a potential night-mare. Somebody must be build-ing a nice middleware platform that can talk Exchange server or Lotus notes across this polyglot world, but can our users wait?

Corporate IT doesn’t support user devices: what the employ-ees do on their own time isn’t the company’s concern. That’s policy, but not reality. The real world is increasingly fusing work and personal time, for everyone in the company, not just the IT people on-call. Your personal device - admit it, you have an iPhone or an Android even though your policy is Blackberry - is on 24/7. You, like much of the company’s staff, are expected to be available anytime you may be needed. As IT’s role is to sup-port the company’s business by providing the tools and systems needed to enable and increase employee productivity, support for the users of these devices is corporate IT’s responsibility.

Key is letting your users set expectations. Active listening skills and a can-do attitude is a must. Some of what is asked will be naive or unachievable given currently available prod-uct, but the discussion needs to take place, frankly and trans-parently. IT has to be honest and realistic to be credible as a partner, not as a naysayer. This art of the possible and practical at a given price point needs to be coupled with recognition that some things will still require a PC, mobile devices aren’t

replacing the full desktop, either at home or in the office. It also means you may have to deliver clunky interim solutions. So be it. Label it as such so no one has any illusions that it’s anything but one of a series of short-term solutions to provide some need-ed functionality quickly. Make it the best you can with what you deliver and then keep revising it to align with your users’ evolving needs and as better solutions become available.

Assuming that the solution must have full and tight integra-tion may be missing an oppor-tunity, as is supporting every flavour of device to the same level. Explore what’s really needed and, with your users, de-velop a prioritized list by those wants and speed to implement. Online banking online can be done with any web browser, on any platform, mobile or not. Think transactionally – simple interactions, low function, vis-ible results. IT facilitating this gives the users what they want and is the opportunity for IT to build in better and less intrusive controls at the same time. Win/win.

Your users expect work and personal life blending. With control over how and when they do their work, they can be more productive, on their terms, not constrained by arbitrary poli-cies. Accepting that the user is the boss is essential to delivering your mandates: ensure access to corporate information by the right people at the right time that it is secure and easy to use, regardless of platform. This requires the active cooperation of your users, fostered by trust. Policies or lack of function that impedes doing their work their way will be ignored or subverted – users figured out how to move files from the office to home and back on USB keys or email years ago. Tyranny of the user means IT uses carrots; the stick is the users’ hands.

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