On April 16th last, I had the opportunity to present at the National Conference on Cloud Computing and Commerce in DCU. The event was organised by Techspectations and the Irish Centre for Cloud Computing and Commerce.
I have included a copy of my slides in this post along with an overview of the main points from my presentation covering the use of business metrics to track the competitive advantage a company can get from Cloud computing.

Recently, I have participated in a regular twitter discussions hosted by EHICCIOCampaign and Handihealth on the role of the CCIO in medical organisations. These online discussions have attracted people from both medical and technology backgrounds and have provided some interesting commentary. In this blog, I would like to summarise my thoughts on the role. With the growth in the development and interest in health informatics, the CCIO role (also known as CMIO in North America) has grown in importance and I believe that it can play an important role in encouraging innovation in a medical organisation for the following reasons.

In summary, this intent has been shown by the following;
The US Government has signalled a clear intention to use cloud computing services. This intention was first signalled with the release of apps.gov – a US Government portal to allow different cloud service vendor to market their offerings to the government sector and to provide information on cloud computing
A ‘cloud first’ policy is being adopted by Federal Government. This means in effect that provided security, reliability and cost-effectiveness criteria are met, Federal agencies should use cloud based services as a default.
Considering that the US Government spends $80m each year on IT related expenditure, this could be a huge investment in the Cloud.

In a previous blog, I wrote about how to create an effective ICT strategy by creating a synergy between the business oriented IS strategy and the technical oriented IT strategy.Both strategies are linked and the progress of both are jointly assessed and measured through relevant kpis. Synergy between IS strategy and IT strategyThis ‘linkage’ will also allow for changes to the IT strategy in order to adapt to changes in the IS strategy driven by the business environment. To further facilitate the delivery of the IT strategy, it is helpful to view the strategy ‘financially’ as an investment portfolio. As the progress of the IT strategy is reviewed, the related kpi’s are assessed and with changes in the IS strategy, it may be decided to alter the relative proportions within the portfolio.

In my consultancy work with different organisations, I get asked what makes for an effective ICT strategy. Also on a related basis, is there a difference between and IS strategy and an IT strategy ? In this blog, I give my 2c on these two related topics. The ICT strategy must support both the organisation’s business strategy and also show how ICT can be used to provide opportunities for new ways of doing business. An effective ICT strategy is a combination of an IS strategy and IT strategy