OC CIO Minutes November 8, 2012

Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table

November 8, 2012 meeting

 

Present:        Joe Desuta, Sean Brown, Jim Sutter, Jeff Reid, Keith Golden, Jeff Hecht, Dave Phillips

 

The following is a list of topics and speakers through January:

 

12/13/12       Branding and Marketing IT                      Joel Manfredo

1/10/13         Controlling Project Costs                        Jon Grunzweig

 

Topic:          Google Apps - Revisited

 

We thanked Joe for giving us an update on Google Apps, which he presented 12 months ago, and a progress report on his implementation projects.  To remind you, Google Apps is Cloud based email (Gmail), productivity tools and collaboration software. At this time, Gmail has about 1% of the total market share of email, but 50% of the cloud-based email. Slides 4 and 5 list the various tools, reliability SLA and costs.  Now the battle is between Gmail vs Office 365. Over 4M businesses have gone Google (see slides 9, 10 and 11). 

Joe then gave us an update on his implementation projects.  First Team is a full service real estate co., founded in 1976, #1 independent in OC, 40 locations, 2,000 employees and agents.  They had a good business case for going Google – email reliability, cost justification by forgoing upgrades, leverage Google Apps for productivity gains and competitive advantage.  Migration is in progress with about 1500 users migrated so far. Switching emails is transformational – many users already familiar with Gmail, which is much better than OWA.  Google Apps enables collaboration on several levels.  Migration is harder than it should have been.  Reliability and security have been achieved.  Lesson learned - don’t skip on training.  All In all, Google has been the right bet for First Team.  It should merit consideration for a cloud-based solution.  We recommend that you read Joe’s slides for more detail. They are posted at:  http://www.slideshare.net/occio

 

OC CIO Minutes October 11, 2012

Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table

 

Present:        Ken Wechsler, David Mann, William Zauner, Jon Grunzweig, Jim Sutter, Joe Desuta, Dave Phillips

 

The following is a list of topics and speakers through January:

 

11/8/12      Google Apps Update                Joe Desuta

12/13/12    Branding and Marketing IT       Joel Manfredo

1/10/13      Controlling Project Costs          Jon Grunzweig

Topic:          Compensation trends

We welcomed Ken Wechsler to our meeting and thanked him for driving up from San Diego early in the morning, in wet weather, to talk about compensation trends.  He started with US forecasts of GDP and unemployment rates, which look to be improving slowly, as do the stock prices. Hiring trends are up, and voluntary turnover is rapidly increasing in San Diego, the Bay Area and in the US in general. In the Life Sciences and Technology overall salary budgets are increasing, and most companies are expecting to pay cash bonuses in 2012.  He shared with us details on individual payouts by level.  Equity strategies include a mix of stock options and RSUs (restricted stock units) as a retention incentive.  He had several slides on the mix of equity vehicle usage and cash by position and level.  His slides on CIO compensation and trends were very interesting, especially the one by organization size:

 

CIO Compensation – By Organization Size

Compensation packages varies significantly by the size of the organization.

 

Component / Org. Size	< $200M	$200M - $1B	> $1B
Base Salary	$208K	$245K	$300K
Target Bonus	30%	35%	50%
Target Total Cash	$254K	$325K	$462K
Annual Equity Grant	$56K	$131K	$177K
Total Direct Comp.	$260K	$458K	$641K

 

Interesting information!  The whole presentation was very interesting and we thanked Ken for taking the time and making the effort to attend our breakfast meeting.  His slides can be found at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio

 

OC CIO Minutes September 13, 2012

1993-2012


Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table

September 13, 2012 meeting



Present: Mikael Elley, Sean Brown, Jim Sutter, Joel Manfredo, Jon Grunzweig, Jeff Hecht, Jennifer Curlee, Dave Phillips



The following is a list of topics and speakers through October:



10/11/12 CIO Compensation Ken Wechsler, Radford

11/8/12

12/13/12 Joel Manfredo

1/10/13 Controlling Project Costs Jon Grunzweig



Topic: IT Challenges of a startup organization



Sean Brown introduced our guest speaker, Mikael Elley, CIO of Fisker Automotive, makers of luxury high performance cars. Founded in 2007, Fisker’s mission is to create environmentally conscious vehicles with style, power and performance. The first is Karma Electric Vehicle, launched in 37 months. To get operational with Karma, they had to go from Start-up to Enterprise ‘overnight’. The strategic objective was to facilitate a lean organization, focus on cost and resource effectiveness, enable streamlined business objectives for better utilization of resources, applications and infrastructure. To do this they had to define objectives, set focus, set strategy, define roadmap, execute and measure. Mikael’s slides go into more detail as to how they did this, and I recommend you take the time to read them. He talked about some guiding principles for organization development. He ended up with a private cloud, which surprised some of our members, because public clouds are generally favored by start-ups. He explained that their basic philosophy was to grab all data for future sharing, and security of that data was paramount. He described the definition of business processes, led initially by IT but with buy-in and discipline through partnership with the business. They implemented SAP ERP in 16 weeks – again look at his slides – and have a road map through 2015.



We had a lively discussion and shared lessons learned. Perhaps the highlight came after the discussion when we all went down to the parking lot and had an opportunity to see, feel, and get in and out of a beautiful car.

OC CIO Minutes August 9, 2012

1993-2012
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
August 9, 2012 meeting

Present: Joe Stein, Sean Brown, David Mann, Jon Grunzweig, Alison Wantanabe, Joel Manfredo, Keith Golden, William Zauner, Jim Sutter

The following is a list of topics and speakers through October:

9/13/12 IT Challenges of a startup organization Mikael Elley, Fisker Automotive
10/11/12 CIO Compensation Ken Wechsler, Radford

Topic: Innovation

Our subject for the breakfast roundtable was Innovation. Our speaker was Joe Stein, President, Simply Innovate, who has had leadership roles in IT and corporate transformations and innovation.

Joe began by demonstrating the paradox in the U.S. While 84% of companies agree that innovation is critical to the bottom line, only 15% are satisfied that the pace is adequate. At current trends, China will surpass the U.S. in patent filings. And, only 21% of companies have a designated head of innovation.

In IT, innovation is always occurring, both in delivering new solutions, as well as coping/enabling technological upgrades in the infrastructure. Joel mentioned that 70% of IT personnel rate themselves as late or last in adopting the latest technical offerings.

David explained that this was a result of CIOS wanting to avoid risk...that many technologies are oversold and are immature at their introduction. Jon echoed that it was another paradox...the need for reliable delivery requiring stability, balanced with need to insert disruptive technological change.

Joe outlined a process for innovation consisting of the following elements:
Identify (analyze, research)
Ideate (borrow, gather, brainstorm)
Filter (prioritize, rank)
Implement (project charter, project plan, implementation plan, test, rollout)

Joe listed the five pillars of innovation: culture, structure, idea nurturing, roadmap and "killing starving monkeys".

There was discussion of the difficulty in "killing starving monkeys" and most of the members of the round table recounted good and bad experiences in opposing certain projects or shutting down unsupported initiatives. Joel urged the group to rely heavily on the finance group and force them to step up to their role in demanding project justification. He also highlighted the need, as part of "branding" the IT leadership, to publicize success.

Joe cited Spigot's ICON....a free crowd sourcing software tool, useful in acquiring ideas. He emphasized that good project leaders were good people leaders as opposed to just being skilled with project tools.

Joe provided a comprehensive handout highlighting the points covered in the presentation. It can be found at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio

OC CIO Minutes July 12, 2012

Present: David Mann, Sean Brown, Jeff Hecht, Jennifer Curlee, Allison Watanabe, Joel Manfredo, Jon Grunzweig, Keith Golden, John Hahn, Colleen O’Higgins, Dave Phillips

We welcomed Colleen O’Higgins, UCI Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences, to describe the goals, objectives and opportunities of its Corporate Committee. Her handout described the charter of the committee, its objectives, several of the engagement opportunities and plans for this next year. For more information, please contact Colleen at cohiggin@uci.edu, or Jon Hahn at jhahn@semtech.com.

The following is a list of topics and speakers through September:

7/12/12 Mobile Device Security David Mann
8/9/12 Innovation Joe Stein
9/13/12 CIO Compensation Ken Wechsler, Radford

Topic: Mobile Device Security

David Mann started by saying that there ia a diversity of mobile devices (Android, iOS, Symbian, Blackberry, Windows Phone, ….) which enable employees to work from “anywhere, anytime”. Security is a major problem because these devices can easily be lost or stolen, and many of the devices are employee-owned accessing corporate data. IT management is fighting an uphill battle because of the proliferation of devices, and the need to integrate mobile device management, device security and data protection. Device management includes keeping track of assets, ownership, and configuration (software and hardware). Device security includes keeping devices safe, password protection, virus & malware, remote wipe of lost devices, backup and restore. Data protection includes deciding what data is allowed on each device, and protecting the data at rest, in transition, or in use. David’s presentation was excellent, including his attachments, which I recommend you read:
”Securing end-user mobile devices in the enterprise – developing an enforceable mobile security policy and practices for safer corporate data” - IBM White Paper
“Tech Insights: Mobile Diversity - 7 Steps to Mobile Security” – J. Gold Associates
“ENISA – Smartphone Secure Development Guidelines”
His slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio .

The Round Table discussion was cut short because we wanted to hear what Jon Hahn and Colleen O’Higgins had to say about the Corporate Committee.

OC CIO Minutes June14, 2012

Present:        Joel Manfredo, David Mann, Joe Desuta, Jeff Reid, Keith Golden, Sean Brown, Jim Sutter, Dave Phillips

We started the meeting by sharing fond memories of Paul Gray, Professor Emeritus at Claremont, a long time member of the group, who died recently.  Many of us had known Paul for many years, and we will miss his presence, his presentations and contribution to our discussions.

We welcomed a new member, Allison Watanabe, to her first meeting.

The following is a list of topics and speakers through September:

6/14/12         IT Service Catalog                       Joel Manfredo

7/12/12         Mobile Device Security                 David Mann, Neudesic

8/9/12           Mobile Application Development  

9/13/12         CIO Compensation                       Ken Wechsler, Radford

Topic:          IT Service Catalog

Joel Manfredo’s presentation was based on his experiences at the County of Orange data center, which provides IT services to 7 programs and 32 agencies and/or departments (see slide 3).  The services they provide are fairly standard - data center services, Help desk, network support, voice, security, application and data services, project management, and finance and contracts administration – but they transformed the way they provide these services to running a service delivery business.  This has taken lots of time (starting in April 2009) and effort, but the results are very good. Slide 8 describes the 5 phases and the method – plan, implement, absorb, measure – and the following slides the improvements within each phase. There is a wealth of information in these slides and I recommend that you take the time to work through them.  By Oct 2010 they had produced a mini service catalog, as a marketing brochure.  Version 1 of the Service Catalog was introduced in Oct 2011, and version 2 in Feb 2012.  Joel had copies available for us to see and we were impressed with their quality and professionalism.  Slide 48 lists a set of interesting conclusions and lessons learned.

We asked those present to tell us whether they provide all their IT services in-house, or use outsourced suppliers, and how do they measure the services provided.

Joe uses both, and has the best and worst of both approaches.  He agrees that you have to build your way up to Joel ‘s approach, and it takes time to get to a formal catalog of services.

Jeff uses all in house IT services, but they do not collect all the data necessary to produce all the reports.  It has taken him time to produce standard reports.  They do allocate costs, and they do try to be transparent.

Keith complimented Joel on his presentation.  He also does everything in house.  It is a continuous battle.  They do not allocate costs.

David said that in his prior company, they did not have a service catalog but they did go for total transparency.  He was very impressed with the professionalism of they Service Catalogs that Joel produced.

Allison said that in her prior company, they had to sell their services to the users.  They initially out-sourced all IT services but ended up bringing it all in house.
Joel's slides are at:   http://www.slideshare.net/occio/  .

OC CIO Minutes May 10, 2012

1993-2012

Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table

Present:        Rich Hoffman, David Mann, Sean Brown, William Zauner, Subbu Murthy, Jeff Reid, Keith Golden, Dave Phillips, Esther Delurgio, Jim Sutter

Thank you, Rich Hoffman, for an excellent presentation, and to Jim Sutter for taking over as meeting facilitator and meeting notes generator.

The following is a list of topics and speakers through September:

6/14/12         IT Service Catalog                       Joel Manfredo

7/12/12         Mobile Device Security                 David Mann, Neudesic

8/9/12           Mobile Application Development  

9/13/12         CIO Compensation                       Ken Wechsler, Radford

Topic:          Global IT Challenges

Rich Hoffman, Sr. VP and CIO of Avery Dennison, led a discussion of the challenges CIOs face in providing efficient and responsive IT products and services for an organization whose operations are spread all over the world.  He began by providing the context for his experience.  Avery Dennison, a $7B multi-line manufacturer which has grown through 145 acquisitions, and operates out of over 500 locations in 60 countries has 30,000 employees (19K IT users) and has to deal in 14 languages and support sales in 90 countries.  It’s products are organized into 4 major groups.  The paper label business is a cash cow, but revenues are declining, while the other groups are growing and have established unique, proprietary solutions.  The products and applications include:  materials for brand labeling and packaging; apparel and footwear labeling design; high definition graphic embellishments; price enabled management materials and systems; and specialized adhesives, coatings, films, and RFID technologies.  Rich showed a selected number of examples. The company has faced challenges in global pricing, brand consistency, and inventory and cost management.  Its strategy of growth by acquisition and highly virtual operations, has resulted in significant diversity in both business process and IT solutions. Rich’s organization has taken on these issues by establishing a major social network as part of an overall emphasis on improved communications; restructuring into a centralized IT group of about 1200, and attacking unnecessary variation in business process.  They use high definition video to help overcome the geographic dispersion, time zone issues, and the complexities associated with managing virtual teams.  They’ve collapsed call centers from 110 to 3, and many data centers to 2.  Rich stressed the increasing attractiveness of having data centers in the USA.  He believes that every major project needs dedicated, full-time communications professionals to avoid the “we don’t ever hear what’s going on” issue across the different locations.

As always, the roundtable members were very active in serving up questions about approaches to overcoming culture differences, standardizing, and selecting tools.  Rich’s candor and grasp of the complexity was very much appreciated by the attendees.