Our Blogs – For CIOs by CIOs

By Naidu Annamaneni
Associate

In 2017 eSilicon, a semiconductor design and manufacturer specializing in making chips tailored to its customer’s specific requirements, faced an enormous challenge. The company was being held back by the inherent limitations of the “datacenter as a service” solution that it had been using to run its High-Performance Computing (HPC) chip design workloads. However, the public cloud providers had not yet addressed the many technical challenges of doing this work—which included thousands of cores and peta bytes of storage—in the cloud.

As eSilicon’s CIO and Vice President of Global IT at the time, I led the team that partnered with Google and several other companies to address this challenge and become the first semiconductor maker to do end-to-end design in the cloud. Along the way I learned quite a bit about how to successfully and cost-effectively run HPC in the cloud.

Silicon Review’s interview with Jeff Richards, Managing Partner

Information technology is now a critical function in any organization. In fact, even companies that do not consider themselves to be “high-tech” are investing in new technologies for digital transformation. To ensure they are tapping the right opportunities, many engage strategic IT consultants to facilitate the development and implementation of an integrated IT strategy.

Founded in 2009, Palo Alto, California-based CIO Professional Services is an IT strategy consulting firm that helps mid-size organizations address a wide range of IT alignment and strategy issues. Over the years Jeff Richards, the firm’s co-founder and Managing Partner, has seen that there are two axioms that explain the problems many of their clients face: In IT the demand for services will always exceed the supply, and If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never arrive. 

By Stephen McGrady
Principal

A few months ago I, like most people, commuted to work each day. That commute created a clear demarcation between my “workday” and my “time at home.” Sure, I sometimes took a call in the evening, and I was as addicted to my Gmail/Slack/Zoom/WebEx/Teams feed as the next person. But when I was at the office I was mentally and physically “at work,” and when I was at home, I experienced work as an interruption in my home life.

That all went out the window when the lockdowns began.

By Stephen McGrady
Principal

Last year if a customer sent you a Business Continuity Plan questionnaire asking what your plans were for responding to a pandemic, your response might have been, “Why are we even being asked about this? What difference does it make?” Your disaster planning was most likely focused on events that appeared to have a reasonable probability of taking place: earthquakes, fires, floods, key suppliers going out of business, labor strikes, etc.

This year, however, the outbreak of the coronavirus known as COVID-19 has changed all this. Between wide-spread quarantines and shut-downs in China, supply chain disruptions, trade show cancellations, stock market swoons and panicked calls from your elderly parents, it’s painfully obvious that you also need to have a plan for addressing pandemics.

As of this writing the outbreak of COVID-19 is far from contained. How might it impact your business?

By David Philippou
Associate

Day after day your IT team keeps the systems running. Everything is secure. There are no outages. Tickets get addressed promptly. The entire system operates exactly as it should, every day.

While you think your group should be up for “Department of the Year,” the rest of the company hasn’t even noticed your good work. Why? Because these things are all expected. As far as they’re concerned, you’re just “keeping the lights on.” And who ever notices that?

By David Philippou
Associate

Years ago I was at a company leadership development day. When we got to the touchy-feely part at the end where everyone is asked to thank someone else in the room, I did so and then…nothing. While everyone else got thanked for the smallest of things, I sat there thinking, “Hey! What about me? My team and I have worked tirelessly to ensure the IT systems work, day in and day out, and tickets no longer disappear into a black hole. Don’t I deserve some thanks, too?”

Evidently not.

By Zeeshan Kazmi
Cyber Security Practice Head

News stories are full of evidence of what CIOPS has been witnessing in the field: cyber security attacks are on the rise. In fact, the global cost of damages from cybercrime, which stood at over $600 billion in 2017 , is projected to skyrocket to $6 trillion by 2021 .

The frequency of cyberattacks, as well as the number of methods used by these criminals, is increasing exponentially. Cyber criminals are investing heavily into tools and automation to find any type of unaddressed vulnerability—especially for small- and medium-sized businesses.

The danger is real and can cause a great deal of anxiety, especially if your ability to combat cyberthreats is hampered by a limited budget. What are your options when your cyber security budget is tight, but you know an attack can be catastrophic?

By Zeeshan Kazmi
Cyber Security Practice Head

I recently wrote about the reasons why your cyber security plan must address SecOps , which is a collaborative effort that ensures that your IT security and IT Operations teams are all on the same page. Today I’d like to take a look at how to make this happen. Here are the initial steps we recommend:

Assess your risks

It is absolutely critical to understand what your assets are and where they reside. You can then prioritize these assets based on the likely negative impact on your business if these assets were to be compromised.

Start by taking a complete inventory of your data assets, wherever they may reside. For example, what data resides in shadow IT? How about email archives, mobile devices, apps, etc.? It doesn’t hurt to reach out to key business stakeholders to ask them where they think their data is! Remember, if you don’t know where a data asset is located (or even if it exists), that lack of knowledge is a security risk in and of itself.

By Zeeshan Kazmi
Cyber Security Practice Head

Thanks to today’s digital transformation initiatives, getting a cyber security plan in place is more important than ever. In fact, it should be a vital part of your IT strategy. After all, chances are nearly all new initiatives in your company involve something digital. This automatically introduces new platforms that can be attacked and quickly become a deficit for your organization if they’re not directly protected by your cyber security efforts.

SecOps—a collaborative effort that ensures the IT Security and IT Operations teams are all on the same page—is the ongoing operational management piece of this. It’s the reminder that your cyber security plan cannot be a “set it and forget it” effort. A cyber security plan must always bridge the gap between Security and IT Operations, neither of which is ever static and each of which has fundamentally different priorities.

By Jeff Richards
Partner

Since 2009 CIO Professional Services has provided strategic IT consulting and business/IT alignment services for a wide range of enterprise clients. Our consultants are all highly-experienced, world class executives who have a true passion for what they do.

Seeing the significant difference that our efforts make for our clients is enormously satisfying. Receiving glowing testimonials from these clients always makes our day. As my father always said, a job well done is its own reward…and normally I would agree and say that all of this feedback is enough.

But as we were recently reminded, sometimes it really feels good to receive recognition from your peers, too.