Afternoon Sessions - #NZCIO
The #NZCIO afternoon sessions kicked off with some case studies from TAIT and Beca - both NZ companies operating globally.
TAIT has started brokering a range of cloud based services to support a global organisation including using Amazon Web Services. Great to see an organisation working towards being ISO27001 certified. A recent security review of one internal file server and one AWS instance showed that one passed the security testing and one failed - speaking to the myth of in house IT being more secure than Cloud.
Beca struggled with aligning it’s IT strategy due to its business strategy being unclear and fluid - a challenge many CIOs face. This made them think about the role of the CIO in a matrix based organisation - with the aim of making it simpler for for front line staff and customers to deal with the organisation. Several key roles were defined and put in place which has resulted in clarity around ICT strategy and sign-off from the business. Interesting to hear from both but each speaker for me reinforced the need for solid basics - communications, programme management, change management, architecture and solid governance. So much benefit can be realised from just getting the basic hygiene right it is hard to hear about how many organisations still aren’t getting that right.