Last-Minute Shopping
The need for a last-minute buying spree at ACME, as in most other companies, is intensified by two key factors: fear of cutbacks and staff shortages.
First, our management is concerned that if we go into the budget process without spending all of this year's money, the bean counters will want to cut our budget for the coming year. Second, our 2004 budget was long on technology but short on human resources--we simply didn't get enough people to complete all our scheduled 2004 projects, and we can't start them now without a panic.
Last week, I saw Xavier Beane, our CFO, walk into the office of my boss, CIO Steve Fox. Minutes later, I got word from Fox to make sure there wasn't any money left in our IT budget at the end of 2004. I've seen this same thing happen at other organizations where I've worked. I can vividly recall walking into the storage room a few years ago at year's end and finding a new router on one shelf, a new VPN appliance on another, an upgrade for our network-monitoring software and even a new videoconferencing system--all in original packaging.
Maybe if we had more staff, we could get these new products installed and operational! But back to reality.
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
