Stories by Mary K. Pratt

Do you need a cyberumbrella?

If your company were hit with a cyberattack today, would it be able to foot the bill? The entire bill, including costs from regulatory fines, potential lawsuits, damage to your organizations' brand, and hardware and software repair, recovery and protection?

The Grill: John A. Benanti and Donald Stanton

Fire trucks remain the iconic image of any fire department, but firefighters -- like all other workers -- are relying on more technology than that to be effective on the job. Certainly, IT will never replace water hoses when it comes to dousing a blaze, but computers are increasingly being deployed on the scene, too. That's certainly the case at the New York City Fire Department (FDNY), one of the largest fire departments in the world. Here, Deputy Commissioner of Technology and Support Services John A. Benanti and Assistant Commissioner Donald Stanton talk about how technology fits into the operations at FDNY.

Cyber insurance offers IT peace of mind -- or maybe not

If your company were hit with a cyber attack today, would it be able to foot the bill? The entire bill, including costs from regulatory fines, potential lawsuits, damage to your organization's brand, and hardware and software repair, recovery and protection?

The Grill: Indranil Ganguly

Indranil "Neal" Ganguly, vice president and CIO at CentraState Healthcare System in Freehold, N.J., says he and his colleagues in healthcare IT have an opportunity to make a real difference. CIOs and their teams have a strong grasp of what benefits technology can bring to the medical field, he says, and they should help shape healthcare policy. Ganguly is helping to do just that, serving in leadership roles with various trade associations. The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) last fall recognized his contributions by presenting him with its State Advocacy Award.

Up-and-coming tech jobs -- and how to land one

Forecasts for IT hiring are almost universally predicting that and business analysts will be in demand in 2012, but what about cloud transformation officers?

Mobile mania spurs demand for unified communications

In the space of just the past few years, Art Johnston has gone from thinking of unified communications as optional to viewing it as "a strategy that we need to implement to be competitive."

The Grill: Joseph Spagnoletti

Campbell Soup senior vice president and CIO Joseph Spagnoletti is all business. He talks about business objectives and transformation, and he looks at technology as a way to achieve those goals. It's an outlook that helped earn him the Fox IT Leader Award from Temple University's Fox School of Business and Management earlier this year.

JM Family: Works to eliminate more than 1,400 physical servers

The IT shop at JM Family Enterprises has taken the typical steps to make its data centers eco-friendly: It has consolidated systems, virtualized servers and set up hot and cold aisles to drive down energy consumption.

Allstate: Reduces nearly 3,000 servers or devices in 18 months

Allstate Insurance has been pursuing energy-saving initiatives for several years, and it has seen a cumulative energy reduction of about 40% through more efficient data center operations and the use of virtualization, according to Anthony Abbattista, senior vice president of technology solutions.

Prudential Financial: 1,000 servers moved into a virtual environment

When Mary O'Malley became Prudential's environmental task force chairperson in 2007, she found that the company's IT department was already focused on being green.

State Street: Compression technology helped cut storage use by 50%

The IT department at State Street has spent the past decade making its operations more energy efficient as part of an overall commitment to environmental stewardship at the financial services firm. But Madge Meyer, executive vice president, chief innovation officer and technology fellow, says the task is never truly finished. "We have a very mature program, so a part of our mission is to continue to drive down energy use," she says.

Raytheon: Boosting data center temperatures cuts energy use by 30%

As the IT sustainability program lead at Raytheon, Brian Moore says he saw a chance to learn from the company's past successes to find ways to deliver even more results.

Nixon Peabody: 300 physical servers were swapped for 30 VMware ESX servers

Boston-based law firm Nixon Peabody has elevated its focus on sustainability to the highest corporate level. A chief sustainability officer and a Green Operations Steering Committee lead green initiatives throughout the organization, and IT spearheads and enables much of the work.

Northrop Grumman: Virtualizing or retiring approximately 3,000 servers

Northrop Grumman set an important environmental goal in 2010: to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by about 25% over the next five years. And

Linglong He

Linglong He stepped into the CIO role at Quicken Loans in 2010, taking over the top IT spot at a company continually ranked by Computerworld and others as a great place to work. She came to the post with an impressive list of accomplishments. In China, she earned an undergraduate degree in civil engineering from Hehai University and a master's degree in civil engineering from Wuhan University, where she taught civil engineering for seven years. She immigrated to the U.S. in 1991. After earning another master's degree in software engineering from the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, she made a career in IT. In 1996, she joined Quicken Loans, where she worked in various roles, from business analyst to director of database and systems engineering, until she came into her current role. Here she talks about her work, her leadership and what it takes to sustain a top-rated work environment. Linglong HeBest part about being CIO? Seeing the technology impact on the business from the big picture, and seeing the teams work together. Worst part about being CIO? I enjoy every single minute of it, but I've spent less time with my family than I'd like. Family snapshot? Husband, Charles Chen, who also works in technology, and three children, ages 16, 12 and 4. Favorite technology?Natural user interface (NUI). Advice you give your staff? Believe in yourself and be yourself. And carry your own sunshine. And enjoy your achievement every day.

Sign up now to get free exclusive access to reports, research and invitation only events.
Featured Download
/downloads/product/171/gadwin-web-snapshot/

Gadwin Web Snapshot

Gadwin Web Snapshot will effectively capture the entire page including all design elements when capturing web pages. It makes an image of the browser’s content ...

Computerworld newsletter

Join the most dedicated community for IT managers, leaders and professionals in Australia