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5 ways to maximize your cloud investment

CIO

Optimizing cloud investments requires close collaboration with the rest of the business to understand current and future needs, building effective FinOps teams, partnering with providers, and ongoing monitoring of key performance metrics. We need hard metrics because we’re running 800 instances of cloud computers.

Cloud 312
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10 best practices when partnering for strategic skills

CIO

“Collaboration with external partners allows enterprises to enhance their IT prowess, drive innovation, and bridge skill gaps more effectively amid a swiftly evolving digital landscape,” says Arpita Dwivedi, practice director at Everest Group. Double down on vendor management. Staff augmentation and outsourcing are nothing new.

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The CIO’s guide to smarter vendor negotiation: 10 tips

CIO

IT leaders may find that prices are going up without an accompanying increase in benefits, with technology providers — less dependent on any one industry or geography — taking a harder line on deals, says Achint Arora, a partner in the pricing assurance practice at Everest Group. The group of stakeholders keeps growing.”

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10 cloud strategy questions every IT leader must answer

CIO

To do this well, IT leaders should uncover the key objectives of each stakeholder, tie those objectives back to enterprise business goals, and align everyone on common goals through top-down discussions and mandates, says Mukesh Ranjan, vice president in the IT services team at Everest Group.

Strategy 363
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The Six Pillars of Effective Security Operations

Palo Alto Networks

Governance: How are we going to manage what we are doing? Metrics: How will we know it is working effectively? We describe each of these interactions as “interfaces,” and these should be defined so expectations between groups are clearly stated. Staffing: Who do we need to do this? Facility: Where are we going to do this?

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IT Leaders’ Top 5 Outsourcing Headaches

Seerene

Since outsourcers don’t publish any kind of standard metrics, you can’t really compare apples to apples. Vendor selections are typically based on hourly rates or perceived customer satisfaction, which is influenced more by the provider’s marketing and account management than by impartial data. Measuring outsourcing value.

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CIOs step up to fill plus-size leadership roles

CIO

Moving forward, Jonnala’s group leveraged data-driven insights to balance parts sourcing against demand for improved inventory management and to keep production flowing. Any CIO gunning for a plus-role needs to be well versed in the metrics and models that move the needle on business outcomes. “If