IT Manager's Journal

West, founder and CEO of xynoMedia Technology, acknowledges that the dawn of another year brings with it some new -- and some not-so-new -- challenges that IT professionals need to adequately address.

"[I]n-house, I would have to say virtual collaboration is a big deal for us right now,” says West, whose consulting firm focuses primarily on social media strategies and secondarily on IT/Web strategies. “When I built this company, I had the vision that it would be a totally virtual company, meaning there’s no office to check into, per say. …We’re [now] a 10-year-old company and we’re still kind of working those kinks out. Another challenge for us, as far as IT is concerned, is beefing up our mobile communications."

Addressing issues faced by IT administrators at the types of organizations her company assists, West notes that the largest challenge is social software and Web 2.0 applications, and the development and management of those applications.

"Companies still don’t get it," she continues. "[And] voice over IP just will not die. Instead of travelling halfway across the word to have meetings, what [businesses] are looking to do is implement the unified technology like voice over IP so that they can have teleconferences that don’t cost an arm and a leg."

While British Columbia-based TELUS, one of Canada’s leading telecommunications firms, will not disclose how much one of its latest projects will cost, Arthur Musgrove, director of information services at TELUS, says that the new year finds his company focused on an ambitious agenda.

"TELUS is in the midst of a major systems transformation program," he says. "This program involves the introduction of significant new systems infrastructure, bringing new capabilities to our company. To address this challenge, TELUS has detailed pre-implementation testing and post-implementation operations. We also have strong launch criteria and a launch plan that considers many types of risks."

Meanwhile, Matt Ho, IT administrator at Capital Engineering, a multi-discipline consulting engineering company in Alberta, says that his company is also cognizant of a number of issues it needs to deal with this year.

"For us, I would have to say the implementation of software” is a key issue, he says. "As of June 2008, Microsoft won’t be selling XP anymore. We might have to upgrade all of our existing software to make it compatible with Vista.

"Most of the applications that we’re running only support XP at the moment, so obviously we would have to check to see if [we can afford to] upgrade all of the software. If not, we would have to see if we could maybe use XP for the time being." Ho adds that around the second half of the year his company might hire more workers to meet increased demand, should a projection for more projects prove correct.

To be sure, decisions involving whether or not to hire new workers are important. However, the stakes are even higher when it comes to bringing top executives aboard.

Kay Cioffi, founder and president of Texzen Partners, a New York-based executive recruitment agency, says that businesses are seeking out IT executives that have the expertise needed to perform their duties, have the capacity to truly grasp the businesses that they serve, and are able to develop relationships with internal client contacts.

"The other challenge to be aware of," she says, "...is the ability to look external to their immediate company, to understand what their competitors are doing, to have that ability to network with other professionals within their area of expertise or other areas that are important to them.

"The transition that I see is that...a lot of executives [previously] were hired because of their specific technical expertise. Now what’s happening is that that’s becoming actually less of a priority than someone who can...be part of creating business solutions, be able to lead and manage, be able to really understand the external competitive factors."