Breaking up is hard to do, as ITT CIO Carol Zierhoffer knows all too well these days. The impending split of industrial giant ITT into three separate multibillion-dollar companies creates a unique set of leadership opportunities and challenges for Carol, who is leading the separation of the IT organizations and the creation of financial shared services. Only a few months into the plan to separate into defense, water and industrial manufacturing businesses, she will share her leadership approach and lessons learned so far. How do you redirect an IT organization that’s been working diligently to build single-instance global systems and processes into a three-way split structure? How do you energize your employees about the personal leadership opportunities the split affords while managing concerns about an uncertain future? In this compelling opening keynote, Carol will talk frankly about the upsides and downsides of taking her once-unified team down three separate paths.

Not many CIOs have to worry about Bloomberg News reporting on their software bugs or Howard Stern chatting about their latest IT project to millions of listeners. But for CIO Joe Seibert of the New York Times, those were just a few surreal moments in the highly publicized March 28th rollout of the NYT’s digital subscription platform. Two years in the making, this new IT system spearheads the effort to turn free online reading into paying subscriptions. And while it’s critical to the future of a world-renowned newspaper brand, it’s also striking a business chord beyond the media world. Any enterprise struggling to integrate multiple channels of its customers into new, digitized distribution models can relate to the challenges of creating new revenue streams from old business models. In this fascinating look inside a game-changing business technology strategy, Joe will share his insights, lessons learned and peer advice on managing a project with such dramatic potential to change an industry.
 

The speedy transition of cloud computing from last year’s buzzword to this year’s reality has surprised even the most skeptical CIOs. On the positive side of the cloud ledger are cost savings, speed of implementation and user acceptance. On the negative side are concerns about data security, integration and vendor management complexity.  Yet the demands of the remote workplace are accelerating, and more businesses are virtualizing IT infrastructures and turning to cloud-based software and services to speed time-to-market, unify communications and ramp up mobile offerings. In this wide-ranging panel discussion, you’ll hear how a widening pool of virtualization and cloud options are changing the way today’s technology roadmaps are being designed. Our panelists will also talk about how governance structures are evolving, how private vs. public clouds are being evaluated and how the CIO role is changing as a result.

 

.