This is one of my two hot topics at the moment to address the need for IT professionals to actively contribute to the business environment in which they work and evolve. All too often the current perception is that IT departments are full of experts in their fields but it is difficult to communicate with them and/or see tangible IT benefits. IT and business process management (BPM) have a strong partnership to deliver competitive edge.

This is one of my two hot topics at the moment: From my experience in designing systems and services in large data centres and complex networks, I feel that optimising and automating the service management layer is at the centre of the next generation of IT solutions. Autonomic computing is one proposition that aims to address this issue.

Computing & Networking curriculums are the backbones for the education of the next generation of IT practitioners and CIOs. There are currently wide gaps between what business require in terms of skills and what Universities are delivering. Having been both a University staff chairing curriculum workstreams and then in business recruiting and retraining, there are a lot of aspects that we can improve.

Academic research in Internet computing & computer networking is still struggling to make an impact on business. Some progress has been made via funding from research councils (EPSRC), government institutions (DTI) and joint initiatives and in particular via support from large companies research labs. But there are still a large number of companies who show minimum interest in R & D, often using the PR fund when pushed to act!.