As I sit back and think of some of the newer technologies we have looked at recently, I find myself wondering if IT is in the never ending cycle of re-inventing the wheel. What I mean by this is sometimes it seems as if we continue to try and re-engineer everything to make it fit our environment or how we think it should work. When viewing newer technologies, usage models and trying to pass data off to other groups the phrases I think I hear the most are, “That will never work in our environment,” or “If we can get them to change this, this and this, we may be able to use it here” or my favorite, “This will never be secure enough for us to use it as it exists”. While these may be valid assessments against the way we do things today, the big question is: should we be pushing ourselves to look for new ways of doing things? Five years ago, employees preferred to use their machines and software loads supplied by IT because they were more powerful or feature rich than anything they had at home. But in today’s society, people have higher end machines at home than IT supplies them. They also use newer technologies that are usually off limits or not supported by IT. Think of some of the tools we use today, such as this blog or even instant messaging. These technologies exist in our corporate environment because we saw people using them at home and brought them into our corporate environment. It wasn’t something that IT created and people took home to use. So with so many of these newer technologies out there, should we keep pushing to make them adapt to our IT world, or should we start pushing IT to start adapting to new models. We take umbrella approaches to everything today. Total security of the platform, instead of trying to reduce the footprint we have to manage. We look for solutions that will cover the majority of the users, versus what may be right for smaller enclaves. We place several management clients on the platform to perform numerous tasks instead of using native components or reducing some of the redundant requirements we have. Moving forward, the next generation of workers will expect businesses to offer familiar technology and won’t accept tradition as an excuse. IT shops need to provide workers with “cool” ways to work. If they don’t, they risk becoming obsolete.

Greetings!

The great behemoth that is Intel is in fact made up of many, many tiny cogs...and I am one such cog.

Working as a program/project manager within Intel's Information Technology group, my efforts are focused on addressing the IT aspects of Intel's acquisitions and divestitures activities (aka mergers and acquisitions...aka M&A...although it seems lately that we've been doing a fair amount of the ‘divestiture' projects...but I don't think you'll see the term M&A&D being used anytime soon! It's just not very sexy.)

I'll probably take a trip down memory lane in a later post, as this is in fact my second foray into the world of IT M&A.

In short, my role involves working with the various business units within Intel when they decide to acquire a company or divest a piece of their business, and ensure that all IT aspects of the transaction are addressed successfully. The PM role is responsible for everything from network connectivity for desktop and laptop systems to servers and storage to telephony and Blackberries. We work closely with our "partners" within Intel (we used to call them "customers," but I prefer the term "partners"...later post topic?) to ensure that people, assets and intellectual property are 1) brought in smoothly to the Intel fold in the case of an acquisition, and 2) handed off/out smoothly in the case of a divestiture.

Wow, so much more I could add on this topic alone, but I'm a brand new blogger, so I must pace myself!

Thanks!

Chad Clemons

Each year Intel IT publishes an Annual Information Technology report documenting our key initiatives and how we performed towards them. The Intel Information Technology 2007 Performance Report is now available. It is noteworthy to state that 2007 was another year of substantial change for Intel IT. Some of the key highlights are:

• We entered our second year of a multi-year replatformization of our ERP environment.
• We streamlined our decision making and governance by eliminating 67% of our forums necessary to make a decision.
• We announced our long-range data center efficiency initiative which is expected to achieve a $1B (US) cost avoidance
• We focused on standardizing and reducing the number of applications. We removed more than 450 outdated & redundant applications!

We welcome your comments on how we did. I especially would like to hear how your company's evaluate their IT performance.

Intel's IT professionals are getting ready to come to you live from IDF (Intel Developer Forum) in San Francisco the week of September 18th-20th. John "JJ" Johnson, CIO, will be discussing Intel’s perspective on the impact technology brings to the future of IT. We are also developing a social media panel who will discuss the challenges of social media in the IT environment and more. In addition, you will likely find me roaming the halls chatting with you, participating in sessions and doing a live blog. We are looking forward to it. Any, oh, by the way- I have a super discount for you. Use the following codes to get a great discount: For September 18th only - code #DNCITI- gets you in *free. *If you want to attend all 3 days use code # PRMITI for a price of only $895. I look forward to seeing you there!

In my blog inside Intel I'm exploring some ideas for social media implementation, and would like to throw them out here to the IT Community for input. Our social media implementation is a bit patchwork at the moment, so I'm looking at ways to help fill it in. In this case, the idea is to open up our current method of corporate employee communication.

Currently, our intranet is a fairly static site. Most news and articles are just fixed web posts, and what I've been exploring is adding an open discussion area on the end of every article published on any intranet site. Then any reader who has something to ask or add on a topic can contribute. It may be a simple link to related material, or it may be detailed thoughts on the topic. There may be no comments for an FYI about a local road closure, or a lengthy exchange about some of our product strategies. If the topic draws out a reader who cares enough to add thoughts, the net result of those inputs creates material that is more valuable than the post alone. At worst it shows what people think of a topic, and at best there could be ideas, information, and discourse that adds a lot more than the original post.

The second piece of this change would be to allow employees to directly submit their own articles and material, similar to something you might see on del.icio.us or Digg. Those sites are very different, but together they enable every single employee to quickly share content they find valuable, and provide a mechanism for the best of that content to rise up for all to see. It's a staggering difference from the tops-down, management sanitized communication we get today. It leverages the incredible knowledge and brainpower already present across Intel, and starts building a valuable repository of information that no centralized, "tops down" organized project could accomplish.

Perhaps it gets to the heart of an ongoing debate about the role of IT - are we an enabler for existing technical demand, or do we have an obligation to stretch the rest of the company in new behavorial directions around technology? I'm a believer in the latter, but it's far from a settled issue.

Do any of you allow that sort of deep participation in all levels of employee communications? Is your company even one that would allow it? As I work this issue internally, I'd really like to hear how others address it.