Strategies for SaaS, Cloud Computing, Governance and Sustainability

If Data Overload, Fileshare sprawl, Data Breach, Regulatory Compliance are part of your day-to-day jargon at work then this should interest you. In this age of exponential growth of information, dynamic global workforce, companies have had to constantly adopt new technologies to reign in the content that is being created on a daily basis. The [...]

As Open Source software continues to penetrate every facet of software business (vendor and consumer) companies now face a challenge in getting a handle on the various open source software that they might be using. In the course of the last three years of my working with many startups or their leaders, I have found [...]

Established companies venturing into SaaS business or newbies starting off as SaaS companies have to deal with a lot of new and evolving challenges. Everything that you can possibly think of is different with SaaS model. To say that it is changing the software business is an understatement. Starting with delivery model, architecture, sales, support [...]

Compliance audits have become a part of life for most companies these days. Companies have relied on certifications to establish and declare the conformance of the related business processes and internal controls to the various regulatory mandates like Sarbanes-Oxley, PCI-DSS, HIPAA. But incidents of data breach that have occurred, time and again prove that just [...]

Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) enacted in 2002 created a watershed moment for companies forcing them to take a critical look at their internal controls and  processes. Executives operating unfettered until then abusing company resources and shareholder money were now asked to account for their actions. Although the mandates under the SOX Act started out murky [...]

Data Security breaches, leaks are a frequent news item these days. If it is not a hacker intruding a network, it is disgruntled employees taking data with them when they are let go.  If all else went well, it is a laptop that an employee lost and along with it all the crucial information on [...]

IT Management has become a critical need in companies that leverage extensive technologies to meet their business demands. Change Governance, Security, Automation and Service Delivery are the key focus areas for IT organizations. With global networks, companies have to contend with securing the network to protect their intellectual property, data and corporate assets. As security [...]

Going with SaaS comes with a set of concerns around Data Security. Intrusion Detection, Prevention and Penetration Testing should allay those fears to a large extent.

Enterprises, both large and small, are now required to stay competitive in this global business environment. Managing a global workforce, dealing with  on-going mergers & acquisitions and being subject to regulatory mandates have challenged the way IT is managed and the level of sophistication required. The Information Technology portfolio in companies has become a mishmash [...]

SaaS adoption brings with it a lot of benefits in the Cost savings, quick ramp up and at the same time brings challenges in the IT Governance area.

If you are customer having a business application like Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft or SAP in production I am sure you have constantly run into this need to clone/replicate Production database. Why would someone need a copy of production instance? Some of the most common reasons are to create a test environment with representative production [...]

One of the critical requirement of governance mandates like SOX 404, PCI Compliance, HIPAA and  SAS-70 is that companies manage their provisioning in a more controlled and audited manner. Companies with disparate applications from different vendors are confronted with the challenges around it. As part of my discussions with companies I have been talking to [...]

If you are in technology world, specifically in the e-commerce world or in a business that processes credit card transactions, by now, you would know what PCI-DSS is. It stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard and refers to a compliance mandate that Credit Card companies including Visa, MasterCard and American Express require companies [...]

Iny my series of governance topics today I will go into the the key benefits of effective Change Management and key areas of  the Audit process. Audit is becoming the norm in most companies. Thanx to all the myriad regulatory requirements, SOX, HIPAA, PCI DS, Gramm-Leach-Biley Act (GLBA), California State, Japan SOX, IT Organizations across the [...]

Quick Question: What is the most challenging aspect for IT? Few would argue if I said change management is the most critical and the challenging process in the IT world. The same is probably true in business world too,  especially given the rapid pace at which things are changing. The effectiveness of  your change management process [...]

In one of my recent conversations with a past customers of mine, amongst other IT challenges we ended discussing the moratorium on changes or locking down the application from any changes. When would you want a change moratorium? Typically a change moratorium is put in place during some critical business events like Compliance Audits, Book [...]