Author Archives: AJ

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About AJ

CIO

Is IT Really A Cost Center?

[My post in the Ipswitch File Transfer blog All Things Manged File Transfer, May 20, 2014]

At a recent May CIOboston event by CIOsynergy,  I met two folks from Apprenda: Chris Gaun, Senior Product Marketing Manager, and Dave Cohn who heads Northeast Sales for the company.  Apprenda is a ‘Private Platform as a Service’ company that sponsored the event with Microsoft. Both made the remark that IT needs to transition from being a cost center to being a profit center and do so by developing more customer-facing software for the business. Continue reading →

CIOs Talk of Challenges

[My post in the Ipswitch File Transfer blog All Things Manged File Transfer, May 5, 2014]

I recently attended CIOboston, a CIOsynergy event headlined as “A New Dimension to Problem Solving Within the Office of the CIO”. We talked about paradigm shifts propelled by technologies like the cloud, the necessary new engagement models for business and IT and the changing world of expectations to name a few topics. But before getting to all this, our moderator Ty Harmon of 2THEEDGE posed the simple question to the attending 50 or so CIOs and senior IT heads: “What are your challenges?” Continue reading →

IT As A Trusted Business Advisor

I was a panelist at CIOboston, a CIOsynergy event sponsored by Microsoft and Apprenda. My co-panelists were Steven Snyder, CIO at Massachusetts Convention Center Authority and Duane Dumont, VP IT at NxStage Medical. We were to take a ‘tell all’ position on where we saw IT headed. Ty Harmon of 2THEEDGE, ex-Gartner, was our able moderator. We hit the ground running with active audience participation from the start.

A key theme that evolved for our panel was that for IT to be effective, IT’s role must evolve to that of “trusted advisor” to the business – and not just in matters related to technology. Continue reading →

What IT Roles and Skills Should Live in the Business? (Premier CIO Forum)

[My post in the Ipswitch File Transfer blog All Things Manged File Transfer and in the Ipswitch Whatsup Gold blog The Daily Network Monitor, March 28, 2014]

I was asked recently to speak on “What IT skills/roles should reside in the Business”.  This was on a panel at the Premier CIO Forum in Boston in March a well-attended and engaging event supported by SIM (Society for Information Management). It was an impressive roster of IT executives from across the New England region. Continue reading →

Merrimack Valley Sandbox Awards

A couple of weeks back, I was one of the judges for the Merrimack Valley Sandbox finalists. The Sandbox is a mentorship program to encourage entrepreneurship in Lowell and Lawrence, Massachusetts.  Seven contestants made a pitch (they are with me in the picture) and we ranked them.  Then a second round of judges on another day ranked another seven contestants.  And finally, last week, Desh Deshpande, whose foundation is a major contributor, and Daniel Rivera, Mayor of Lawrence, handed out cash awards to the winners, from a pool of $25,000. Continue reading →

Ipswitch – Looking At The Future Of IT

[Post about my talk in CBR Online, October 8, 2013]

Joe Curtis, reporter for Computer Business Review at Progressive Digital Media Group, wrote an article on CBR Online based on a talk I gave to visiting European journalists. You can read the article here.  I spoke about the future of IT and what the converging digital technologies mean for business and the end-user.

Technology Convergence And Its Implications For IT

I was invited to speak at the Salesforce “Connect For Growth” event in Boston in August.  There were 300 attendees; Salesforce customers and prospects.  Here is a video of my talk.  On the stage asking me questions is Adam Gilberd, Senior Area Vice President, Commercial Sales, at Salesforce.  My earlier talk at the Salesforce CIO Thought Leadership dinner had been popular and Adam wanted me to cover similar ground with this larger audience.  Following the talk was a panel discussion in which I also participated.

The Convergence of Cloud, Mobile, Social and Big Data

[In July, I was invited by Salesforce to be the speaker at the launch of their new CIO Thought Leadership series of meetings.  The suggested topic was, “The future of IT and cloud computing in a social, mobile, digital world.  Here is what I said.]

Every day IT is bombarded with statistics that talk about a future that WILL happen – and the question is posed, is our ship ready to get us to that distant shore?  Just yesterday, I saw statistics from Intel, saying that by 2015 the number of connected users will grow by 55% that connected devices will triple in number, that storage needs will quadruple over today, and that global cloud IP traffic will grow almost 5-fold!  For vendors like Intel, there is a relatively clear response with products.  For IT, the answers are less clear and with many choices – but the convergence of four major areas is very obvious. Continue reading →

What does the “I” in “IT” stand for?

[This is a transcript of my extempore acceptance speech at the 2013 CIO of The Year award ceremony.  The award was given by Boston Business Journal & Mass High Tech.]

Thank you very much, Boston Business Journal and Mass High Tech.

I thought I would start by giving you a couple of reactions from my family.  So my son who is studying in New York said, “Dad – congratulations!  This is fantastic news!  I hope you are planning to share the money.”  [Laughter]. Then my uncle called from Karachi, Pakistan.  He is 90 years old.  And he said, “Azmi – I always knew that you would become a CIO.  Now, remind me again of what the ‘I” stands for.”  [Laughter]. And that got me thinking…  What does the “I” in “IT” stand for?  I think that today it stands for “Intelligence” – whether it is in the form of network intelligence, or customer intelligence, or more broadly business intelligence.  I think it stands for “Insight” – because the whole purpose of delivering this intelligence and the ecosystem that produces it and delivers it, the main purpose of that is actionable insight, business insight that results in revenue. And finally “Innovation”.  I think that if you treat IT as a commodity, that is what you will get.  If you treat IT as the creative edge of your business you have a weapon like no other.

Thank you.  And I would like to thank my IT Team.  It is your success we celebrate here.  And I would like to thank my business partners.  It is your trust and confidence and expectation of IT that makes it successful.

[To read my interview with Boston Business Journal click here]

Winning IBM’s Websphere Community Award

Over the years Ipswitch has won many awards — and we continue to do so — for our stellar software products, our community work, and our workplace environment.  Yet there is one award that stands out for me.  It is one that my IT team brought home: IBM’s Websphere Community Recognition Award.

What the award recognizes is the Ipswitch IT teams’s excellence in the integration work we did between Salesforce and more than a dozen on-premise and cloud products using IBM Websphere’s Cast Iron product.  Paul Ray is the master of this.  His Introduction to the Websphere CastIron Management API graces IBM’s developerWorks web site.  Paul steered the effort and led his colleagues to this success.

A motto of mine, one that I have always emphasized with the folks who wok for me, is:  “Make ships not waves”.  Here is a good example of where the waves just naturally follow when the work stands out.  I am grateful for my team of stars for what they accomplish.