The July 2008 issue of CIO Digest was published last month. The issue debuted at the Symantec Vision event in Las Vegas, NV on June 9 (part of the registration packet). Then, in late June, more than 150,000 customers and online subscribers worldwide received notification of the issue’s release via the Symantec Confidence in Enterprise Newsletter and an email subscription blast. An additional 20,000 printed copies were sent to Symantec sales offices around the world for use in business development activities.

An exciting cover story

The July 2008 issue contains some exciting articles and Symantec sales and partners will want to leverage them when talking about Symantec technology solutions with their customers. We took a different approach with the cover story. Rather than showcasing one customer, we decided to take a thematic approach—focused on data center infrastructure software—and  interviewed several customers as well as an industry analyst. The content-rich article, “All Roads Lead to Data Center Infrastructure Software: Charting a Strategic Journey Focused on the Final Destination—Delivering Business Value,” is laden with valuable insights and analysis on industry and technology trends, providing a snapshot into three core areas: Green IT, Server Virtualization, and Storage Management. The story includes sidebars on each of the customers: Norm Fjeldheim, CIO at Qualcomm, Inc.; Brad Wyckoff, CIO at Meredith Corporation; and Ignacio Vera, CIO at HSBC México.

Features, case studies, and more

The industry feature, “Striving for Brilliance in the Public Sector Spotlight: Facing Resource Limitations Every Day Unleashes IT Creativity,” highlights the IT challenges faced by public sector organizations—federal, state, and local and includes interviews with Kenneth Fritzsche, the chief of operations for Army Knowledge Online; Darrell Davis, the CISO for the State of Alaska; and Curtis Rawlings, the assistant CIO for DeKalb County, Georgia. The solutions feature , “Getting Strategic with Managed Services: Delegate IT Headaches with The Right Prescription,” focuses on out-tasking and how IT organizations are leveraging it to deliver business value. For the feature, CIO Digest conducted interviews with G V Gopalakrishnan, the executive VP at HDFC Bank; Todd Hauschildt, the CIO at Verigy, Inc.; and Alan Payne, the chief innovation officer at Healthe Group.

The issue also includes four case study articles on customers from around the globe:

• “IT in a Bottle: Two-way Communications: IT to Business and Business to IT” (The Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Egypt)
• “Talk About Email Retention Policy: Business Processes Combined with Technology Deliver the Right Solution” (Mitel)
• “The City That Works: A Broad Municipal Charter Requires a Comprehensive Solution” (the City of Vitória)
• “Making a Winning Argument: Strategic Collaboration Between IT and the Legal Practices Leads to Email Archiving and e-Discovery” (Rodyk & Davidson, LLC)

In addition to the above, the issue includes an introductory letter from John W. Thompson, “IT GRC—Moving Beyond IT Compliance,” on the intersection of IT Governance, IT Risk Management, and IT Compliance. And the Upload section contains exciting news about Symantec, industry and technology trends, an Executive Q&A with Enrique Salem on Symantec’s Customer-driven initiative, and more.

Patrick E. Spencer

Editor in Chief, CIO Digest