Okay, the iPhone’s here. Now what?

Just heard back from outgoing Capital One CIO Gregor Bailar, who's departure I wrote about below and promised a response from the horse's mouth. Capital One, you may know, was the top company in the InformationWeek 500 list two years ago. Check out the last paragraph in Gregor's response about his insight into the future role of the CIO in this industry -- very interesting and right in line with some of my own previous postings...

Figuring out what IT workers should look at, shouldn’t look at, and what liability lies in between is not as easy as it, uh, looks.

Challenge: Add even more complexity to an already complex IT role by taking on telecom cost-reduction project. Solution: A call to arms, CIO Nation! Ben’s got his own ideas but let's get him some additional CIO input. Ben Holder, CIO of Unifi, a textile manufacturer located in Greensboro, N.C., is in the discovery phase of overhauling the telecom bill-paying and management systems at the company. Not traditionally an IT operation at many companies, telecom is yet another part of the business where many CIOs are starting to insert themselves. Here’s what’s going on with Ben and how CIOs can help…

Following on the previous entry about BNSF's legacy migration, here's a reader's post from back in February on Chris Anderson's Long Tail blog that underscores the shift in the hierarchy of value within IT. The CIO doesn't always have the best answers, there isn't necessarily a direct correlation between age/experience and intelligence/talent, and it's a CIO like Jeff Campbell at BNSF who recognizes that that'll be the greatest asset to their company moving forward...

Challenge: Convert bloated, NATURAL-based, legacy transportation-support system to Web-based front end without breaking the bank or working through the decade Solution: Hand it off to a couple of 20-something brainiacs who did it in several weeks for one-fifth the cost. For this week’s CIO Nation Dossier, I spoke with BNSF Railway CIO Jeff Campbell about a project that blew my hair back. For years, BNSF had been pondering how to modernize its legacy transportation-support system and give it an online front-end that would make it more accessible, flexible, upgradeable, and cheaper to maintain. Here’s the amazing story of how they did it – and how it can be a lesson for any CIO wrestling with the legacy monster…

This is either an exciting time, or a worrisome time to be an IT leader, judging by all the attention being paid right now to examining the value of IT and the evolving role of the CIO.

...at least when it comes to candor. An online letter recently sent to US Airways frequent flyers explaining some of the IT-related problems customers have been experiencing since the merger with America West is chock-full of frank mea culpas that you don't see coming from many businesses these days, much less a major airline. It's clear in the letter that frustration over problems in integrating the two airlines' reservation systems is percolating, as CIO Joe Beery says he'd like "to be buried in a kiosk."

I couldn't book something in Death Valley on July 31, so I had to settle for the cooler climes of Phoenix -- but if you're a CIO from the greater Phoenix area (or happen to be visiting that day), I invite you to join me and up to eight CIOs for the first in this season's series of informal CIO Nation Breakfasts.

Capital One said today its CIO, Gregor Bailar, is stepping down Sept. 1 to pursue philanthropic interests. Bailar was at the helm of the company's IT department when InformationWeek named Capital One the no. 1 company in the presitgious InformationWeek 500 list in 2005. For those who want to make hay about the shortening tenure of the CIO, even among the good ones, think again... (read on after viewing the video by clicking "Continue reading..." below) To see Bailar speaking on agile programming and the CIO's role in growing the business, click below:

Did you read about the missing IBM Tapes? It's almost like another undecipherable episode from "Lost," except it's a car that may have crashed in this case apparently, and it's tapes that got lost in the aftermath.

The Internet is a wondrous place indeed. Besides all the practical benefits that are too numerous (and obvious) to mention here, there are few limits to where your imagination combined with web technology can take you.

The biggest thing that's new under the Vegas sun may be the thousands of more hotel rooms being built to accommodate the thousands of more people that keep pouring in. It’s a strange town that somehow mixes business and pleasure pretty seamlessly e.g. beer as well as tee shirts and pens given out on the exhibit floor!? Yup, they had it.

We usually spend so much time thinking about, wishing for, or planning to implement new technology, that we don't give much thought to the old stuff.