CITe is pleased to announce the acceptance of Sandra Rapp to the CITe Advisory Board. Sandra is the Vice President and Chief Information Officer of OE Connection located in Richfield. Sandra is a alumni of the University of Akron and holds an MBA in International Business from the CBA!
We have student recruitment sub-committee on Friday November 20th at 3:00pm. Send an e-mail to Paul Evans for more information on participation.
Congratulations to CITe advisory board member Jim Sage for winning the 2009 CIO of the Year Award for the non-profit organization category awarded by Northeast Ohio Software Association (NEOSA). Jim Sage has been Vice President for Information Technology at The University of Akron since December 2005. This is the second time Jim Sage has received the CIO of Year Award following the first one in 2007. Jim is a graduate of the University of Akron and holds a BS in MIS and Operations Management.
Next ITEE Meeting will be on November 13, 2009. Main topic of meeting is “Security – What you need to know to stay off the front page of the WSJ”.
On any given day the Wall Street Journal contains sad reports of firms that have permitted data breaches, been victims of computer crime, or in other ways have suffered from insufficient computer security. Declining stock prices, dropping consumer confidence, monetary and trade secret losses, civil and criminal penalties—consequences can be dire. Come share with your peers information about how you perceive the latest threats and what you are doing to combat them. Please RSVP to Paul Evans at pse2@zips.uakron.edu.
IT Executive Exchange (ITEE) meeting discussed the topic “New communication methods – aggregation and the use of social networking tools to foster new communication methods.” The meeting on September 18, 2009 started with a networking lunch at 1:00 pm and continued with discussions. Many CITe advisory board members and local IT professionals joined the meeting.
Welcome to Mrs. Orysia D’Aurelio, Managing Director, Comsys, Inc., a leading IT services company with over 50 offices throught the US, Canada, Puerto Rico, and the UK, who joined the CITe advisory board recently.
Orysia has been with Comsys for over 14 years and is a University of Akron graduate. Orysia holds a BS in Accounting.
The topic for the next ITEE meeting is: New communication methods – aggregation and the use of social networking tools to foster new communication methods.
Location: CBA 258, CBA, The University of Akron
Time: 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm
The IT Executive Exchange group met on June 12 to discuss business and technical issues related to Cloud Computing. Few members in attendance have experience with cloud computing. As per the discussion, some of the benefits of cloud computing include minimizing hardware and running applications off site with ownership and management still available. Other motivations involve cost savings of shared servers and a minimal security issues. Potential drawbacks relates to security & data transfer and it becomes clear that firms remain tethered to the cloud as it attempts to share data internally. The primary utilization of cloud computing of some of the companies present currently consists of e-mail. Although there remains no formal definition of cloud computing, an informal definition is obtainable by applying the purpose of the model to an active definition. The model of cloud computing implies capacity on demand such that the cloud can add or subtract servers as necessary to meet demand. Consequently, the user pays for only that capacity which is necessary. The complexity of the entire IT industry is rapidly advancing. In sum, industry CIO’s face a mosaic of both long and short-term choices entailing critical decisions. It is entirely possible that the term “cloud computing” is a mere buzzword to drive increased revenues. Only time will tell if the large IT firms gamble pays off.
Welcome to Darren Hudach, Director, Global Software and NA Technical Support, PerkinElmer, Inc., who joined CITe advisory board recently.
Darren has been with PerkinElmer for over six years. His primary areas of responsibility include: Global Genetic Screening Software, North American Technical Support, and Site Management for the Akron, Ohio Genetic Screening Technical Center. Darren’s areas of expertise include team building, selecting and retaining top talent, leadership and motivation, new product development and maintenance, project management best practices, contract negotiation, P&L management, international business, and change management.
Six student teams spent the entire spring, 2009 semester developing solutions for a real problem at Summa Health Systems. In the midst of rapid growth and the robust outlook for the health care sector, Summa wants to improve the way that Human Resources (HR) information and transactions are processed and shared with its more than 10,000 employees across more than 12 locations. Teams met with senior executives, conducted surveys and other primary research, and presented their recommendations to Summa at the end of the semester.
During the Fall 2008 semester, the teams worked on a project for Timken on how to implement web 2.0 tools to increase employee collaboration through the company’s intranet. 500 North American associates completed a survey which the students used to formulate recommendations regarding the use of tools such as Wikis, Blogs, and RSS feeds, translation tools (to address global communications needs), and management policies to encourage knowledge sharing and retention. Each semester a different local firm is chosen; recent participants have included Goodyear, YRC (Roadway), FirstEnergy, Timken, and InfoCision.