Ways to Be an Authentic IT Leader

Simply being a manager of people doesn't make you a leader. So what does? In order to empower and influence others you must demonstrate that you are constantly growing professionally and personally.

If you follow the news you can find a litany of examples of poor leadership. People are distrustful or cynical of today's leadership and many times with good reason. That's why being an authentic leader is so important. Getting all your people onboard and moving in the same direction is paramount to success in the fast-paced environment of IT.
What Does It Mean to be an Authentic Leader?

Most of us have had a boss or worked with someone who tried hard to portray himself or herself as something they weren't. Not only was it off-putting to their co-workers and subordinates, but it was likely exhausting for them. You can't lead people by trying to be something you aren't.
IT Training vs. Hiring

Being an authentic leader helps to create an environment where people are not only confident in your ability to get the job done, but also in your motives for doing so. So what can you do to be a more authentic leader with your teams? CIO.com spoke with CIOs and professional-development experts to find out what it takes to be the leader people want to follow. Here are 10 keys.

Related Story: How to Apply Transformational Leadership at Your Company
1. Know Thyself

The best way to start your journey is know who you are at your core. "You need to understand yourself and your motives," says Tim Eiler, manager of the Project Management Office for Park Nicollet HealthPartners.

In a study done by Bill George and other scholars, researchers reported that there wasn't a common set of traits associated with authentic leadership. What they found was that most often a successful authentic leader's style of management was a result of their life story or upbringing.

"The journey to authentic leadership begins with understanding the story of your life. Your life story provides the context for your experiences, and through it, you can ?nd the inspiration to make an impact in the world"

"You're the best at being you, not a watered-down version of another leader. Don't try to be like anyone else," says Pamela Rucker, chair of the CIO Executive Council's Executive Women in IT.

2. Lead With Integrity

Trust is a large part of leadership. People not only need to know you are competent at what you do, they also need to understand your motives. "Values-based leadership is necessary for driving sustainable change as this ensures that the results achieved are underpinned with a strong moral and ethical foundation, thus they can also stand up to any scrutiny or resistance to change," says Greg Stewart, vice president and CIO of Enerflex.

"It's all about trust," says Eiler, "Even though we each work for money, job satisfaction or whatever else gives us value in return for the work we do, it's relatively easy to vote with our feet. If I don't trust my leaders, I'm much more likely to do just that."

Related Story: How to Close the IT Talent Gap

Trust is gained in a number of ways, according to Rucker. "Regardless of what process you use, you want to lead in such a way that people know that you are honest, fair and you are concerned about others."
3. Lead with Vision

In order to do this you have to lift your head out of the daily trenches of the workplace and get a good understanding of what's going on inside your niche of the IT industry. An authentic leader genuinely cares about what's happening in the industry, his or her company, and the employees within it. A great leader can mold all of those into a successful and achievable vision.

"The more I trust that my leaders have a vision and I can trust them to behave in consistent ways, based on clear values, to achieve that vision, particularly if that consistency involves watching out for the interests of everyone on the team, I'm more likely to be increasingly engaged in the effort," says Eiler.

---

Best comptia A+ Training, Comptia A+ Certification at examkingdom.com

Rackspace President Lew Moorman to step down

Cites family health issues; will remain on board of directors

Rackspace President Lew Moorman is stepping down from leading the company, he announced in a blog post today, but will remain on the board of directors of the cloud computing and managed hosting company.

Moorman has been with the company for 13 years. He has played an important role in developing OpenStack, the open source cloud computing platform that Rackspace and NASA jointly founded three years ago. Rackspace CEO Lanham Napier will add president to his title once Moorman officially steps down in the coming weeks.

Cloud watcher Larry Carvalho, an analyst and consultant at Robust Cloud, says he’ll be interested to see what, if any impact, Moorman’s move has on OpenStack. Rackspace is an important member of the open source community, he says, hosting one of the few public cloud offerings based on OpenStack code, and being one of the chief contributors of code to the project.

While Rackspace’s support for OpenStack is unlikely to waiver, especially with Napier taking over the executive role, the direction and priorities that Rackspace takes could change with Moorman stepping down. For example, there’s a large debate within the OpenStack community right now about how much compatibility OpenStack should have with Amazon Web Services, which is perhaps Rackspace’s biggest competitor. In the past, Moorman has not been shy about expressing feelings related to keeping Rackspace and OpenStack completely separate from AWS.

Rackspace has also been the subject of some acquisition discussions, Carvalho says, which intensified in recent weeks after IBM bought IaaS company SoftLayer. An opening at the top executive level of the company could reinvigorate that chatter, he says.

In the blog post, Moorman noted that members of his immediate family are undergoing health issues, which is why he is transitioning out of the president’s role. Moorman’s stepping down marks the third executive shakeup at a major tech company this week. Juniper Networks CEO Kevin Johnson announced his retirement this week; he plans to step down once a replacement is found. Polycon President and CEO Andrew Miller stepped down after an expense report scandal rocked that company.

---

Best comptia A+ Training, Comptia A+ Certification at Certkingdom.com

Nvidia sees good Windows RT future, even as analysts see platform's demise

Nvidia sees good Windows RT future, even as analysts see platform's demise
RT dying 'slow death,' analyst says

Even as the market for Surface RT and other Windows RT tablets grows more dire by the day, chip supplier Nvidia said it remains bullish to the platform and is committed for the long term.

Nvidia's commitment to Surface RT and Windows RT "remains at a high level and hasn't changed," said Rene Haas, vice president of computing products at Nvidia, in an interview.
Microsoft Surface RT
The Surface RT (credit: Microsoft). .

"Surface RT is the very beginning of a long process and it's the first shot in a changing landscape," Haas said. "Microsoft is moving the entire Windows platform to something really mobile."

Nvidia makes the Tegra 3 chip used in Surface RT and Lenovo's Yoga 11 convertible with Windows RT. Haas said in May that next-generation Tegra 4 chips will be used on multiple RT tablets, but said Wednesday he couldn't divulge when or what types of future RT products will appear.


Haas put a positive spin on Microsoft's decision earlier this week to slash the price of Surface RT tablets by up to 30%, dropping the original $499 price for a 32GB tablet to $349. The 64GB version sells for $449, down from the original $599.

"We're very encouraged and excited by the new price point and hope it inspires new sales," Haas said. When Surface RT first appeared on the market in November, analysts had said the original price was too high when compared to other tablets on the market.

On Wednesday, after Haas spoke with Computerworld, it was reported that Lenovo dropped online sales of the Yoga 11. Haas didn't respond to a request to comment on that move.

Haas said Nvidia employees are using Surface RT tablets running Windows 8.1 for RT, which includes Microsoft Outlook and offers VPN improvements. "Outlook in 8.1 is a big, big deal for us, and it's not a baby version of Outlook or somehow stripped down," he said. "We can use it to book meetings and other ways and it's completely productive and a big item for us." He said other organizations will find 8.1 valuable.

Haas said Nvidia is also encouraged that Microsoft has made organization changes, putting the Surface development under Microsoft long-timer Julie Larson-Green. "Think about Microsoft essentially owning hardware as well as Amazon and Google. Over time, that's exciting," he said.

Analysts have generally been concerned for months about Windows RT and Surface RT sales since first quarter sales reach just 200,000 Windows RT tablets, including Surface RT -- just 0.4% of the 49.2 million tablets shipped overall, according to IDC. Microsoft reports its quarterly earnings today when more insights on Surface RT may be forthcoming.

Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates, said that Nvidia is "blowing smoke" about the future potential for Windows RT and Surface RT "since that's what marketing people do....They don't want to spook the market and say RT sucks and won't sell."

The Tegra line of processors will still be important to Nvidia, but not because of Windows RT and Surface RT, Gold said. Qualcomm also makes ARM-based chips used in two Windows RT tablets, but Gold said that part of Qualcomm's business is miniscule.

Gold said he doubts any tablet maker will produce a future Windows RT tablet. "RT is dying over night," he said. "RT is going to die a slow death."

At least one analyst still sees a future for Windows RT. "Windows RT is performing poorly commercially today, but this is a long-term Microsoft commitment," said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. "Microsoft won't pull the plug even if they're the only OEM using it. The bigger question is if chip vendors like Nvidia and Qualcomm will keep developing for it."

---

Best comptia A+ Training, Comptia A+ Certification at examkingdom.com

Then and now: Doing a mobile startup in 1999 vs. 2013

Co-founders have learned important lessons in 14 years and two mobile startup companies

Network World - For Ty Wang and Amitabh Sinha, co-founders of mobile startup WorkSpot, last year could have felt like déjà vu all over again.

Back in 1999 they founded EveryPath, a company that specialized in optimizing business process software for mobile devices. Fast forward 14 years, and the two are back at it again, founding Workspot last year, once again trying to solve the problem of enabling workers to use their mobile devices, while still giving IT some control.

[READ ABOUT WORKSPOT AND MORE STARTUPS: Check out these 8 hot mobile startup companies that could redefine the industry]

Remember the mobile landscape in 1999? There was no iPhone. Android didn’t exist. Palm Pilots, Nokia, Ericsson and Sprint dominated the budding hardware market. Forget smartphones, there were barely even flip phones in 1999.

But there were early mobile devices that could provide limited functionality. Wang and Sinha recognized this opportunity and built a platform for connecting enterprise applications to these Palm Pilots and Windows CE devices. The software integrated with SAP and Oracle, and allowed task management applications to run basic features on the field devices.

The startup actually gained some traction in the pharmaceutical industry, allowing field workers to report back to the main office when certain tasks were complete, for example. But, the platform just seemed a little too ahead of its time, as the mobile devices at the time weren’t optimized to run business applications and the mobile networks weren’t up to par. “If one thing has changed, it’s been the iPhone,” Sinha says.

The company fizzled out in the early to mid-2000s, but Wang and Sinha’s vision for the platform didn’t. The business partners went their separate ways. Wang took a job at Oracle working on platform products, while Sinha became a vice president and general manager at Citrix, working on mobile delivery of applications.

After working with enterprise clients at their respective jobs and watching the growing mobile market explode in the enterprise, about 18 months ago Wang and Sinha realized that their original vision they had in 1999 could be applicable once again.

The mobile device management market is flawed still today, they believe. Users don’t want to entrust their entire mobile devices to their IT department, but they also want to be able to use email or forward a document on their phones.

The duo co-founded Workspot last year, which provides a gateway for enterprise applications to run on an iOS tablet through a secure VPN connection. The app lets users keep control of their devices, while providing IT with capabilities to manage what applications are available to the end users through Workspot. Early customer reviews have Wang and Sinha optimistic and the company has received about $2 million in venture financing.

Getting back into the startup scene in 2013 is very different than in 1999, on a variety of fronts, they say. For one, Wang and Sinha believe they are wiser now. Sinha says he has two important takeaways: 1) Always focus on the end user and 2) Don’t become dependent on big infrastructure updates to ensure the success of your company. Despite the fact mobile phones had not become ubiquitous yet in the early 2000s, that was not the problem for Everypath, Sinha says. The biggest problem was the speed of the wireless networks. Today, powerful 3G and 4G networks allow mobile devices to be powerful work stations.

Macro-economic conditions and the state of the venture capital market are a little different today too. In the booming late 1990s, VC money flowed freely. Companies also required large investments because they had to build up their own IT systems to support their projects. Startups were building data centers because programs and applications had to be run behind a firewall.

Today, Wang and Sinha are able to use public cloud computing resources from the likes of Amazon Web Services, almost eliminating the need to buy expensive hardware. Cloud computing allows them to be more agile and to experiment with their services faster.

The mobile market is exploding now too. So many workers have mobile devices, which can unlock powerful productivity gains if they can use them for work purposes. But finding a balance between allowing the devices to be used while still giving companies control over their IT environments is a challenge.

---

Best comptia A+ Training, Comptia A+ Certification at examkingdom.com

EMC's Syncplicity lets enterprises lock down data sharing Companies can define who can be sent a piece of data and make them enter a password to get it

EMC is giving enterprises greater control over how corporate data gets distributed and to whom, plus more mobile capabilities, with the latest update to its Syncplicity service.

When employees distribute links to data in Syncplicity via email, IT administrators can regulate what addresses go in the "to" field and force the employee to set up a password that the recipient has to enter before opening the link. As added protection, the links to those attachments can be set to expire after a certain period of time.

Syncplicity is EMC's entry, acquired last year, in the market for cloud-based file sharing and synchronization. It's up against enterprise rivals such as Box as well as consumer-focused services such as Dropbox. One way EMC has tried to set Syncplicity apart is by letting enterprises use it for access to data stored on their own storage systems, in a hybrid mode, if they're not comfortable with the cloud. Syncplicity starts at a list price of US$216 per user, per year, and goes down with larger numbers of users.

Users already can avoid sending large email attachments by instead sending so-called Shared Links for accessing the data via Syncplicity. The new Syncplicity Secure Send feature is a set of tools for controlling and tracking the distribution of sensitive data, primarily outside an organization.

Before an employee sends a Shared Link, the IT department can require a series of steps to help secure and track the data. For any given piece of information, an administrator can prescribe whom it can go to and what steps they need to go through in order to open it up. For security, Syncplicity can automatically generate a unique password for each link sent, based on password-strength parameters defined by IT. Once the email with the link has gone out, the sender can see whether each recipient has received and clicked on the link.

Once the recipient has downloaded the file onto their own computer, Secure Send doesn't control it anymore, said Jeetu Patel, vice president and general manager of the Syncplicity Business Unit. But the service can be integrated with EMC's information rights management software, which can control operations such as copy, paste and print for a particular file, he said.

On mobile devices, EMC now offers apps for Android and iOS that reside in a Good Dynamics secure software container from Good Technology on the mobile device. A key feature of the Good Dynamics container is its compliance with FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards), Patel said.

Syncplicity has also added tighter integration with Active Directory, allowing enterprises to automatically create and cancel Syncplicity accounts when they add and remove employees. This even allows the enterprise to remotely delete Syncplicity software on a device when the employee is terminated, Patel said.

---

Best comptia A+ Training, Comptia A+ Certification at Certkingdom.com