Richard Barton

Richard Barton

Director at CIO Portfolio Limited

Recent Posts

Your investments in IT infrastructure are going nowhere fast

4 minute read

I don’t care if you are developing mobile apps or extracting minerals. You might be a young start-up, a national government body or a global corporate - it doesn’t matter. If you make bad decisions about your IT infrastructure you will be saddled with a burden that sucks up money, puts obstacles in the way of innovation and will turn away customers, partners and your best people. You would think that organisations would do all they can to help their CIO avoid such a fate but, unfortunately, you would be wrong.

Business cases can be wonderful

3 minute read

Is it just me or is there anyone else out there who actually likes developing business cases? Maybe there are a few but I am sure we are outnumbered by the many who find business cases a long-winded, administrative chore. Why on earth would anyone want to get excited about this?

Let’s be fair to procurement

2 minute read

In a recent Twitter exchange, digital leaders in the UK and US were critical of procurement in the public sector. Others make similar comments about their colleagues in Legal and Finance. I agree there is a problem but I don’t think it is entirely fair to single out these teams. The rest of us need to accept some of the blame because, generally, we get the commercial services we deserve.

A new weapon in the battle to attract IT talent: cloud computing?

1 minute read

The recent Cloud World Forum in London provided plenty of food for thought. I have already talked about some of the challenges for customer and organisations. The industry transformation being wrought by cloud computing also creates some interesting career choices for programers and other IT specialists.

The hundred billion dollar cloud gamble

3 minute read

This is the second post about some insights I gathered from attending the Cloud World Forum in London in June. The first post covered some uncomfortable choices for cloud customers. This post explores the equally unpleasant choices for suppliers.