March, 2008
by Frank Bereznay
The 2008 winter meeting for the Southern California region was held February 8 at CA Corporation's West Los Angeles office. This meeting featured three speakers and included breakfast and lunch for the attendees. We are very grateful to CA for hosting this meeting and their ongoing support of CMG. This support makes it possible for us to provide valuable training and networking opportunities. The California regions are continuing our partnership and one of the speakers, Mike Swanson - President and CEO of ISAM, presented at the Northern California meeting earlier in the week.
Mike gave the first presentation and provided insights into what differentiates the best in class software management organizations from the rest of us. With software license fees becoming a major cost factor in all computing environments this topic continues to be a major focus for all organizations. Mike provided many tips and suggestions to help us do a better job managing this growing expense area.
Norm Hollander was the second speaker and he focused on the changes we need to make in the way we monitor and manage our IT infrastructure assets. The challenges we face today are much more complex than the ‘good old day's when we supported one computing technology. Norm provided a new way to look at one of our core disciplines.
Tom Bell wrapped up the day's meeting with an update on what we need to do to plan for our retirement. Tom, already retired, shared what he has learned as he heads into this new phase of his life. We have spent the last couple of decades planning and managing technology investments for the companies we work for and now is the time for us to plan for our own futures.
Our February meeting was a great success and we are already working on our May 9th meeting. If you are in the area, please plan on joining us. For more information check the regional webpage, http://regions.cmg.org/regions/sccmg.