In his 1966 book “The Psychology of Science,” American psychologist Abraham Maslow tackled the idea that those in the field of psychology needed to approach treatment from multiple perspectives, to take on new ideas, and not just continue using the same theories and techniques created by Freud and his followers so many years ago. Acknowledging that changing your point of view can be difficult, Maslow wrote “[I]t is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything like a nail.” We have all had this experience. We get so used to the way things have been done in the past, we sometimes don’t question the reasons for doing them.

You’re facing increasing global competition. However, changing business models such as lower-cost cloud options, enable more competitors to join the fray faster than ever.

Your response? Consistently select the right projects and bring in-demand products and services to market quickly.

Today’s challenging and hyper-competitive business environment offers CIOs a unique opportunity to assume an expanded role as a strategic technology expert collaborating with the business toward greater success, more revenue and happier customers.

It’s in IT’s hands at the moment, but the window of opportunity is closing as lines of business get tech-savvy, spending more of their budgets on IT projects and re-examining the role that IT plays in advising them. IT can either define a new role for itself which embraces this change, or ignore it and risk becoming increasingly irrelevant to the business.

Escalating competitive pressures, tight budgets and scarce capital resources are working in concert to intensify the importance of true alignment between IT and the organization it supports. But many of today’s enterprises are noticing a decided gap between what the business demands of IT and the realities of what IT can deliver.

"End user response. To borrow a phrase, it’s where the rubber meets the road. You can be armed with vast amounts of performance metrics, but if you don’t know what users are actually experiencing, you don’t have the real performance picture. While this measure is critical, it is one many organizations fail to consistently capture. Why? This guide looks at the challenges of user response monitoring, and it shows how you can overcome these challenges and start to get a real handle on your infrastructure performance and how it impacts your users’ experience."