Stories by Julia King

Many CIOs find it exhilarating to responsibility for business functions outside of IT. But CIO-plus roles require a new mindset and trusted deputies.

Six months after arriving at Credit Acceptance Corp. as a contract tech support analyst, Chris Thomas hired on as a full-time employee. He hasn't looked back.

Tracking cellphone activity plays a key role in helping law enforcement officials determine where suspects were before and after crimes were committed.

Variations in the manufacture of batches of pharmaceuticals can force drug companies to discard products, potentially incurring tens of millions of dollars in losses.

Even after successfully deploying electronic medical records, Texas Children's Hospital struggled to accurately identify ways in which it could improve efficiency, effectiveness and health services delivery. The challenge was combining the gold mine of data in the EMR system with data from financial and administrative systems.

It's up to each one of us to figure out what in the daily surge of data is useful, what's crap and what's truly valuable.

The No. 1 midsize place to work in IT may be a 12-year-old company with nearly 3,500 employees, yet LinkedIn still very much has the look and feel of a laid-back and oh-so-cool Silicon Valley startup.

There's a reason the theme song at this year's Open Business Conference was 'Happy.'

Three years ago, when David Behen signed on as the state of Michigan's CIO at the age of 42, he knew he didn't have all the knowledge or experience he would need to do the job. So he did what he says any good leader would do -- he asked for help.

National correspondent Julia King reports the mood is feisty at this year's CITE Conference & Expo.

Editor's note: Each year, Computerworld's Premier 100 IT Leaders awards program honors the best and brightest IT executives. This year's class of 100 men and women are on the move, transforming their careers regularly on the way to the top.

Why some IT professionals in the United States have no desire to become CIOs.

Big data and analytics permeate virtually every move Ford makes, from forecasting the worldwide price of commodities to figuring out what exactly consumers want, what it will build, where it should source parts and how to power its lineup of vehicles.

In her 33-year career with $18 billion Southern Co., IT veteran and first-time author Becky Blalock held positions in accounting, finance, corporate communications, external affairs and IT, where she rose to the rank of senior vice president and CIO before retiring in 2011. Regardless of the department, she continually encountered young women starved for career tips who sought mentors to share lessons learned and real-life how-to information. That experience, combined with the fact that she always wanted to write a book and "couldn't just go from being CIO to doing nothing," led her to pen Dare: Straight Talk on Confidence, Courage, and Career for Women in Charge, which was published last month.

In the next three to five years, the five technologies most likely to upset the status quo are social networking, the cloud and software as a service (SaaS), self-service IT, predictive analytics and mobile payments, according to a survey by International Data Group, 'Forecast 2014', of 221 IT executives.