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11:15 AM
Greg MacSweeney
Greg MacSweeney
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In a Matter of Months, CIOs’ Agendas Turned Upside Down

Early in the summer of 2007, Wall Street was counting its good fortune. In early summer 2008, the markets are still trying to figure out what went wrong.

In July of last year, when the 2007 Gold Book was being prepared, Wall Street was humming along nicely and most expected 2007 to be a third-straight record-setting year in terms of industry profits. In fact, on July 19, 2007, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 14,000 for the first time. But less than one month later, August 15 to be exact, the DJIA had dropped below 13,000.

In short, many of last year's Gold Book honorees' priorities (namely, Reg NMS preparation, Web 2.0 projects and technology for sales growth) were quickly replaced with credit risk management projects, cost-cutting plans and, unfortunately, layoffs. Since last August, financial firms have announced subprime-related losses totaling more than $370 billion, Bear Stearns and IndyMac Bank (a large mortgage issuer) collapsed, and an estimated 83,000 financial services jobs have been lost. Wall Street's technology organizations have not been immune to the job losses or budget cuts. And this year's 15 Gold Book honorees are examples of technology leaders who are doing their best -- and then some -- in this volatile market.

Even with the mass job cuts on Wall Street, however, a top priority mentioned by many of this year's honorees is recruiting and developing top talent. One SVP of IT with whom I recently spoke said he has been pleasantly surprised by the quality of candidates he is seeing, since many of the recently unemployed were not let go because of performance, but because of a firm's need to simply reduce head count. So, on the bright side, the talent pool seems to be full of good -- and available -- candidates.

Another item on the top of many priority lists this year is data center rearchitecture/revitalization/enhancement. A number of CIOs mentioned the need to increase data center capacity, performance and availability, while a few mentioned these priorities coupled with the decommissioning of older data centers -- something that also helps firms become more efficient and greener.

This year's Gold Book honorees, like every year's winners since WS&T started publishing the Gold Book in 2005, certainly have their work cut out for them. The economy may have a few more surprises up its proverbial sleeve, but these technology leaders have shown that they can adjust strategies and priorities to navigate both bull and, now, bear markets.

Greg MacSweeney is editorial director of InformationWeek Financial Services, whose brands include Wall Street & Technology, Bank Systems & Technology, Advanced Trading, and Insurance & Technology. View Full Bio
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