CIO Essentials: Virtual worlds, biometrics and green IT

Ever wondered what CIOs are reading on silicon.com? Our CIO Essentials feature puts you in the picture. Each week a leading IT chief picks his or her top stories from the past seven days and explains why they matter.

This week we hear from Mark Foulsham, CIO for online insurer eSure.

Real world terrain coming to the virtual sphere
I think virtual worlds are a huge untapped market currently suffering from a lack of business-savvy input. Companies are now realising they can sell their products twice - once in reality and once in virtual space - and I expect 2008/09 to be dominated by virtual pennies dropping.

Biometrics wing their way into Gatwick
Biometric solutions have now become reliable, affordable and most importantly practicable.

Britannia cuts call queues
It is surprising how poor some organisations' telephony management still is. The biggest issue however is nothing to do with IT; companies just need to do the maths on demand versus resourcing and not rely on technology to solve what is inherently an age-old challenge.

UK tech skills crisis 'exaggerated'
I think there will always be a skills shortage in newer and emerging technologies and this is a consideration organisations have to take on board when developing their architecture roadmaps. A balance has to be struck between the competitive advantage of new technology whilst ensuring the market has skills to develop it.

Data centres fuelling climate change?
Companies, quite rightly, are being caught in a pincer movement on green issues - upwards from staff and downwards from government. Green is no longer off the CIO agenda and using technologies such as virtualisation and reducing environmental impact also makes clear business sense.

If you are a UK-based IT director or CIO and would like to take part in the CIO Essentials series by choosing your top five stories of the week, send us an email here at silicon.com.