Every week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on the worst practices of cloud computing, the state of the CIO, and more. I hope you find them useful:

State of the CIO slideshow
In the annual “State of the CIO” research findings, nearly 50% of all CIOs admit that their IT departments aren’t considered a peer to the business. They aren’t looked upon as innovators, but cost centers. How can IT break free from this perception?

9 ‘Worst Practices’ to avoid with cloud computing
Cloud computing represents a major shift in business, but not every business is prepared for the cloud. For example, most business application architecture isn’t prepared for a move to the cloud. Before these businesses can even consider the cloud, they must first fix their legacy architecture.

5 things every CIO needs to know about cloud sprawl
It’s the wave of the future: Consumer devices are here to stay, and business units will look to the cloud when IT departments don’t meet their needs. The key to stopping this practice? Understanding why business units avoid IT in the first place.

ERP vendors are getting a good kick from users
According to Gartner, the era of the monolithic, highly customized enterprise ERP system is fading. Customers are realizing that they can’t move forward if they’re stuck to their old enterprise systems. As a result, many are replacing some ERP functions with SaaS options and other best-of-breed web applications.