While HP's solid OpenView management software brings in "billions in revenue, to deploy Web services you need to closely tie in application development, " says Governor.

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"I think people are pretty shocked and surprised" that a deal didn't happen, says Keith Rabois, vice president of strategy and business development at Slide, a Web application developer.

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Her responsibilities were broader than the average CIO, as well, as over time her role expanded and she oversaw innovation, gaming, IT application development, infrastructure, security, support for customer facing systems, all company web sites, as well as key initiatives to develop new technical capabilities for the Total Rewards loyalty program.

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And rather than envision some sort of uber developer, who understands big data, web performance optimization, application middleware, and fault tolerance in a massively distributed environment, we need operations specialists on the development teams.

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