There are arguments about what’s in The Cloud or, said
another way, what constitutes Cloud Computing. Some purists vociferously deny that there is such a thing as a Private
Cloud . Others say the only
reasonable way for large corporations to migrate to cloud... (2640 more chars)
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A new report by Gartner and the Financial Executives Research Foundationsuggests that the CFO is increasingly becoming the top IT decision-maker in many organizations. The study, which is based on a survey of 482 senior finance executives, also fo... (2546 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: I can't believe your software i... (6112 more chars)
Backup has been evolving steadily for over 60 years. And
just when we think we’ve solved every problem, new technology comes along to
present us with new challenges.
Tape was first developed in the 1950s to solve the storage
problems of punch-card systems. This new technology prov... (4133 more chars)
It’s fairly common to hear about a new security threat emerging in the wild. But if you’re a typical computer user you simply wait for your particular brand of antivirus software to get on top of the threat and send out an update.
Now comes word, however, that a new threat ... (2387 more chars)
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Last week, The Wall St. Journal ran a very timely story on how the lingering recession and its aftermath “have brought an unprecedented surge in productivity” and how those gains could be harder to sustain “as they are built not o... (1991 more chars)
What separates the merely ordinary organization from the extraordinary? According to a new study released by IBM, quite a lot.
IBM surveyed nearly 300 global executives to find out what characteristics separate outperforming organizations from their peers. In the end, the study determined t... (2476 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: You are paranoid and think everyo... (5854 more chars)
Usually a perfect storm is a phrase used to describe a set of events resulting in a very negative outcome. But in the case of the smartphone market, it’s being used to describe a market that is looking very good, indeed – maybe perfect.
According to research firm IDC, the worldw... (3022 more chars)
Process improvement is on a lot of corporate front-burners these days.
For example, a just-released survey of 126 Indian CIOs by CIO Klub, an Indian association made up of enterprise IT chiefs, conducted in association with Ernst & Young, showed respondents listing “achieving efficien... (2403 more chars)
Legally Sound But Technologically Wrong (first of a two part
series)
By Daniel B.
Garrie Esq., B.A. & M.A. Computer Science
Bill
Spernow, CISSP,
CEH, PMP, Net+, Sec+, CHS III, GAPPI/GCP
Today’s Judges face numerous
challenges in determining the tr... (8820 more chars)
By Daniel B.
Garrie Esq., B.A. & M.A. Computer Science
Bill
Spernow, CISSP,
CEH, PMP, Net+, Sec+, CHS III, GAPPI/GCP
In Part One of this article, the
authors identified a test case, Trump v.
Genger , supporting our thesis that technological misunderstandi... (8825 more chars)
Today, multiple organizations are
forming to develop knowledge standards respective to the field of electronic
discovery. These organizations are seeking to define a baseline aptitude to
independently gauge a technologist grasp of the core technology components
involved different systems in... (4367 more chars)
Modern IT systems have enabled smaller companies to successfully
compete against larger international competitors. Today, it’s not uncommon to
see a company of less than 30 employees with offices in multiple countries...
operating 24 hours per day, and 7 days per week.
Of course, t... (3048 more chars)
I was reading an article in Computerworld about how federal dollars being pumped into grant programs aimed at drawing students to pursue IT careers in the healthcare industry may generate up to 50,000 new jobs over the next five years, according to a top federal health official who spoke at a h... (3492 more chars)
It’s been just over a year since search giant Google launched its venture capital arm, and while the company has been active snapping up various startups, there hasn’t seemed to be any overreaching plan as to how the startups will fit into Google’s core business. That, in fact, se... (3027 more chars)
It’s no secret that data center managers are looking at
every possible way to maximize budget without sacrificing services. One of the
easiest ways to save between 50% to 70% on hardware acquisition costs is to buy
refurbished IT equipment. Besides the obvious cost savings, there are o... (7619 more chars)
Green IT isn’t just a buzzword anymore. It’s a business
imperative. Nearly 80% of organizations mandate energy consumption audits as
part of their standard facilities and IT management regimen. While environmental
stewardship is a driving force, considerable business benefits can... (9048 more chars)
Cloud computing incorporates virtualization, data and application
on-demand deployment, Internet delivery of services and open source software to
provide significant business benefits. Through virtualization, cloud computing
enables a dynamic data center where servers provide resources that ... (3009 more chars)
What is the best storage solution for SMBs facing unpredictable
data growth—all while providing adequate data protection and right-now access
to critical files for users? Of the three most common storage architectures, direct
attached storage (DAS), network attached storage (NAS) and s... (6853 more chars)
I was reading a global report on IT governance and management from Infonomics. The study, which canvassed the opinions of business and IT leaders in Australia, Europe, North America and other geographies, paints a rather dim view of the maturity and effectiveness of IT governance.
T... (2674 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: He’s all over the map.
... (5963 more chars)
After months of hand wringing about the falling fortunes of enterprise software giant SAP, the company turned in first quarter results that signal management may be getting things back on track.
It was three months ago that SAP founder and Chairman Hasso Plattner decided to take matters int... (3082 more chars)
Is today’s enterprise, including its IT acolytes, missing something very obvious and vitally important in its current management mindset or is it just an inability by a traditionally conservative constituency, to accept the radical paradigm shift involved?
... (8154 more chars)
It’s official. The floppy’s days are numbered. Electronics giant Sony said this week that it would stop manufacturing the once ubiquitous storage medium likely by March of 2011.
Few will notice its passing, given the fact that most computers haven’t included a floppy drive... (2083 more chars)
As the federal workforce grows older, government CIOs find themselves struggling with effective ways to retain highly-knowledgeable IT workers. They also face a tough time convincing younger workers – people in their 20s and early 30s – to not only work for a government agency but to... (3888 more chars)
HALO/Lee Wayne is seeking talented professionals with strong programming and design skills to augment our Web Services team. As one of the largest Promotional Marketing companies in the world, we have a broad range of development opportunities based on a similarly broad range of client ... (725 more chars)
If there is any truth in stereotypes, CIOs are generally left brainers, meaning they’re analytical, objective, goal-oriented and linear thinkers. Those qualities would seem ideal in anyone running an IT operation.
Now, however, with the recession hopefully receding, there’s much a... (2799 more chars)
After writing a blog on Earth Day about my optimism for the technology industry’s ability to overcome the challenges associated with energy-hungry data centers, a CIOZone member forwarded me an article on an innovative project in Finland.
A mobile telecommunications company called Eli... (2310 more chars)
Periodically, I’ll come across a story or blog like this one that offer suggestions on project management best practices. There are some sound recommendations here, including the need to factor changing requirements into project plans and timelines.
These types of stories ofte... (3480 more chars)
As the world celebrates Earth Day, it’s worthwhile considering the state of the IT industry’s Public Enemy No. 1 – the data center.
Sure, on their own, data centers don’t seem like much of a threat to the environment. There are no billowing smoke stacks and for the m... (2799 more chars)
It says something about cloud computing when the NY Times,
not often an information technology bellwether, not known for surfing on the
bleeding edge of technology, publishes on its business pages an article on how mainstream
companies are slowly but surely examining and adopting cloud computin... (8029 more chars)
While reading an article in Computerworld about how to sell IT to the business, I was one again reminded about thescarcity of CIOs who take every advantage of marketing the full breadth of services offered by their IT organizations. This goes beyond selling the value of the IT organization to ... (2087 more chars)
If you follow sports you have noticed that top athletes do not always perform consistently. A world class runner may break a world record in one competition and then not even place in the same event one week later. A champion weight lifter might break a record and then be unable to lift that same w... (2815 more chars)
While the on again, off again economic recovery has left doubts as to whether hiring will rebound this year, the big players in the technology sector are sending perhaps the strongest signals that yes, they are ready to recruit again.
In recent weeks, several of the bellwether companie... (2653 more chars)
The recession has affected everyone on some level (re: decimated savings and retirement plans). But surely it has impacted some much more severely than others. Six and a half million U.S. residents have remained unemployed for six months or longer while the national unemployment rate remains at 9... (2805 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: We appreciate you being pr... (6012 more chars)
These days research analysts are falling all over themselves projecting how enthusiastically the cloud is going to be adopted by corporate America. Most recently, Gartner went to far as to assert that cloud computing will become so widely used that 20 percent of all businesses will have no IT asse... (2734 more chars)
Last week I posted my disappointment regarding the
as-of-yet seamless integration of Adobe and Omniture:
http://www.ciozone.com/index.php/mamblog/view/7632/.html
Re-reading my post, I know what I wanted to say, but I
seem to have skirted around the true issue.Th... (1332 more chars)
There have been a number of articles and blogs recently which question the future of the CIO, including this fine piece by CIOZone Contributing Editor Michael Neubarth. Another report, citing statistics compiled by Diamond Digital, claims that nearly one-third of IT spending occurs outside of the... (2086 more chars)
The problem with live TV is that anything can – and often does – go wrong. The same might be said for the switchover of large IT systems. There is a very real possibility that the exercise will encounter unforeseen problems and result in anything from minor challenges to a complete melt... (2942 more chars)
As U.S. auto sales continue to gain strength, automakers are beginning to add engineers and IT professionals to their payrolls as production of new vehicles ramps up.
Continued business improvement by both Ford and General Motors are leading to increased hiring by both automakers, according to... (2065 more chars)
There was some disappointing news at software giant CA (formerly Computer Associates) last week as the company announced it was going through a restructuring and cutting about 1,000 jobs. That’s why a news report from Bloomberg was surprising.
Bloomberg noted that a number of big inv... (2479 more chars)
With today's momentum around the disruption of the Flash platform within iPhone OS4.0, I felt it necessary to comment on the more significant piece of Adobe's revenue generation.
This is not to say that the iPhone OS is not relevant. On the contrary, the direction of the iPhone has obvious... (1683 more chars)
Anumber of calls to me from other users of ATT's e-mail servicehas uncoveredwhat may be a universal disconnect between e-mail accounts at ATT and e-mail accounts at both Hotmail and MSN. All ATT.NETmessages to anyone at those ISP addresses are getting kicked back to the sender. It is difficul... (96 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: For the first time in a long... (5813 more chars)
It's highly unlikely that the great Billy Squier was referring
to VMware(VMW) when he wrote the 1982 hit Everybody
Wants You , but it would have been appropriate.
Not only is VMware the vendor that received the most positive
spending intentionsout of the 95vendors included in... (5775 more chars)
As I wrote in a recent blog , there are a lot of different indicators that can reflect the relative state of the IT job market. Some survey results can be misleading because they’re not statistically valid or they don’totherwise encapsulate what’s the hiring scene is for a deep ... (2193 more chars)
Here’s a different spin on the familiar refrain, ‘More Power to the People’. A group of technology companies and Green energy-related organizations have banded together to call on President Barack Obama to adopt the goal of giving every household the ability to monitor and manage ... (2812 more chars)
The arrival of super smart evolutionary computers, capable of autonomous reasoning, learning and emulating the human-like behaviour of the mythical HAL in Arthur C. Clarke’s Space Odyssey 2001 is imminent.
The Darwinian evolutionary paradigm has finally come of... (6541 more chars)
In one of the first classes I taught, I had a student who was always scowling at me. It would have been really hard to miss that scowl. He sat in the front row and it was a small class in a small room.
He was friendly enough when he entered the class room and when he left for the evening. ... (2563 more chars)
I was reading through the top 10 business priorities for CIOs laid out in Gartner’s 2010 CIO Agenda study and considering the order of these concerns. Obviously, every CIO faces their own set of priorities based on their organization’s pressing business and organizational needs; sha... (2459 more chars)
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" Moral: adj. Conforming to a local and
... (5914 more chars)
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No one is about to confuse the Albany, N.Y. area with Silicon Valley. But New York State’s Department of Labor is taking a series of steps to help generate a sustainable technology workforce for the Empire State’s capital region. It... (1661 more chars)
In another sign of momentum for Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system, a survey by Forrester Research shows that a majority of early adopters are “very satisfied” with the operating system and a surprising number of older PC owners are making the upgrade.
Furthermore, For... (2459 more chars)
I am very new to this forum.. and I need to take a very CRUCIAL DECISION!!!! This is regarding what development platform should we choose as an IT solutions company?
What in your opinion is the next gen of Mobile device? WIll it be Blackberry, Android, iPhone or Window Mobile or any Nokia... (71 more chars)
Since the recession kicked in last year – and, truth be told, almost consistently since 9-11 – CIOs have been under intense pressure to cut costs. No real news flash here. But after IT leaders quickly dispensed with the oft-mentioned “low-hanging fruit,” it became increasi... (3318 more chars)
In what is sure to come as a relief to chief information officers across the country, a new study released this week reports that the number of students enrolled in computer science undergraduate programs has risen for the second year in a row.
In fact, the number of students majoring in co... (2647 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: I like to think of myself as you... (5334 more chars)
Remember Albert Gonzalez? He’s someone whom CIOs, CSOs and anyone else involved protecting companies against identity theft aren’t likely to forget soon.
On Thursdaya federal judge in Boston sentenced Gonzalez, the head of whatprosecutors call the largest identity theft ever,... (2655 more chars)
A new study has found that Internet advertisements that targetpeople's Web surfing and shopping habits are twice as effective as non-targeted ads.
The study, which was conducted by the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), a coalition of 40 online marketing companies, provides fuel for mar... (2500 more chars)
I'll open this post with a personal Technological Allegiance that is evolving, but then I'm going to 'Tarantino' this a bit by discussing the event that prompted the idea for this post. I'll conclude by returning to my opening example and posing a question to the reader about their personal experi... (2385 more chars)
Maybe it’s just me, but sometimes I can’t help but scratch my head at some of the conflicting and often contradictory signals in the IT labor market. Some studies point to an overall uptick in hiring for full-time IT staffers. Other reports offer a tepid hiring outlook at best.
... (2316 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: We're putting together an offer to ... (5602 more chars)
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As a journalist, I’ve worked for a number of publications over the years that make annual predictions about technology and management trends. They’re intended to be thought-provoking, which they can be, though I personally enjoy reading ... (2349 more chars)
With the pervasive presence of Windows 7 in the marketplace, and many organizations contemplating an operating system upgrade after a well-documented pass-over of Windows Vista, the Open Source operating system question is once again brought to the forefront of spending decisions.
While ma... (1602 more chars)
In what will be viewed as a positive sign for Microsoft, a survey out this week shows that companies are making firm plans to move to Windows 7. In fact, more than half of those surveyed say they plan to deploy Windows 7 by the end of the year.
That is in stark contrast to the fate that met... (2148 more chars)
Writing in InfoWorld magazine (6 Jan 2003), Ephraim Schwartz said:
"The goal of IT, since its inception, has been the timely (a relative term) delivery of information to those who need it. Behind this goal is an unspoken belief in technology: If IT could deliver to its internal enterprise c... (4327 more chars)
"Information is not knowledge.
Knowledge comes from theory."
-- W. Edwards Deming
When Sir Isaac
Newton was conked on his head by the falling apple (as the story goes),
he had information. The information was, "apples fall from trees" or,
put more generically, "things fall to th... (3181 more chars)
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Under the weight of enormous budget pressures like other states, New York recently decided to insource as many as 500 IT jobs which could save the state up to $70 million annually.
On the face of it, the plan, which was approved by the state legi... (1639 more chars)
Facing uncertainty over its plans to win back customer satisfaction, SAP Co-Chief Executives Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe, arrived in Silicon Valley this week looking to set the record straight.
Their joint appearance comes as the company tries to stem a sales slump which ultimate... (2238 more chars)
Google Apps has been a great place to access basic applications such as programs for sharing documents, calendars, and of course, email. But it has been a work-in-progress in terms of getting full featured business applications.
That appears to be quickly changing. In recent months the Goog... (2423 more chars)
10 Inspiring Quotes on Leadership
1. The goal of many leaders is to get people to think more highly of the leader. The goal of a great leader is to help people to think more highly of themselves. --J. Carla Nortcutt
2. Communication seemed to me s... (1346 more chars)
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A Clemson University researcher has been awarded a $415,000 grant to study the social factors which influence under-represented students’ decisions to enter engineering fields.
Clemson University assistant professor of engineering and scien... (2363 more chars)
A little known American poet, Delmore Schwartz once noted famously that “Even paranoids have real enemies.”
Certainly, CIOs are subject to paranoia, especially these days when job security is a rarity. In fact, any IT chief who doesn’t look over his shoulder from time to tim... (1761 more chars)
There’s an interesting article on ITWeb about different techniques that HR professionals can use to identify the right candidates for an open position and to retain them. The article notes the potential for utilizing a third-party predictive index service to help match an individual’... (2537 more chars)
Last week, Dan Rayburn posted that Akamai is now offering premium pricing to large customers who utilize Akamai for greater than 50% of their distributed content ( Streaming Media blog ).
The example Mr. Rayburn provided was Netflix, a notorious user of all three key CDN vendors (Limelight ... (1072 more chars)
An interesting article was recently posted at CIO Zone . The article was titled “ Cray
Teams with Microsoft on Cloud Computing .” Apparently Microsoft and Cray plan to work together on cloud computing
systems. Cray is a supercomputer
company. Micr... (7713 more chars)
Cisco unveiled a new router this week. So what? It’s true that most of the time the unveiling of a new router doesn’t elicit much more than a yawn from the technology community. But this time is different.
The new routing system promises to change the way we, and in fact, the en... (2161 more chars)
In recent years, federal agencies have become more generous in doling out bonuses to recruit and retain top notch workers. In 2008 alone, 37 federal agencies laid out more than $284 million to more than 39,000 workers for recruitment, retention and relocation bonuses.
Now, the Fed is b... (2117 more chars)
The economy was tough on technology professionals in 2009 with most surveys pointing to no growth in salaries or even small cuts. However, at least one segment of the IT industry appears to have fared quite well and is in line for further gains in 2010.
A survey released this week on inform... (2401 more chars)
5 Strategic Challenges to
Passing a PCI DSS Audit
For a standard that has only formally existed for
less than 4 years, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard
(PCI-DSS, or PCI) is making astonishingly rapid progress.
These days it seems like data centers have become Public Enemy No. 1. From the east coast to the west coast, city, state and the Federal governments are declaring war against the rapidly multiplying and energy guzzling facilities.
A couple of weeks ago California Governor Arnold Schwarzeneg... (2227 more chars)
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Capgemini recently released its fourth annual Global CIO Report . For some CIOs, the results are uplifting and downright encouraging.
For others, well …
For this report, Capgemini conducted 490 face-to-face interviews with CIOs from 14... (2744 more chars)
Software giant Microsoft says it is investing heavily in building a cloud infrastructure, but doesn’t expect to see serious revenues from the investment to begin flowing for two to three years.
The company believes cloud computing will be a major line of business for the company in th... (2570 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: Once you've identified the members of y... (5615 more chars)
Sally looked at Mary Carol and said, "Wow how did you do that? How did you just brush it off, I mean Jim just got in your face and told you that he hates working with you. And you are just as calm and collected as ever." Mary Carol looked at Sally and said, "Well I am really not taking it personall... (2494 more chars)
“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me.”
Do any of you remember that charming little childhood chant? It was meant to ward off the cruel verbal taunts we received from other children. Sometimes kids can be very harsh with their teasing. Sometimes adult... (3671 more chars)
Green-Tech & Sustainability Conference at the U.N. - October 7, 2009
Organized by UN-GAID and AIT Global
Video Produced by CIOZone.com
Partners -CIOZone.com, WITI, SIM NY Chapter, CIO Executive Council
Co-Sponsors: Cisco, S... (214 more chars)
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The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) contends that a Newark, N.J. software company named Peri Software Solutions Inc. has underpaid 163 workers on H-1B visas and owes them more than $1.45 million in back pay.
The H-1B visa program allows employers... (2671 more chars)
Running a traditional IT shop in an SMB is at best a thankless job. Typically the CIO – presuming there is one – necessarily wears several hats. In addition to managing IT, he or she may also be functioning as COO, CFO or even CEO.
Or onoccasion, all of the above.
ThereR... (2998 more chars)
I am a long term advocate and contributor to the PostgreSQL database project. This open source community is not owned or even dominated by a single company. As such, this past weekend I spent pretty much all of Saturday and Sunday as a volunteer answering questions at the PostgreSQL booth in the ... (1402 more chars)
There has been lots of talk and discussion around external vs internal clouds over the past couple of years. Everywhere you look there is cost-benefit-analysis for cloud. We all know that cloud is just a new name to an old face, but do we have real metrics on the cost of using an external ... (2211 more chars)
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"My observation is that whenever one person is found adequa... (5795 more chars)
This is a loaded question with no right answer. Did you notice that I said no right answer as opposed to saying that there is no wrong answer? We discussed, to a small extent, the techno-political landmine of an enterprise Grid, but providing a Single System Image (SSI) is a whole other ba... (2500 more chars)
Software and system development needs to seriously grow up- and fast. It urgently needs to become far more rigorous and dependable if it’s to have any chance of meeting critical 21st century process engineering requirements. Model-Based Development- MBD might be the answer.
... (5742 more chars)
I was pondering this issue the other day after speaking recently with some CIOs who have come from different parts of the organization.
Ultimately, I don’t think there’s a single answer to this question.
But it’s worth considering. And there are certainly m... (2926 more chars)
Dell reported a 4.8% drop in fourth quarter earnings last week, suffering from squeezed margins on personal computers. Investors responded by initially pounding the company’s shares on Friday. But what can we learn from the news?
First, as suspected, netbooks are having a big effect o... (2547 more chars)
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I was reading a blog the other day in which the author implies that the CIO profession must be facing a crisis if big companies such as Harrah’s, News Corp. and ConocoPhillips are “getting rid of their CIO and then choosing to not to re... (3791 more chars)
Simple Ad Posting Job Work available. Easy work n Easy Money. Register now !! Golden Opportunity. Complete guidance and support. Go for Go India and start making money from Online Business. Payments Guaranteed. 100% Genuine Jobs. Most trusted Online Jobs. Unlimited Job Work. Join Now !! Real work... (281 more chars)
Our green concept focuses on the use of alternative energy sources which is a very important issue nowadays due to the fact that more than 170 countries has signed and rectified the Kyoto protocol. Kyoto is a ''cap and trade'' system that imposes national caps on the emissions of countries. Our sec... (258 more chars)
I wrote an article a couple of years back focusing on Large Grids (Developer.com). I made the following claim in that article:
“A large Grid is any extension to the original and first application deployment on that Grid”
I wanted to revisit this claim and focus o... (2180 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: The company wants the analyst's report this way.... (5517 more chars)
The buck stops with Vivek Kundra.
The Federal CIO recently began conducting meetings with agency CIOs and other department officials to assess the status of IT projects. Kundra’s TechStat meetings are aimed at determining which projects are on course, which ones may need to be ... (2416 more chars)
In many ways it still seems like the netbook is the industry’s unwanted child. At every turn, major PC manufacturer will take the opportunity to explain why the netbook is a poor replacement for a laptop, and yet survey after survey, shows consumers are snapping up the handy devices.
... (2256 more chars)
Mechanical
calculators or computers date at least as far back as the 150-100 BC with the
creation of the Antikythera mechanism . In more modern times Charles Babbage created his
mechanical difference engine in the 1800’s. John Von Neumann outlined
the architecture of modern... (5405 more chars)
Early in Mel Brooks’ “The History of the World: Part I”
Moses goes up the mount to see the burning bush and receive the word of
God. Coming down with three tablets
Brooks as Moses says “The Lord, the Lord Jehovah has given unto... (6411 more chars)
You have to hand it to Arnold Schwarzenegger. He knows how to take a rather mundane topic like data centers and turn it into a man versus machines battle.
In this case, the Governator has declared war against energy gobbling data centers. Under an executive order issued last week, Schwarzen... (2404 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: It looks like you've thought of everything.
... (5550 more chars)
Mattel announced at the New York Toy Fair on Feb. 12 that more than 500,000 consumers from around the world selected computer engineering as Barbie’s next career.
Apparently this will represent the 126 th career for the doll that turned 50 last year. She’s a regular r... (2132 more chars)
Afew days ago I was talking to Honorio Padron, the Hackett Group’s IT advisory practice leader, about how companies are attracting and retaining qualified IT personnel given the shortage in this sector of the labor market.
The new generation of information technology workers differs ma... (2924 more chars)
Many articles have been written over the years about the trend of CPU vs. the trend of memory; in terms of density, speed, die size, etc. We all agree that CPU speed has been increasing at a faster pace than DRAM access time, but what does really mean for an application running on the Grid? ... (2223 more chars)
IDG posted an interesting article about older IT workers who are being forced to extend their careers as a result of their dwindling retirement savings and skyrocketing healthcare costs. Interesting both for what the article states and what it doesn’t.
One of the data points ci... (2083 more chars)
This week SAP made a surprise move to oust its chief executive Leo Apotheker and replace him with two co-CEOs. Officially the word is that Apotheker has resigned, but the company also acknowledged that it decided not to renew his contract.
The German software giant said the company would no... (2265 more chars)
Clouds, Grids, shared infrastructures or any other of such technologies aims at lowering the cost of ownership for the end-users. There are fundamental questions that still need to be answered from a service provider and service user stand point:
What is it that I am paying for? Or char... (2486 more chars)
The economic recovery has appeared a bit anemic of late. Positive economic news on one front seems to be met with less encouraging news on the next. Poor showings on the job market and the housing front, in particular, are troubling signs that the recovery may not be at hand.
Providing a bi... (2238 more chars)
Over my professional career, I've had the benefit of working through a number of different frameworks and methodologies to deliver software. For each one I've had to deal with enthusiastic idealists pushing the current approach as the epitome of successful delivery while another camp of equally ... (2041 more chars)
Symantec recently released a study in which half of the nearly 1,800 global respondents reported that their data centers are either ‘somewhat’ or ‘extremely’ understaffed. Downsizing is a factor but that’s only a piece of the puzzle. Three-quarters of the responden... (2701 more chars)
How
to Fix Your Business
[A Roadmap
for SMEs: Lead Your Business Away from Trouble and Back to
Success]
Owners of small
and medium enterprises (SMEs) are entitled to the same turnaround
help as large corporations. Unfortunately, they don't receive... (6201 more chars)
In reading Mel Duvall’s report on President Obama’s proposed federal IT spending plans, I was blown away by the following statistic: how the number of agency data centers has more than doubled since 1998 from 432 to 1,100 data centers last year.
At a time when most IT org... (1764 more chars)
Toyota is seen as the worldwide leader in lean manufacturing, of just-in-time supply chains that deliver parts to manufacturing facilities exactly when they’re needed. In fact, its lean manufacturing systems have been analyzed and copied by a wide range of manufacturers including some of Toyo... (2588 more chars)
Last week during a Web seminar, Salesforce.com’s Director of Platform Research
Peter Coffee projected that the day may soon arrive when CIOs spend most of their
time focusing on supervising business processes and less and less dealing with technology.
This certainly isn’t a... (1621 more chars)
There’s an interesting article posted on CIO.com about how middle managers at both offshore outsourcing companies and within U.S.IT organizations (i.e. retail, banking, energy) often lack the necessary skills to manage the complexities inherent in outsourcing agreements these days. The a... (3089 more chars)
Question: What happens when you take someone with empathy and place them in a meeting with someone who is pitching a fit?
Answer: The person who is pitching the fit gets lucky because they have someone in the room who understands that sometimes others get upset in the workplace AND someone... (2717 more chars)
Technology has definitely changed the world. We are more connected, have easier access to information, and we can be more productive. The question I pose: Is our quality of life better or worse? I remember as a kid growing up in the 1970’s. When my father came home from work ... (1461 more chars)
Intel is looking to put more green energy inside its operations, with the announcement that it plans to build eight new solar installations at sites in four U.S. states. The chip manufacturing giant said this week that the solar power projects will generate approximately 2.5 megawatts of energy.
... (1948 more chars)
research2guidance to publish comprehensive report on corporate mobile applications market. report identifies key trends and drivers, valuable guide for companies planning publication of smartphone applications.
For further information comment here orvisit www.research2guidance... (24 more chars)
Oracle says there will be no license changes to any of the Java developer tools. In current scenario Java has no replacement; technology companies like us cannot get complete features from any other languages. My worry is what will happen to Netbeans vs Jdeveloper? JDK vs Jrocket
I was reading an article today that referenced some survey
numbers completed my Check Point Software. For those who don’t know, Check
Point is a leader in providing network security solutions.
According to this
survey, a shockingly low nu... (1964 more chars)
According to university administrators, enrollment in computer science and IT-related undergraduate programs has dropped by 40%-to-50% over the past decade. There are plenty of reasons for this, including a steady rise among college students to pursue degrees in other disciplines such as Business... (2314 more chars)
With each earnings release Oracle usually likes to take a poke at its arch-rival SAP by touting how many more customer wins it had in the quarter or how many SAP customers converted over to Oracle software.
The self-promotion goes hand-in-hand with Oracle chief Larry Ellison’s charact... (2360 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: More later.
Translation: I don't conside... (5330 more chars)
Hi everyone,
I wanted to introduce myself -happy to be here and be part of the virtual team.
My expertise lies in the middleware and Grid/Cloud computing world with an emphasis on High Performance Grids. I have been working in the field for about dozen years, and have been involved... (199 more chars)
I saw an interesting story today that I thought could be one
of the first major deals which could help small business gain access to a
variety of different applications which have been developed through a verified
channel and be hosted on high availability tru... (1946 more chars)
Around the same time that I’d read Laton McCartney’ erudite article calling for CIOs to be compensated at similar levels as their C-level peers, I’d also come across a SearchCIO.com story on CIO salary expectations for 2010. Both stories got me thinking not only about compen... (2643 more chars)
I thought I would take to the time to bring everyone up to
date on the current technologies which have helped many colleges develop and
run online degree programs which both meet the expectations of the accreditation
boards and the general business community.
Over... (3115 more chars)
Research firm Gartner added its voice to those predicting a rebound in technology spending in 2010, forecasting that worldwide IT spending will grow by 4.6% in 2010.
Gartner said a slow but steady improvement in the macroeconomic environment will support a return to modest growth. Worldwide... (2280 more chars)
After toiling in
obscurity, learning the hard way about stand-up comedy and how to play
the banjo, Steve Martin started catching on in the 1970’s hitting the
big time with a comedy album titled “Let’s Get Small.”
The
title and the bit by t... (5334 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: All good ideas degenerate into work.
Tra... (5524 more chars)
Thanks to those who have contributed to this. If you wish to be mentioned please respond and your name will be attached. There is a list of CIO, IT Attorneys, Directors, Project managers, Project leaders, Technicians and Users that have contributed.
The PMO is running meetings, asking... (1290 more chars)
Purdue University recently announced a summer program it’s planning for high school teachers, guidance counselors and students that's aimed at encouraging more girls to consider computer-related careers.
It’s a shrewd move which hopefully will have some impact. Many educa... (1740 more chars)
IBM released its fourth quarter results Tuesday and in yet another sign of the economy rebounding, it managed to come in at the top end of its earlier forecasts. Big Blue said fourth quarter profit grew 8.7% to $4.81 billion, or $3.59 a share, an increase from the $4.43 billion, or $3.27 a share it... (2100 more chars)
How many CIOs do you know that make as much as, say, their company’s COO
or CFO. For that matter how many IT chiefs do you know who sit on their company’s boardof directors.
.
You can pretty much do the math on one hand.
Now a few years ago when chief information’s... (3280 more chars)
SAP recently reported results that certainly look positive for the enterprise software giant, but it is far too early to say the company is out of the woods. In reporting its fourth quarter results, Germany-based SAP said its fourth quarter revenue dropped 9% - a smaller decline than the company ha... (2533 more chars)
In the last couple of days both German and French bodies have recommended against the use of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer at least temporarily until further patches are found to fix one of its current vulnerabilities. The vulnerability in question has been used in recent days to attack compan... (5365 more chars)
I was reading a story posted by eWeek which lists the top 25 companies that applied for and received approvals for H-1B visas in 2009. The list includes the names of companies that you might expect to see, including Microsoft (#2 with 1,318 H-1B visas); Intel (ranked 3 rd with 723) and Ci... (3836 more chars)
Top sales guys as seen from top IT guys
Gary Beach of CIO.com writes about top 10 characteristics of Sales people as viewed by senior level IT folks. Here is the list
"
10. Understand your business.
9. Possess competitive intelligence/knowledge.
8. Provide ongoing support af... (2338 more chars)
Cloud Computing WHY?
Lot have been written on cloud computing. But is it really a viable
option? if yes. Then how do we assess it and measure the business
value? What are the main challenges in the technology? In short lets
break the problem in brief, like a Technology Consultant.
T... (3486 more chars)
Up until a few years ago, the average tenure for a CIO in most Fortune 2000 organizations was about 3 years. For some IT leaders, the duration was much shorter.
How things have changed.
To be sure, there are still varying lengths of service for CIOs and these are influenced... (2671 more chars)
By now you’ve no doubt seen any number of advertisements or promotional materials related to IBM’s Smarter Planet campaign. Blue Blue launched the campaign a little more than a year ago, based on its vision of a more richly interconnected network of cities, transportation networks, busi... (3315 more chars)
Streamline production with fast, effective Waterfall, RUP and Agile processes. Use mixed software development strategies to meet specific project needs.
Despite signs of life in the economy, the realities of software development persist. Most companies and customers need their software y... (1177 more chars)
It seemed to John that Jane spent at least as much time away from her desk as she did at her desk. It seemed like every time he walked down the hallway he would see her speaking with someone. And she never made it through the company cafeteria without stopping to exchange greetings with several pe... (3018 more chars)
One of the things that I’ve enjoyed most about covering IT management issues for the past 20-plus years has been the evolving relationship between IT organizations and the businesses they support. It wasn’t that long ago when many IT organizations were looked uponas little more than ... (3502 more chars)
I thought I would take the opportunity this week to mention two
products which are being awarded at this week’s CES show that I thought were
quite interesting and could potentially be products which could come in handy
to those out in the field.
... (2483 more chars)
The recession knocked the wind out of the sails of some organizations’ Green IT efforts, but there are signs of renewed enthusiasm, a report from Forrester Research has found.
In a survey of enterprise Green IT practices, conducted in November of 2009, Forrester found that a wide rang... (2540 more chars)
Well in an interesting twist in the sage that is the “Green
Dam” project. Cybersitter LLC is suing Sony, Acer, Asus, BenQ, Levovo and The
Chinese government itself over the former (and still pending) requirement for
machines to be pre-loaded with the... (1749 more chars)
The
importance of understanding the nature of business anomalies as they happen and
taking concrete steps to minimize adverse effects on the business is what
differentiates between successes from failures.
In
recent times fierce competition and the volatile market envi... (1717 more chars)
First there was Virtual Reality-the creation of simulated games, objects and avatars; narratives embedded in online virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft, with 15 million subscribers.
Then came Augmented Reality- created by integrating or ... (5282 more chars)
Under a promotional subscription program that Microsoft is offering through June 30, small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs) are being offered half off on first-year licensing fees if they to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional and/or Office 2010.
The program, called Microsoft’s ... (1825 more chars)
Corporations are beginning to realize the potential of their Intranets as a source for communications and collaboration among employees, a report on the Top Intranets for 2010 has concluded.
In releasing its annual report on the state of intranets, research firm Nielsen Norman Group noted... (3112 more chars)
I thought I would follow up to an article that I wrote a
week ago amount the current smartphones and how they match up towards each
other. (I don’t know if it has been posted yet). The question really is whether the new Google
Nexus One phone really affect... (1931 more chars)
Well I recently read an Op-Ed by Bono titled “Ten for the
Next Ten” and one of the points that saw was about the continued contention
that music piracy is hurting the small artist the most and should be tracked in
some way to eliminate the issue. Now I... (2523 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: Now what would that look like in our
environmen... (5782 more chars)
I’ve never met Dr. John D. Hamalka, the CIO of Harvard Medical School,. but from his blog and what I’ve read about him he seems to embody many of the characteristics of a new waveof CIOs that is has emerged in the past few years.
What are the difference between old school IT l... (3306 more chars)
While officials at Oracle and Sun Microsystems continue to sweat it out while European Union regulators decide whether or not to bless this marriage on or before Jan. 27, the co-founder and creator of the open source database at the heart of the EU’s anti-competitive concerns, Monty Wid... (2684 more chars)
Well I thought I would add a couple of words on the recent
news that the GSM A5/1 stream cipher has been cracked. For those who don’t know
A5/1, it is a steam cipher which is used to encrypt the dialing and voice
coming from and going to GSM handsets. The ... (1642 more chars)
There’s been a tremendous amount of hype over the past year regarding the integration of customer relationship management (CRM) systems and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and how businesses can leverage the two to tighten their customer connections.
Sa... (2125 more chars)
In reading over the technology news in the last couple of
days I saw an article about the actions of Fireeye , Inc a small security firm
located in Milpitas, CA which is in the southern bay area. What Fireeye did was
quite remarkable and is not something that has ... (2009 more chars)
Mary Carol arrived at the hospital too late, Lydia had just died. Mary Carol and her co-workers all knew that Lydia was dying. Lydia had been fighting cancer for several months and unfortunately she did not respond to the treatment. Mary Carol was coming to say goodbye. She said her good byes and h... (2536 more chars)
In an effort to spur the use of their 802.11n products Cisco
is not offing some sweat special offers in order to help the transition to the
higher speed wireless alternative. The special offer allows the purchaser to buy
the Aironet 1140 access points for a new ... (1623 more chars)
Year-end is a popular time for journalists and bloggers to assemble ‘Best of’ and ‘Top’ lists (i.e. Top Ten Enterprise Trends to Watch; Nine Best Films of ‘09). I had intentionally shied away from adding one of my own since crafting yet another one seem like overkill... (5102 more chars)
Data profiling tools do two things: they discover facts about data values and they discover relationships between different data items. As I have commented before they are typically not very good at the latter, at least when those relationships exist across data sources rather than within a single ... (3000 more chars)
Considering outsourcing ? Beyond cost savings and the need to focus resources on your company's core strengths, there are other various reasons why you should - or should not - outsource. After all, not all outsourcing companies are created equal, and outsourcing, in general, is not necessarily th... (3040 more chars)
Well only in the U.S. can we be finishing a bill on the eve
of one of the largest holidays in order to save ourselves from further delay
and unneeded debate. The senate finally passed their version of the healthcare
bill (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act... (2386 more chars)
Well first I must introduce myself as this is the first of (hopefully)
many blogs posts on here. My name is Sean Wilkins and I am a networking
consulting/engineer/author. I have been in the business for about 15 years and
have been around the U.S. several times ov... (2293 more chars)
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"This isn't right. This isn't even wrong."- Werner Heisenberg
... (4993 more chars)
Ever since Netbooks arrived on the computer scene about two years ago, they have attracted either the praise or scorn of users. Netbooks are regularly dismissed by analysts and such high-profile industry people as Michael Dell as being too underpowered and too small to be taken seriously.
... (2182 more chars)
The Recorder, a daily legal newspaper for Northern California, published a thought-provoking article on Dec. 22 about the rise of Silicon Valley’s tech giants as lobbyists in Washington.
The story kicks off with an anecdote about how Oracle co-president Safra Catz held a fun... (2293 more chars)
Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra was recognized this week by InformationWeek as the Chief of the Year. The magazine said it chose Kundra because he demonstrated “both a compelling IT strategy and an ability to deliver business benefits as a result of that strategy.”
... (2355 more chars)
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When it comes to commercial software, I’ve always felt that the particular system a Fortune 2000 organization ends up selecting through the RFP, bidding and evaluation process largely boils down to the functionality, price point, architectural fi... (3872 more chars)
Jane had a tough decision to make. She had two strong candidates for her former Director of Software Development position. Newly promoted to CIO (Chief Information Officer) Jane needed to backfill her old position quickly. This was the first decision she would make in her new role, so selecting the... (2818 more chars)
A couple of new surveys out this week more-or-less substantiate what many CIOs and their staff are feeling. IT departments are overworked at a time when there is little room for improvement in hiring budgets.
A report by IT hiring firm Robert Half Technology found that about 43% of chief in... (2676 more chars)
After rounds of verbal jousting between Oracle and the European Commission over the software giant’s nine-month effort to acquire Sun Microsystems and its hotly-contested MySQL open source database system, a treaty of sorts appears to be in the works.
On Dec. 14, Oracle mad... (3121 more chars)
Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner finally took flight Tuesday, more than two years behind schedule. The Dreamliner, with its sleek composite materials structure, is destined to become one of the great achievements of aviation history.
Airlines around the world have placed some $140 billion wort... (2272 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: Now what would that look like in our environment... (5901 more chars)
Michael ‘Monty’ Widenius, the founder of the same MySQL open source database that’s at the heart of the European Commission ’s concerns over Oracle ’s plans to acquire Sun , has made an impassioned public plea for developers and others to inundate the EC with e-ma... (2569 more chars)
A study released last month raised a number of questions surrounding the government’s multi-billion dollar effort to spur the use of electronic health record (EHR) systems in hospitals and physicians offices.
The study, which was led by the Harvard School of Public Health, compared 3,... (2400 more chars)
It seems everywhere I turn lately I’m either reading or hearing about the death of the traditional premise-based ERP model. Case in point: there’s a terrific video that was recently posted on ZDNet of blogger Brian Sommer, former director of Andersen Consulting’s Software Inte... (2679 more chars)
Bank robber Willie Sutton was once famously quoted as saying the reason he robbed banks is because “that’s where the money is.” It seems another form of criminal is adding new meaning to that old quote.
Cisco Systems reported in its annual security report released t... (2568 more chars)
In case you hadn’t heard, SAP is making preparations to release a decision-support tool called Constellation. SAP describes the forthcoming system as a ‘virtual war room’ that will enable users to collaborate in real-time and draw upon business intelligence from both the cloud... (2258 more chars)
The scene below depicts Jane and her behavior while in a bad mood. In this potential scenario Jane is being really hateful:
“Do you think you could stop surfing the web long enough to get me a latte? I would hate to think your horoscope for the day includes bad customer service.” For... (2802 more chars)
A Guide for Project Managers
"A goal without a plan is just a wish." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
What is it? Planning is a very natural process. Every day we all make lots of little plans (eg. what we will watch on tv tonight, what we will do at the weekend, what we will have for dinner,... (7245 more chars)
Consolidation is continuing in the IT research sector, with word this week that Gartner has entered into an agreement to acquire AMR Research of Boston, Mass.
Gartner of Stamford, Conn. said it had reached an agreement to acquire AMR for about $64 million in cash. AMR, which has projected r... (2471 more chars)
Under pressure from user groups around the world, SAP has decided to postpone any decisions to increase support costs until early 2010.
Under a program that the German software giant had unveiled in July 2008, SAP had planned to gradually increase maintenance costs over the next thr... (2655 more chars)
A non-profit group, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, updates corporate and governmental data breaches going back to 2005. What’s striking about this list is the number of major corporations and government agencies that don’t have even basic policies in effect to prevent breaches? What&... (2703 more chars)
According to Reuters , the European Commission has scheduled a Dec. 10 hearing for Oracle to make its case for acquiring Sun Microsystems . On one level, the move seems a bit odd given that Oracle recently asked for and received an extension from the EU to “further develop its argumen... (3063 more chars)
Agile practices in software projects help you to reduce requirements risks and deliver real business value.
Every software project carries some risk, but many of these risks can be mitigated. That's true of problems related to product requirements – problems that are often cited as ... (1479 more chars)
Time to break out the big guns. With Sun Microsystems losing an estimated $100 million per month (by Larry Ellison’s estimates, anyway) while the European Commission ponders the competitive implications of Oracle ’s $7.4 billion bid for technology-rich but financially-struggling ... (3741 more chars)
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"Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans."
... (5280 more chars)
On Nov. 20, the European Commission granted Oracle an extra week to “further develop its arguments” in response to the commission’s anti-competitive concerns regarding Oracle’s bid to acquire Sun. Oracle requested the extension from Jan. 19 to Jan. 27, citing disruptio... (2592 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: Great idea. Put together a meeting to get everyo... (5282 more chars)
According to The Wall St. Journal , SAP and Microsoft are planning to announce a partnership on Wednesday under which Microsoft will name SAP as the ‘preferred provider’ to customers for its budgeting, planning and forecasting software.
The two companies have collabor... (2111 more chars)
IBM is facing the heat in Texas over an $863 million government data center consolidation outsourcing project. An independent report on the seven-year project, commissioned by the Texas Department of Information Resources, says the project is “not sustainable” and that the state is a lo... (2986 more chars)
Director of the Future Enterprise Research Centre in Australia- David Tow, predicts a major shift in IT business models with the next incarnation of Cloud Computing- Cloud 2.0.
The Cloud is a metaphor for shared infrastructure, software and data within the web. The original cloud c... (5546 more chars)
"There is a curse.
They say: May You Live in Interesting Times" - Terry Pratchett
While I'm consistently entertained by Pratchett's works, I was
reminded of this quote again this morning as I listened to the current
economic situation being described as "unprecendented" in a discussion
... (2566 more chars)
It seems that SAP is going beyond cost-cutting to strengthen its the bottom line.
According to a German magazine report, SAP is planning to raise maintenance fees for hundreds of customers who use older versions of its software. The report, published by Wirtschaftswoche , claims tha... (2225 more chars)
Scene One :
“Do you think you could stop surfing the web long enough to get me a latte? I would hate to think your horoscope for the day includes bad customer service.” For some reason, snapping at the coffee house barista made Jane feel just a bit better. Jane slammed some money on... (1395 more chars)
California is continuing to look for ways to improve the
procurement of large information technology projects. Last August, the
Department of General Services (DGS) held a panel
with senior officials from the Office of the State Chief Information
Officer (OCIO) and the state’s Consumer ... (3605 more chars)
The problem when you start a giant ball rolling, is that you never know exactly where it will stop and how many things it will roll over in the process. That, more-or-less is what happened when networking giant Cisco Systems decided earlier this year that it would enter the computer server market. ... (2403 more chars)
After the European Commission filed a formal objection to Oracle ’s planned acquisition of Sun Microsystems , both Oracle and the U.S. Department of Justice defended the competitive aspects of the deal.
The EC’s ‘statement of objections’ isn’t really ... (2585 more chars)
A growing number of disgruntled former employees and a lack of adequate funding for IT security budgets are creating a case of double-trouble for corporations around the globe, a survey from Ernst & Young has found.
In its 12th annual Information Security Survey, Ernst & Young found that co... (2306 more chars)
In recent years the Securities and Exchange Commission has fallen far short in its mission of protecting Joe and Jane shareholder from the shady dealings that are all too common on Wall Street.
It’s not just that the SEC failed to nail Bernard Madoff. It was clueless in overseeing an... (3082 more chars)
Fortune 2000 companies spend millions of dollars each year to license third-party ERP and other enterprise software that’s poorly adopted by the end users it’s targeted for. I’m not revealing something that hasn’t already been known for years, but there’s still somet... (2819 more chars)
JDA Software group has announced it has signed a merger agreement to purchase supply chain software specialist i2 Technologies for $396 million.
Now, if this all sounds a bit familiar, that’s because it is. It was 15 months ago, in August of 2008, when JDA announced it was buying i2 f... (2416 more chars)
What is EA? Do we really need to answer this. Gartner,
Forrester, IBM, Microsoft and almost every consultant firm has their own
definition of EA. Let’s not put too much of interest needle into it but try to
sew the picture instead.
W hy do we need EA? For a moment let
us assume the... (3909 more chars)
Microsoft made a couple of aggressive moves this week that are aimed at wresting a greater share of the cloud computing market. On Nov. 2, Microsoft cut the price of its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), which consists of hosted versions of Exchange, SharePoint, Office Live Meeting and... (2103 more chars)
The founders and co-lead of Business Intelligence Reporting
Tools (BIRT) are looking ahead when it comes to the next generation of
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), open-source BI software. In an event held
Tuesday in New York City, San Mateo-based Actuate offered partners and
analysts a peak at th... (4527 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: We're committed to this and are going to make it... (5527 more chars)
The latest obstacle in Oracle ’s $7.4 billion bumpy path to acquire Sun Microsystems involves gaining antitrust clearance in Russia.
Oracle, which is awaiting clearance from the European Commission to close its long-delayed proposal to acquire Sun, was forced to withdraw an ap... (2124 more chars)
How many jobs does $36.6 billion buy?
That was the question many were hoping to answer as the Recovery
Accountability and Transparency Board released reports detailing how
and where stimulus dollars were being spent. According to data released
on Friday, the answer is roughly 640,000, wi... (3587 more chars)
EQ is the acronym
for Emotional Intelligence. So not only do you and I have an IQ (Intelligence
Quotient), we also have emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is not
about traditional intelligence. It is about our ability to handle ourselves and
others. It is all about our ability to ge... (2307 more chars)
The King County, Washington Housing Authority (KCHA) has
tapped Agresso to manage ongoing changes for their new enterprise
resource planning suite, the company announced yesterday. Under the
terms of the deal, Agresso will assist the KCHA in their Moving-To-Work
(MTW) program as federal complia... (2888 more chars)
In late 2003, the Missouri Department of Revenue (DOR)
decided to modernize their tax collections and department workflow
processes. They knew there was a significant amount of taxpayers who
were not filing or filing incorrectly, but due to the disparate nature
of their data and tax systems the... (3107 more chars)
The metaphor that watching a bill be made in Congress is
like watching a butcher make sausage may have a rival in stimulus funds
reporting. According to one industry expert, high expectations and
early setbacks in the Recovery Act reporting process have caused state
and local recipients to worr... (5120 more chars)
As state and local government budgets across the country
further tighten their already tight belts, there exists a growing need
to look at how government operates on a line-item level.
Now, more than ever, it is important that public sector institutions
look at how they buy the everyday ... (3619 more chars)
If you’re a public sector CIO, knowing how your IT
priorities line up with your budget is a necessity. And in the
post-Recovery Act world, having access to accurate spending data is
more than just a smart business decision – it’s the law.
Industry observers and major so... (4227 more chars)
A developer of on-demand e-procurement solutions has
invited federal, state and local government agencies to use their spend
management software free for six months.
San Mateo-based Coupa Software, Inc. announced earlier this month
they were extending a 30-day free trial period to six mo... (3110 more chars)
Lockheed Martin has announced the release of a proprietary
social media tool, using an open source software license. The platform
is one of a growing number of offerings meant to tap the power of
collaboration between employees, while creating a secure environment to
share content using blogs a... (3325 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: That's a work in progress.
Translation: ... (5833 more chars)
The U.S. economy roared back to life in the third quarter, with the nation’s gross domestic product rising 3.5% on an annual rate through the July-to-September period. This is certainly good news, but already skeptics have been raising questions about whether the possible end to the recession... (2311 more chars)
Has someone been putting strange substances in the drinking water at Gartner’s
Greenwich, CT. headquarters? Some of their analysts are beginning to sound like
New Age gurus on a mission to bring peace, love and harmony to the corporate world.
Consider these words of wisdom recently im... (2270 more chars)
Ouch. This one has got to hurt the nation’s major healthcare insurers. The State of New York announced plans this week to build a new, independent database that will provide information for reimbursement fees owed to consumers for out-of-network healthcare costs.
Here’s the kick... (2313 more chars)
While attending the annual conference for the Fairfield (CT) and Westchester (NY) chapter of the Society for Information Management in Stamford, CT yesterday, I had a chance to talk to a group of about a half-dozen CIOs and IT directors about their experiences with application development proje... (3060 more chars)
In what appears to be an alarming trend, several more sites have been tricked by cybercriminals into running their advertisements for fake anti-virus software.
It’s difficult to know how often perpetrators of such “scareware” tactics have been able to get their ads on site... (2025 more chars)
Last week I've participated in a conference dedicated to subject-oriented business process management (mainly - modeling) in Karlsruhe, Germany. Unless it was a BPM event, it was properly organized and orchestrated. So we really considered the subject.
The idea is to give a participant of the BP ... (500 more chars)
Where will the next great business application come from – SAP, Oracle, Microsoft? If research firm Gartner is correct, it could very well come from a growing legion of so-called citizen developers.
In fact, Gartner has gone so far as to predict that by 2014 as much as 25% of new busi... (2686 more chars)
I’m usually a bit leery about placing too much weight on research studies that are conducted or paid for by vendors. After all, they’re not likely to report any findings which reflect poorly on them or their area of focus, right?
But a recent study from Coverity on the in... (2354 more chars)
I am happy to announce the publication of my new book "IT's hidden face". Please find below more information about it (as published on my webpage):
IT’s hidden face
an excerpt from the new book
Everyth... (15335 more chars)
Social media has arrived. Get over it and get on with it.
That at least seemed to be the message futurist Don Tapscott held out to a gathering of technology executives this week. And he's not alone, in what seems to be a growing acceptance of the use of new social media forms in the workplace... (2300 more chars)
Thomas Tileston is in the business of making Hollywood blockbusters. He doesn’t do it from in front of or behind the cameras, however. He does it by using business intelligence software to predict the right number of DVDs that need to be manufactured and shipped to retailers around the globe.... (2871 more chars)
For those players who like to explore what’s available in a specific area, that is time for Achievement Diary from rs world. It's the turn of Ardougne to come under the all-seeing-eye of the diary runescape money taskmasters. From the Legends' Guild to Castle Wars, and from the Combat Tr... (216 more chars)
Three software groups which support Open Source have sent a letter to the European Union commissioner who is investigating Oracle’s $7.4 billion bid for Sun Microsystems, imploring her not to permit Oracle to acquire MySQL due to anticompetitive reasons.
The letter, dated Oct. 19... (2650 more chars)
At a conference in London earlier this week, Art Coviello, the keynote speaker and president of RSA, the security division of EMC, all but brought the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse out with him on stage.
Now, it's not uncommon for IT security types to project doom and gloom as an inc... (3434 more chars)
I amcurrently looking at some enterprise service management solutions for my organization ,BNC Remedy and CAUnicenter. Whatare your thoughts on thesesolutions, pros and cons?
TDWI’s Maturity Model is represented by a bell curve spanning five
stages of maturity. The curve, which represents the percentage of
companies at each stage, is broken in two spots. The first is the Gulf
and the second is the Chasm. (See figure 1.)
The Gulf
and Chasm represe... (4140 more chars)
Is an aggressive communication style always bad? Sometimes it appears that much of the information about aggressive styles or dominant personalities is presented using fairly negative words. Or is it that I interpret these words as negative? Here is a list, what do you think?
•Dom... (2226 more chars)
There are a number of great examples of companies using business intelligence and analytics to gain a competitive edge in their respective fields or markets. But what about putting BI to work to help your business partners use less of your products or services?
That seems to be the unlikely a... (2182 more chars)
Larry:
I’ve been reading about comments you made to analysts and press at an Oct. 15 briefing about how Oracle isn’t planning on acquiring any services companies in the near term as it focuses its attention on growing its software revenues and the soon-to-be-added hardware and s... (2719 more chars)
If you’ve ever attempted to upgrade your computer from an older version of Windows to a newer version, chances are you’ve sworn to never do it again. One of my previous attempts was so disastrous that I ended up having to purchase a new PC just so I could continue working.
That&... (2141 more chars)
Network science will be a critical enabler of advanced enterprise management in the 21st century.
Major advances are already being made in applying the principles of network science to social, technological and business systems and it will be vital for the fut... (5684 more chars)
It may be possible in the not-too-distant future for Wi-Fi enabled devices to communicate wirelessly with one another without the need of a hot spot. The Wi-Fi Alliance, a non-profit organization which aims to steer the world towards the adoption of a single standard for high-speed wireless network... (1949 more chars)
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I just finished writing the second d... (4346 more chars)
Enterprise software guru Ray Wang, who crafted the enterprise software buyer's Bill of Rights during his days at Forrester Research, is now trying to do the same thing for corporate buyers of software-as-a-service (SaaS).
Wang argued for the need for such an IT buyer's bill of rights on h... (1123 more chars)
Ispeak often with recruiters, headhunters, CIOs and corporate hiring managers about the types of IT/business skills that are in top demand across different regions and industries. For at least the past 18 months, ‘ SAP ’ has been the top response echoed by hiring managers. Demand for... (2492 more chars)
I have chosen subject for my MBA dissertation work.
Project Efficiency and Effectiveness: The IT Project Management.
I hope, it will be interesting for many people. U will share it in my blog.
There have been a number of high-profile cases recently of cyber criminals breaking into the bank accounts of small and mid-sized businesses and stealing what amounts to million of dollars. The most damaging part of this increase in criminal activity is the fact that in many cases the funds are not... (3024 more chars)
A recent story in the New York Times Business Day section focuses on the problems American university students are having siftingthrough and analyzing the overwhelming amount of data that's stored on huge databases.
In the past, the article says, students have used relatively modest com... (3850 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: I am shocked that this doesn't amaze me.
... (5529 more chars)
On Oct. 9, Capgemini and Microsoft jointly announced a new initiative called ERP+ that’s aimed at helping customers to better integrate Microsoft and SAP software. The multimillion euro program is aimed at improving the interoperability of SAP’s ERP and NetWeaver middleware softw... (1225 more chars)
That urgent notice you receive from your cable company may not be related to an overdue bill. Cable giant Comcast announced this week that it has rolled out a new service initially in the Denver market which can detect if a customer’s PC has been infected by malware.
If it does detect... (1857 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: You know what I mean.
Translation: I can... (5644 more chars)
As the Obama administration presses ahead with plans to implement electronic medical record systems in the nation’s hospitals and physician practices, it would be wise to take note of a costly tale from north of the border.
The Canadian province of Ontario was embarrassed this week wh... (2540 more chars)
What I really want to know is this: Where are the Database Admins (DBAs) these days?
I cant tell you how many times in the past 18 months that I’ve found
real enterprises running vulnerable databases with default passwords,
weak passwords and no real permissions management.
I... (1987 more chars)
It may only be installed on 2% of mobile devices today, but by 2012 research firm Gartner believes Google’s Android mobile operating system could leap into second place globally. In fact, Gartner believes Android will enjoy such a surge in popularity that it will capture 14% of the global sma... (2384 more chars)
The wires and blogosphere have been buzzing since The Wall St. Journal reported on Oct. 5 that executives at Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. are considering putting the maker of data center networking equipment up for sale. Since the article was published, other media outlets and pundit... (2629 more chars)
Employees who like to share the latest news with their Facebook friends or tweet their followers while at work, run the risk of losing their job, a survey suggests.
Technology recruiting firm Robert Half interviewed 1,400 chief information officers and leading technology executives to get t... (2368 more chars)
The Federal Trade Commission took steps this week to rein-in bloggers who flog products or accept payments from advertisers for positive reviews by issuing new guidelines that come with fines of up to $11,000.
The revised Guides take aim at what has become a disturbing practice on the Inter... (3182 more chars)
IBM today announced a new low-cost hosted Lotus Notes e-mail service that’s aimed squarely at Google’s browser-based Gmail offering. And while that’s bad news for Google, it’s good news for cloud computing.
IBM’s LotusLive iNotes, which works with Lotus ... (2170 more chars)
When you were a child, did a parent or a teacher every say to you “Two wrongs don’t make a right”? I was listening to a teleseminar on business etiquette and I heard a variation of that saying that I really liked:
“Two rudes don’t make a right.”
I... (2034 more chars)
As part of an ambitious plan to halve its carbon emissions, British grocery giant Tesco has announced that it has deployed software from CA to automate and manage its efforts. The company says it has implemented CA’s ecoSoftware to help track its carbon emissions and to develop strategies to ... (2193 more chars)
On Sept. 29, a U.S. District Court judge in Providence, R.I. overturned a $388 million jury verdict which claimed that Microsoft had infringed a patent held by anti-piracy software company Uniloc Singapore Private Ltd. In 2003, Uniloc USA sued Microsoft in federal court in Rhode Island, cla... (2154 more chars)
Dell announced a new addition to its Latitude Z business laptop lineup, a new machine that among other things features a wireless charging capability.
First, let’s get the humdrum business out of the way. The new device is being billed by Dell as the world’s thinnest, lightest 1... (2029 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: I'm not worried about that. We're all pros and w... (5487 more chars)
Xerox joined the growing list of hardware manufacturers deciding to get into the IT services business, when it agreed to scoop up Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) Monday in a $6.4 billion cash and stock deal. The buy immediately makes Xerox a major player in the IT services sector and provides it... (2008 more chars)
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There’s a lot of talk these days ... (4266 more chars)
One of the biggest burdens faced by CIOs is overhead. Plenty of CIOs talk about their desire to run an agile IT operation that can react quickly to changing business needs. Problem is, many IT leaders have their feet stuck in the cement otherwise known as fixed IT costs or the day-to-day co... (2315 more chars)
RISK is by far another misused term
after ROI in IT. It is often used to describe "the probability of
the unknown" - maybe I am giving too much credit to the ones who use
it! It is also used to make IT decisions most ambiguous. La... (5122 more chars)
HP Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd stood before a group of financial analysts this week and gave an upbeat, but somewhat muddied look at the company’s fortunes for the year ahead.
Hurd touted the company’s portfolio of products and its broad IT services reach, thanks to its ac... (1860 more chars)
Over the past several weeks a number of disturbing reports have surfaced concerning an increase in electronic bank fraud against businesses. One warning from a high profile industry group went so far as to urge businesses to set up a stand alone computer for business banking – one that could ... (3563 more chars)
We’ve been through this before, a number of times. Some new technology comes thundering over the horizon, and CIOs understandably ask themselves: “What does it mean for me and my job?”
Go back to PCs. For years IT managers were guardians of huge mainframes that had to be k... (4585 more chars)
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There is a dirty, little secret ab... (2344 more chars)
HP made a huge bet when it plunked down nearly $14 billion a year ago to acquire Electronic Data Systems. But now, with the economy struggling to get back on its feet, it looks like the gamble turned out to be a shrewd move.
HP announced today that it is officially renaming EDS to HP Enterp... (2016 more chars)
One of the upsides of a weak economy is that it forces vendors to identify new revenue (re: profitable) opportunities, which translates into additional product options for buyers. This includes efforts by software heavyweights such as IBM , SAP , Oracle and Microsoft to scour the market for... (2336 more chars)
With its deal to acquire Perot Systems for $3.9 billion, Dell puts itself on a more even footing to compete with HP and IBM for projects that involve IT services. But rather than becoming just another me-too player in the IT services field, Dell may be gaining itself a bit of an edge in a red-hot m... (2193 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: We want world-class best practices, people, and ... (5791 more chars)
“I already know that.” Now there is a phrase that does not encourage conversation. In fact if someone approaches you to speak with you and you hit them with an “I already know that”; you might as well say “Go away” or “I don’t care what you think.R... (1778 more chars)
For many companies, a 4% rise in quarterly net income would be encouraging news in the midst of a global recession. But not at Oracle .
The main reason Wall St. analysts were disappointed by Oracle’s first quarter earnings report is that the company saw new licensing revenues ... (3003 more chars)
Next year marks the 15 th anniversary of The Data Warehousing
Institute (TDWI), an association of data warehousing and business
intelligence (BI) professionals that has grown nearly as fast as the
industry it serves, which now tops $9 billion according to Forrester
Research.
In 1995,... (4921 more chars)
IBM Cognos laid out a roadmap for the future and provided a deep dive
into the elements of its next major release (due Q2, 2010) in its
fourth annual Industry Analyst Summit in Ottawa this week.
Due to confidentiality agreements, there is not much I can discuss
publicly about future r... (2986 more chars)
Have you ever tried to sign into a Web site or sign up for an online service and been asked to retype some form of distorted text? Like millions of other Web users, you have just completed a very simple puzzle involving a CAPTCHA (Completely Automatic Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans... (2259 more chars)
Fed up with spiraling enterprise software licensing fees and maintenance costs ? It could be quite some time before you see any relief, depending on the software and IT services strategy that your organization is willing and able to take.
Last week, BusinessWeek published an... (2958 more chars)
The federal government has launched a new online storefront for agencies to browse and purchase cloud-based IT services, clearing the way for wider adoption of cloud services.
In an announcement Tuesday, Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, said the Apps.gov Web site will help lower... (2085 more chars)
We all know the Internet is a dangerous place. It’s littered with ads for software to make your PC run faster, speed Internet downloads, screensavers with adorable pictures of kittens or puppies, and offers for free anti-virus protection. Unless the source is trusted, most people know to avoi... (2869 more chars)
Talk about advertising traction.
After Oracle ran an ad in some editions of the Sept. 10 The Wall St. Journal, the technology media and bloggers have been buzzing about what’s contained in the six-sentence annnouncement and what isn’t.
... (2918 more chars)
Social computing is the crucial next step following the rise of personal computing in the evolutionary computing stakes.
The term Social Computing has many connotations. It has come into prominence over the past few years due to the growth of dozens of hugely successful so... (4507 more chars)
So Microsoft has set up a nonprofit organization to foster increased communication and collaboration between open-source communities and software companies. The software giant announced this week that it has contributed $1 million to form the CodePlex Foundation, which aims to smooth things over be... (2470 more chars)
Got a question about how to get rid of that roll of fat, or what foods are best to maintain a sharp mind? Why not fire off a tweet to your healthcare provider.
Lately we’ve been hearing a lot about how corporations are experimenting with various forms of social media to reach out to c... (2091 more chars)
Support and Growth can be mapped to Present and Future. For long we have
lived in the myth that IT is a support function. Anything not
comprising core business is always looked upon as a support. In this
article my aim is to confront this myth. Will Give direction, How to make IT a Profit center... (33 more chars)
The Apple faithful gave Steve Jobs a heartfelt welcome back to center stage Wednesday, five months after the iconic chief executive received a life-saving liver transplant.
Looking gaunt but well in a loose fitting pair of jeans and his trademark mock turtleneck long sleeve shirt, Jobs took... (2068 more chars)
There’s been a lot of buzz over the past few months regarding how enterprise software vendors such as Oracle , SAP and IBM are directing more of their sales and marketingmuscle at midsized companies. It’s hardly surprising, given how other technology vendors similarly pushed the... (2494 more chars)
Last week, the European Union’s antitrust arm announced that it intends to investigate Oracle ’s planned $7.4 billion takeover of Sun Microsystems , citing anti-competitive concerns over the software giant’s potential absorption of Sun’s MySQL open source database. A... (2474 more chars)
Whether you are a project manager planning for a smooth implementation of a plan or a project sponsor on whose decisions a project depends, you cannot escape from the fact that project estimation is essential to its success. In the first place, there are three basic requirements that a project m... (4584 more chars)
A recent Gartner study found that although most companies aren't planning to hire IT workers any time soon, those who are find it difficult to attract talent in a few key areas -- enterprise architecture, database administration, ERP programming and analysis, project management , Internet a... (679 more chars)
Right now in this corner of the world, students have gone back to school. And a popular first week of school assignment is to write an essay on your summer vacation. Popular titles include ‘What I did on my Summer Vacation’ or ‘What I Learned on Summer Vacation’.
In keep... (1415 more chars)
Dear colleagues,
My company, GEM Lifestyle, is building a 3D Virtual World and Social Networking website called GEM Island ( http://augustoyingguo.gemisland.com ). Watch this video http://is.gd/2gM9W
I would like to quickly talk you about my company, and hopefully convince you of registe... (2834 more chars)
Memo to President Obama:
Mr. President, as your administration pursues its objective to achieve full digital health records by 2014 at an estimated cost of $10 billion a year, you might want to look closely at what other countries have experienced in pursuing similar goals.
Beginni... (3304 more chars)
CIOs that have pushed for the early and enthusiastic adoption of Web 2.0 technologies by their organizations, have been rewarded for their vision, a survey by McKinsey & Co. has concluded. According to the consulting firm, those companies that can be categorized as heavy users of Web 2.0 are derivi... (2504 more chars)
I had meeting with about 10 people today. It is regular meeting and we have this number of participants every time. So what could I say... Only about 5-6 people could really discuss topic, other participants are just listaned. But during "live" meetings, when all participants are in one room, it is... (98 more chars)
While enterprise software giants SAP and Oracle struggle to figure out a way to compete against Salesforce.com for mid-sized businesses, the software-as-a-service pioneer is moving ahead on an entirely new front. The company announced this week that is introducing a new contact manager product for ... (1600 more chars)
I am back again! :) I have a lot of energy to finish Office upgrade project!
I had vacation in Manchester (England) to see soccer game MU vs. Arsenal. Now I have some ideas about teams in business and soccer, which I will publush here soon.
The worldwide server market continued to decline in the second quarter of 2009 research firm IDC reported Tuesday. It was the fourth consecutive quarter of revenue declines and the lowest quarterly server revenue total since IDC began tracking the server market on a quarterly basis.
There w... (2449 more chars)
I’ve been doing a lot of research and reporting lately on how a growing number of CIOs are actively exploring the possibility of sharing software, infrastructure and IT services with their peers as another path to cost savings and efficiency gains. While the notion of inter-enterprise share... (2963 more chars)
Another chapter closed on Boeing’s much-vaunted and problem-plagued 787 Dreamliner program this week with news that Scott Carson would retire. Carson, 63, has led Boeing’s commercial division and has been the chief point-man on the Dreamliner program since 2006.
The news does no... (2215 more chars)
BP made headlines last week when the energy giant awarded $2.5 billion in application development and maintenance contracts to IBM, Accenture and three Indian outsourcers. The deal is expected to help BP save roughly $500 million by consolidating from 40 outsourcing partners to five, includi... (2701 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: While we have the same goal as the FCC - to keep... (5643 more chars)
A specific challenge that seems to face all IT practitionersis that of aligning your ICT activities with your corporate strategies.In particular this even more of a headache whenyou are not in an industry wherethe application of ICT and related innovation is directly related to the organisation... (885 more chars)
Electronic
Discovery in2008
January is always a time for reflecting
back on the previous year, but picking the judicial top cases for electronic
discovery is a complex and perhaps insurmountable task.
My key picks for 2008 are just a small
sampli... (4542 more chars)
It seems Facebook and the Canadian Privacy Commission have come to an understanding. On one side, Facebook has agreed to limit the amount of personal information third-party software developers can collect from members. And on the other side, the privacy commission appears to be willing to wait for... (3327 more chars)
A report issued by IBM Wednesday warns there is an “unprecedented state of Web insecurity” on the Internet as cybercriminals and hackers take advantage of new exploits to gain data and access to personal information.
The X-Force 2009 Mid-Year Trend and Risk Report, found that th... (2411 more chars)
After the U.S. Department of Justice approved Oracle ’s plans to acquire Sun Microsystems on Aug. 20, the only obstacle standing in the way of the transaction is the consent of the European Commission . But it’s far from a done deal.
Reports indicate that the antitrust gro... (2305 more chars)
Yahoo launched a major upgrade to its popular email service this week, in an effort, as it says, to be at the center of people’s online lives. The funny thing is, you could be mistaken for thinking you had logged onto your Facebook account rather than Yahoo Mail.
The upgrade includes ... (1916 more chars)
While Apple and Research in Motion battle to see who can launch the most feature-rich smartphone, Microsoft is moving forward with an initiative aimed at the opposite end of the spectrum.
The software giant announced Monday the launch of OneApp, new software that enables standard cellphones... (2320 more chars)
Natural system computing is the field of research that investigates and applies computational techniques modelled on the information processing and self-organising operations of nature and organic systems.
The new paradigm of Systems Biology seeks to map the networks and information flows t... (5612 more chars)
Vice President Joe Biden today announced that $1.2 billion in federal stimulus money will be set aside to help hospitals implement electronic medical records (EMR) systems .
The program is expected to award twenty grants to hospitals and clinics in the first quarter of 2010, with... (3541 more chars)
Saleforces.com continues to defy the economic downturn, racking up another quarter which saw the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendor increase sales by 20% on a year-over-year basis.
The San Francisco company reported that sales for the quarter ended July 31 came in at $316.1 million, up 20%... (2053 more chars)
Even in the best of times, technology services and solutions companiescan beforced to shut down, sometimes leaving their clients in a lurch.
This year, in the space of several months, technology giant Nortel filed for bankruptcy protection, as did BearingPoint, once one of the leading tec... (3102 more chars)
If you believe what Delloite is saying in their ‘ The 2009 Shift Index ’ then harnessing the flow of knowledge and information is the primary determinant of achieving and sustaining long-term success. A large factor in that equation is the ability to attract and retain the smart... (5783 more chars)
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey loves him some blogging. He has
used it to tout his company’s virtues and defend his business tactics. But
following an op-ed he wrote on health-care reform that appeared in traditional
media outlet the Wall Street Journal last week, he struck a nerve with... (1530 more chars)
Here’s a factoid that will cause you to shudder if you’re the type of person who likes to vent their frustrations in social networking forums. According to a survey released today by CareerBuilder, some 45% of employers are now perusing social networking sites to research job candidates... (2930 more chars)
The last blog I posted focused on continuing complaints by customers (and pundits) about how packaged business software is so poorly designed. Even when third-party software has been customized, it rarely meets all customer needs. I went on to press the case for open source software (OSS) as ... (2235 more chars)
By now most people will have read the stories about the arrest of the Heartland Payments Systems hacker. Albert Gonzalez, 28, of Miami was arrested for being the alleged ringleader behind a strong of cybercrimes which resulted in the theft of some 130 million credit and debit card numbers.
... (2743 more chars)
The Huffington Post, the unabashedly liberal Web site which offers a combination of news and advocacy journalism, has launched an initiative with social networking venture Facebook.
In editorials on its home page Monday, the Post touted the partnership as a collaboration that would “t... (2228 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: Right or wrong, let's stick to the process.
... (5620 more chars)
I’ve been seeing a lot more articles lately about how packaged business software is so poorly designed. It’s an age-old complaint, to be sure, but it got me to thinking about the ramifications and ripple effect of the shortcomings of third-party software.
Some organizatio... (2077 more chars)
It seems that from the day Vivek Kundra was named to thepost of Federal Chief Information Officer, he has had to keep one eye looking over his shoulder for attacks. As if the job of being the first Federal CIO isn’t tough enough, Kundra has had to be on guard against attacks that go well bey... (2251 more chars)
Cisco has been making a lot of noise lately about expanding beyond its traditional networking equipment base into other products and services. Most notably, it has begun selling servers which puts it in direct competition with traditional partners like IBM and HP. But could Cisco also be looking to... (2230 more chars)
It’s the middle of summer and time to take a break from all the technology wheeling and dealing.
CareerBuilder released a survey today designed to “bring a little levity” to the midst of a very stressful working environment. The national job site surveyed 2,600 hiring mana... (2153 more chars)
VMware struck an interesting deal on Monday when it announced plans to acquire enterprise application and Java developer SpringSource for $362 million in cash and equity. SpringSource, which is privately held, has already approved the deal, which is expected to close in the third quarter, accor... (2152 more chars)
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Reprinted from Keep the Joint Running .
ManagementSpeak: You need to be creative.
Translation: I ... (5604 more chars)
With the explosion of social media many companies are attempting to figure out how to take advantage of the desire by people to chat, complain, gossip and opine online. The challenge has been in figuring out a way to allow the free flow of conversation while at the same time attaching value to a br... (2342 more chars)
Budgeting is going to be tight for the next year or so. Who am I kidding, budgeting is aways tight, thats why its a budget.We as top level management have to keep things moving within our company andneed to set some money aside for emergency itemsthat come up that we didn't think of while we w... (202 more chars)
At times it seems Internet entrepreneur Alan Meckler has always been able to stay one step ahead of the game.
Back in 1998 when the world was awash with money looking to invest in Internet plays, Meckler was able to sell his Mecklermedia Corp., a collection of technology trade publications,... (2203 more chars)
You’ve probably noticed that IT security, risk management, governance and compliance have begun to converge recently, or at least overlap more then in the past.
The reasons for this are varied, and probably go back to the Sarbanes-Oxley push. By necessity this needed to be a team eff... (4050 more chars)
According to reports which surfaced over the weekend, SAP is in ‘very advanced talks’ with Tibco about a possible acquisition. SAP officials haven’t commented on the report but an SAP/Tibco deal would make a lot of sense for SAP for several reasons.
Although SAP... (2269 more chars)
The Human Machine, like every other earthly creation, requires maintenance. Passion cannot be created when none exists. However, when and if you ever stumble upon passion in one of your employees, it might augur well to remember a few thumb rules:
Passion... (1227 more chars)
As the results continue to flow in from reporting season, one area that was expected to hold up fairly well in the recession was the business intelligence sector. After all, what better way for companies to look for ways to trim costs or generate new revenues than by figuring out how to better use ... (2451 more chars)
I love a good committee as much as the next guy. But Cisco currently boasts nearly 60 internal committees to help steer its strategy, according to a Wall Street Journal article on the tech giant’s new management structure. Mull that over.
And while you could call such groupthink a more d... (2200 more chars)
It’s been almost two years since SAP first announced its Business ByDesign initiative and by most accounts it has either been a dud, or a non-starter. When the company first announced the service, it said its goal was to have 10,000 clients using the service by 2010. But so far, the company r... (3070 more chars)
An interesting deal was struck Wednesday by software-as-a-service pioneer Salesforce.com, to grab a piece of a company providing cloud computing services for the healthcare arena. Salesforce has purchased a minority stake in Practice Fusion, a San Francisco startup that provides electronic medical ... (2287 more chars)
Late last week, SAP introduced a feature pack for its SAP Business ByDesign on-demand ERP software. The so-called Feature Pack 2.0 provides some useful features, including integration with SAP’s BusinessObjects business intelligence software as well as functionality to support busines... (2038 more chars)
In the early days of the Obama Administration a mini-revolution was seemingly underway. The old school way of operating was on the way out. The monolithic, slow acting – or more accurately, reacting – bureaucracy was being replaced by an agile, transparent, collaborative and streamlined... (2991 more chars)
Complex Event Processing, or CEP, is a technology in transition - a precursor to more sophisticated autonomous decision-processing emerging within the future enterprise.
CEP systems collect data from numerous sources and raw events within an environment such as a physical emergency situation o... (3906 more chars)
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Reprinted from Keep the Joint Running .
ManagementSpeak: Just give me a quick, Volkswagen solution.
... (5451 more chars)
Vish Agashe
8/3/2009
Every technology innovation changes the way we do things.
Cloud computing is creating inflection point with the way business applications
or solutions are delivered. With the obvious advantages offered by cloud
computing, are we ... (2331 more chars)
There’s been a ton of buzz since Microsoft and Yahoo finally announced their partnership last week. Many Wall St. analysts seem underwhelmed by the agreement, mainly because Google continues to dominate with a hefty 65% of the global search business and the deal doesn’t have t... (2386 more chars)
“I am so glad I am not at work, now I can relax and say what I think, I don’t have to be nice to everyone anymore”, said one of my students as she sat down and leaned back in her chair.
Right away I looked at her and said, “Who says you aren’t at work anymore? You a... (2347 more chars)
Article by Vish Agashe
These are exciting time for computing in general and specifically for Cloud computing. There are several vendors offering cloud computing followed by many services (PaaS, SaaS). Recently Informatica (The data ... (5475 more chars)
Arguably CIOs of midsized businesses have one of the toughest jobs in IT. They often not only serve as their company’s CIO, but pull double and sometimes triple duty, acting also as the firm’s CFO and/or COO. This means that at most they can devote about half their time and energy to th... (3776 more chars)
It has always been one of the ironies of technology spending: in survey after survey, CIOs and IT professionals will say that security is either their No. 1 priority, or near the top of the list. Yet, when the economy is in trouble and budgets are being squeezed, security spending is often one of t... (2119 more chars)
The results are now in for enterprise software’s big three, SAP, Oracle and Microsoft, and the results are not pretty.
As a whole the companies managed to stem the bleeding through a series of cost cuts, including some of the worst layoffs the industry has seen to date. But while the ... (2312 more chars)
There’s been a flurry of acquisitions recently among enterprise software vendors, with much of the focus centered around business intelligence and analytic software. SAP recently snapped up SAF AG , a provider of Web-enabled demand forecasting and replenishment technology for retail, who... (1890 more chars)
Hot on the heels of its $1.2 billion purchase of predictive analytics and data mining company SPSS, IBM has launched a series of ‘Smart Analytics Systems’, designed to get customers up and running on analytics in a matter of days.
The company announced early Tuesday morning that... (2297 more chars)
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Reprinted from Keep the Joint Running .
"The world is made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness... (5572 more chars)
It may be difficult to realize it, given the almost daily security warnings and virus threats, but it turns out your computer is a lot more secure today than a year ago thanks to your friendly neighborhood software giant.
That’s right, Microsoft declared at the Black Hat conference in... (2423 more chars)
TechTarget.com recently posted a thought-provoking article which explores whether Software-as-a-Service applications might actually cost enterprises more in the long run versus traditional premise-based apps. While the upfront costs of deploying SaaS apps are cheaper than premise-based system... (1903 more chars)
All signs were pointing to a definite turnaround for the technology industry earlier this week, as the sector’s leading companies pulled out a steady stream of better-than-expected results. Then Microsoft came along and took a big dump right in the middle of the parade.
The software g... (2091 more chars)
The tech sector helped lead Wall Street to gains this week as a steady stream of companies from Apple, to IBM and EMC posted solid results. The overlying message from the heads of the bellwether companies seems to be that budgets have stabilized, and growth may not be far off.
The picture, ... (2289 more chars)
It looked for a while that the once proud telecommunications giant that was Nortel, might quietly fade into memory as its assets were auctioned off one-by-one to the highest bidder. Now, thanks to an escalating battle featuring BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM), Nortel is once again in the ... (2443 more chars)
The new California Electronic Discovery Act was signed into law on June 29, 2009 by Governor Schwarzenegger. Although the new law generally tracks the 2006 e-discovery amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), we want to focus on electronically stored information (ESI) that is not ... (3406 more chars)
To date, many enterprise IT organizations have tiptoed carefully in and around the cloud as they consider the types of software applications and IT infrastructure they’re willing to entrust to third-party providers amid security, data privacy and reliability concerns.
And while s... (2987 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: Who will be writing the detailed requirements for ... (5755 more chars)
In the days of yore, CIOs used to be the kings – and rarely queens, since there were few women in the profession – of their own little domains. Of course, in those ancient days they were called Data Processing (DP) Managers or IS or IT managers or directors, and their kingdoms consisted... (3521 more chars)
First came the news this week that Amazon had angered customers of its Kindle electronic book service, by remotely deleting two of George Orwell’s books, Animal Farm and 1984. It seems Amazon allowed the books to be uploaded from a publisher that didn’t have the rights to the books, so ... (2330 more chars)
We have just returned home from visiting my parents. We had a terrific visit and smooth travels. Of course the more you travel, the more likely you are to have travel mishaps. It is how you handle these mishaps that set you apart.
An airport (or on the airplane itself) is ideal for people watch... (1507 more chars)
As someone who makes a living off the Internet, and more to the point, from the field of social networking, I’d like to think I’m riding a winning horse.
Perhaps that’s why I paid particular attention to a column in the Wall Street Journal by a leading investment advisor w... (1984 more chars)
In a new price list it came out with on July 1, Oracle has jacked up the prices for some of its database performance management tools by up to 40%.
The price hikes for some add-on tools for its flagship database management system include processor licenses for Oracle’s diagn... (2541 more chars)
Cloud Computing is quite possibly the hottest, most discussed and often misunderstood concept in Information Technology (IT) today.
In short, Cloud Computing proposes to transform the way IT it's deployed and managed, promising reduced implementation, maintenance costs and complexity,... (1697 more chars)
It’s the heart of financial reporting season and what have we learned so far? The recession is obviously taking a bite out of company revenues, but for the most part technology companies appear to have made the necessary adjustments to their operations to stem losses and have pulled off a few... (2061 more chars)
A hack which exposed sensitive corporate information about Twitter is creating a lot of debate in the Internet community about the security of cloud computing. While it may be too drastic to paint cloud computing red with this latest breach, it does raise serious concerns for companies thinking of ... (2965 more chars)
You probably read the story not long ago about Dow Jones giving employees of The Wall Street Journal, Newswires and MarketWatch a new list of rules for “professional conduct” regarding their activities on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Specifically, accord... (2912 more chars)
Microsoft seems to be under siege on a number of fronts these days, be it Apple in mobile apps, Google on the search engine and now operating system front, and even the economy is playing havoc with its scheduled fall release of Windows 7.
Here’s one more battle it doesn’t need.... (1906 more chars)
Microsoft’s plans to offer Office Web applications for free to 400 million Windows Live subscribers is a stroke of genius. Or is it?
When the software giant announced plans to offer free lightweight versions of its ubiquitous Office applications such as Word, Excel and PowerPoi... (2267 more chars)
According to a story published by the Washington Post today, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have found that your social security number could be determined just by knowing when and in what zip code you were born in.
It's an interesting read. The full story can be found here
According to a security researcher, the so-called Smart Grid technology being rolled out across the country as part of the stimulus bill, may be vulnerable to numerous attacks.
According to the researcher, many of the commands that allow the power company to interact with the smart-meters a... (153 more chars)
Oracle insists it got a good deal when it outbid IBM for Sun Microsystems, but you’ve got to wonder if Oracle Chief Larry Ellison is looking at the same numbers Wall Street took in Tuesday.
Sun projected that its fourth quarter, which ended June 30, will result in a loss of between si... (2043 more chars)
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Reprinted from Keep the Joint Running .
ManagementSpeak: Whenever you shift to a more technologically
ad... (5596 more chars)
A number of high-profile security breaches over the past year have drawn attention to the lack of security-preparedness at organizations of all shapes and sizes. But a study released Monday indicates just how widespread the potential damage may be.
The Ponemon Institute, a research body spe... (2507 more chars)
Recently HP commissioned a research study on how well senior IT decision makers are doing in providing timely, accurate, transparent IT spending information to key business stakeholders.
When HP got the survey results back from 200 IT executives around the globe, one number jumped out. R... (2454 more chars)
As pointed out recently here on CIOZone, technology,
media, and telco (TMT) companies ironically lag behind other firms' use
of social-networking and Web. 20 capabilities. Why would companies with
strong expertise in these areas shun their use?
Security, at least according to Deloitte.
... (777 more chars)
The results of a new Software as a Service study by Gartner might not give a complete picture of market sentiments towards using SaaS, but it is revealing.
According to a survey of 333 SaaS customers and prospective users in the U.S. and U.K. released by Gartner last week, many custo... (1855 more chars)
Familiar to this non stop"socail networking andpersonal sites"displaying Blocked by Websens or PleaseContact Your Administrator to access this webpage messages?
Welcome to IT companies in India.
Many software professionals consider accessing internet a waste of time during work hour... (1341 more chars)
It lost the battle for deduplication technology vendor Data Domain, so what’s the next move for NetApp? Some analysts are speculating it may not get a chance to call the shots and could, in fact, be the next takeover target.
This week NetApp gave up the battle to takeover Silicon Vall... (1517 more chars)
By 2010, Web 2.0- The Social Web- will have developed into a complex multimedia interweaving of ideas, knowledge and social commentary, connecting over three billion people on the planet. In combination with the Semantic Web 3.0 it will automatically analyse, interpret and create new forms of ... (2983 more chars)
You’ve probably noticed that more and more frequently cloud computing and SOA are being mentioned in the same sentence.
In fact, much of the recent 2009 SOA Conference and Expo in New York was devoted to cloud computing. The keynote delivered by Dr. Kareem Yusuf, a key architect of I... (2893 more chars)
As might be expected, AMR Research predicted this week that revenues for enterprise software vendors would be hit by the global economic recession. The Boston-based research firm is predicting that revenues for the group as a whole will decline in the range of 2% to 6% “based on budget lock... (2394 more chars)
Google yesterday removed the ‘beta’ tag from many of its software services, including Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Talk. When a software provider lifts the beta designation from a product, it usually means that the vendor is confident that they’re ready for f... (2224 more chars)
This article suggests that Microsoft and other companies that have recently tapped the debt markets will just sit on the money, which is hardly an encouraging sign for new capital investment, research and development, or even deal making.
That means that corporate treasurers don't have a ... (828 more chars)
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"The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often... (5703 more chars)
Amazon may be angling for a U.S. Supreme Court fight over nexus , but a victory there won't get it very far abroad.
Sure enough, Japan's tax authorities have followed in the footsteps of a growing number of U.S. state officials by hitting up the online retailing giant with a sales tax bil... (305 more chars)
All of us here are certainly into social networking, at least the professional kind. But how can anyone predict where Facebook's revenues will be in five years, even if his name is Mark Andreessen?
Didn't Rupert Murdoch have the same expectations for MySpace only a year or two ago?
... (554 more chars)
According to gloucestercitynews.net, the National Archives
are in search of an important hard drive containing sensitive files dating back
to the Clinton Administration, and are offering a $50,000 reward for the safe
return of this property.
The drive in question was a 2GB MYBOOK ... (2610 more chars)
I was reading a story on Businessweek.com the other day about how the IT staff at British Airways helped the airline save more than $3 million by working for free or taking unpaid leave to help the company cut its costs. The story caught my attention for a couple of reasons.
For st... (2760 more chars)
“Do I have to be an extravert to be a good leader? “
“Do I have to be able to walk up to strangers and strike up conversations to be a successful leader?”
My answer to both of the above: no and no! I receive both of the above (or similar) questions all the time. For s... (2181 more chars)
According to an SAP strategy document obtained by Reuters a few days ago, the German software giant is targeting a 35% operating margin by 2014 while hoping to double its revenue by then.
And while an SAP spokesman told Reuters that the strategy paper was still being discussed and sh... (2461 more chars)
Symantec has just published the results of
its 2009 Disaster Recovery survey, which the firm says it will use to
guide its product plans (as well as promote its current products, of
course).
"We're looking at challenges customers are facing, and trying to
build these requirements into ou... (2433 more chars)
By now, it should really be no surprise to anyone reading this that airports are THE prime
location for laptop theft. That's why it's so important that you never leave
your luggage unattended or turn your back on it for even a second.
But even with the strictest of precaut... (2036 more chars)
When Oracle reported its fourth-quarter earnings last week, CEO Larry Ellison made it clear on its call to analysts that the company has every intention of becoming the world’s top provider of on-demand software, even if it takes the company ten years.
With Oracle’s solid... (2301 more chars)
I was just re-watching the GTRA video (library found off the home page of ciozone.com) and tuned into Emma Kolstad Antunes, Web Manager for NASA.
Please watch her, if you haven't - for a rocket scientist, astro-phyicist type, she is very eloquent and to the point.
One... (937 more chars)
There has been a lot of discussion lately about whether CEOs should or shouldn’t use social media, and to a larger extent under what conditions should companies encourage their employees to blog, tweet, or use other social media tools.
The easiest route for companies to take would be ... (2542 more chars)
As has been reported in another post on CIOZone , a survey out this week shows that
Fortune 100 CEOs are social media slackers. Apparently they don’t spend a lot of time sending tweets to one another, checking out what their friends are up to on MySpace, or blogging about the trials and t... (1995 more chars)
Multinational companies typically have more complex computing and networking technical support requirements, because their business technology applications can span over numerous locations with very diverse operations.
Business and IT leaders are currently exploring managed cloud service options... (2648 more chars)
Have you ever wondered if your company's utilization of Business Technology is in line with the creative market leaders? The Harvard Business Review recently published an interesting commentary by Susan Cramm entitled "How to Support Your IT Innovators."
Ms. Cramm believes that to realize the ... (2374 more chars)
Some market studies continue to identify confusion regarding the true meaning of cloud-based services, and the apparent benefits derived by the early-adopters. One recent example comes from a survey of financial professionals in the UK.
However, there is already growing demand from informed ex... (2700 more chars)
Do you have your head in the clouds? Well, if so, then you're surely not alone. In breaking news, eWeek reports that Cisco Systems is pulling together key pieces of its data center and networking portfolios to create a blueprint for building a cloud computing infrastructure for service providers.... (2253 more chars)
Like any new business technology, the early development of cloud services can be a little confusing -- as some descriptions are still open to interpretation. However, the dialog is helpful, because it enables us to focus on the true business value of data center resources.
According to Forreste... (3197 more chars)
IBM announced today that a researcher had cracked a long-standing cryptographic challenge, using what is termed "fully homomorphic encryption" to allow data mining and analysis of encrypted data without revealing the sensitive data itself.
While the release touts the breakthrough as a pos... (632 more chars)
It’s been a tough month for the folks at Microsoft . On May 28, Google stole the spotlight away from Microsoft’s Bing rollout by announcing its own development plans for Google Wave , an open source communications and collaboration tool that integrates e-mail, instant messaging,... (1859 more chars)
On the surface, Oracle’s fourth quarter results (its fiscal year ended May 31) lookeddownright dismal. Sales fell 5.2% to $6.86 billion compared to the same period a year ago, and profits dropped 7.2% to $1.89 billion. The fourth quarter is traditionally one of the company’s strongest,... (2916 more chars)
I understand what the online retailing giant is up to here. Call it Amazon’s own series of state tea parties.
But to argue that online sales taxes are unconstitutional is
a bit much. Amazon can hardly be unfamiliar with the legal concept called nexus,
under which courts have com... (716 more chars)
I didn't realize that this has been happening since March.
But at the rate it's going, Microsoft will have no need to acquire Yahoo.
After all, aren’t a tech company’s most valuable assets its people?
All of which calls further into question ... (374 more chars)
What an amazing weekend for Apple. First the Wall Street Journal came out with a scoop Friday night that Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs was recovering from a liver transplant. Then news broke Monday morning that sales of Apple’s new iPhone 3G S not only beat expectations, they creamed them.... (1775 more chars)
Well, this could get ugly real fast.
It appears that the Federal Trade Commission is preparing to go after bloggers who fail to disclose conflicts of interest. According to the Associated Press , the FTC wants the authority to fine or prosecute bloggers who fail to indicate that they’... (3584 more chars)
I remember in kindergarten -- or was it first grade -- we were all taught to share. That’s fine when it comes to cookies and milk, but I’m not so sure about cloud computing.
In fact, were I a CIO, I’d be among the first in line to gain the potential benefits of cloud computing, ... (4002 more chars)
I confess I never quite understood former SEC Chairman
Christopher Cox’s fascination with XBRL, extensible business reporting language
that is supposed to help investors grapple with financial data, though how
exactly has never been adequately explained. And according to this article , Co... (1403 more chars)
Almost a year has passed since IBM announced its planned acquisition
of ILOG, the company behind the JRules business rules management system
(BRMS) and other embeddable software such as the CPLEX mathematical
optimization module licensed for use in many supply chain management
systems. The acqu... (2735 more chars)
Interesting chart on Apple up at Silicon Alley Insider.
Not only does it illustrate how important the I-Phone now is
to Apple, it shows that sales of other products, from the Mac and I-Pod to peripherals, are flat or worse. (Yes, non-GAAP sales make the trend look more
dramatic than GA... (356 more chars)
They’ve resisted diving into the market for selling their core software offerings online, but with the recession biting into sales, the software giants appear to be giving in.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Oracle is preparing to launch as many as 10 online software... (2332 more chars)
As viewers of this past weekend’s U.S. Open can attest, being the Number one golfer in the world doesn’t guarantee you a spot in the final pairing.
And while SAP hasn’t completely lost its grip as the world’s largest business management software provider, it ... (2054 more chars)
These days, does it seem like your exchange server is
becoming an overpriced fileserver?
As large business document email attachments increase in
frequency and size, email server administrators are being put under more
pressure to do more with less.
The size of the data, and it... (1819 more chars)
Seriously, playtime is over, Big Business. And tech companies in particular are being told it’s time to start cleaning up their toys.
Following in the footsteps of the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, the Federal Communications Commission is starting to show its teet... (1055 more chars)
It isn’t exactly the falling of the Berlin Wall, but a study by research firm IDC shows use of open source enterprise applications is on the rise in Europe. IDC surveyed a total of 515 Western European IT decision makers on their use of open source applications and found a surprisingly high p... (1980 more chars)
Just when you might have thought it was safe to get back
into the waters surrounding China’s
intellectual property rights, the pirates reappear .
Yes, in cases last year involving Germany’s NeoPlan Bus and
Japan’s Samsung, Chinese courts ruled in favor of patent holde... (613 more chars)
I have often wondered what characteristics make a good CIO. Books have been written about great leaders throughout history but can the same rules be applied to CIOs? Lui Sieh, in his blog, A Bottom’s Up View From a Pai Mei Gu y , discusses “ (Successful) IT People Charact... (1679 more chars)
According to reports, tennis star Maria Sharapova on Wednesday presented a prototype dress to the press that lights up when the wearer’s cell phone rings.
Sharapova showed off the dress to photographers and passers-by from the window of a department store in London. According to Reute... (3250 more chars)
I’m firmly in the camp that prefers to read books on paper as opposed to an electronic tablet, but I have to hand it to Amazon for knowing how to pull together the pieces that could make its Kindle eReader product an eventual winner.
The Seattle-based company has acquired a Silicon Va... (2039 more chars)
The eyes of the world may be on the protests taking place in the streets of Tehran this week, but the technology community is watching just as keenly at the war Iran is waging against the Internet.
In recent days Iran’s government has taken a number of steps to essentially electr... (1809 more chars)
In case you hadn’t noticed, Google is on a tear in the enterprise software space.
Already a search-engine powerhouse with considerable momentum in the cloud computing space, Google last week released a plug-in for its Google Apps that allows Microsoft Outlook customers to u... (2102 more chars)
I am interested in how we all protect against "Zero Day" the suggested and openly discussed day in the future, when a large number of destructive codes are enabled and subsequently released {by unethical hackers} against many global targets.
What are we as corporate/government thought-le... (195 more chars)
On a visit last year to Spartanburg Regional Hospital, in Spartanburg, S.C., I got to see a couple of robots in action.
There was a room-size pharmacy robot, really just a giant arm
mounted on a track that would zoom back and forth in an isle where
various medicines were stored picking out th... (3610 more chars)
If you want a window into the degree to which CIOs have embraced social networking -- and the impact of Web 2.0 technology is having on the organizations for which they work – look no farther than Washington.
Yes, Washington.
Okay, the Feds aren’t usually on the downh... (4110 more chars)
It appears that the ‘Softies have gotten the attention of the Googlers.
According to a report in the New York Post, Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, is rattling a few cages in the corporate office of Google. Indeed, it appears that Google co-founder Sergey Brin is so unner... (1088 more chars)
Determining the true value of social networks is a work in progress, but one thing is certain – the popularity of social networks is exploding.
According to a survey released today, 43% of the online community now uses social networking sites, including Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, an... (2556 more chars)
I have to say I’m a bit puzzled by the bullish case suddenly being made for Yahoo’s shares in some quarters.
Of the ten reasons given by this analyst for the company being undervalued as a turnaround case, the only one that seems at all compelling is that it’s trading a... (716 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: Tell me what the problem is in this organization... (5800 more chars)
Greetings fellow IT professionals,
Working as the Divisional Manager for IT for the Automobile Association, Group IT Manager for Value Logistics and CIO for Beyond Outsourcing I found that vendor management against SLA was a constant problem with vendors of all sizes often effectively holdi... (331 more chars)
The battle for storage device maker Data Domain gets more interesting as the Silicon Valley company’s board of directors officially recommended that shareholders reject a $30 cash takeover bid from EMC.
Instead, the company is recommending shareholders approve a cash and stock bid fro... (3131 more chars)
Putting together a resume must be a tricky business for Nick Leeson. One obvious puzzler: where do you stick the part about bankrupting the oldest merchant bank in the United Kingdom? In a recent roundtable discussion, executive placement executives seemed to come down on the side of 'Other Skills.... (4570 more chars)
The Bush era has left us with a lot of highly-publicized & highly-controversial
cases being heard in front of the Supreme Court. And many of these cases are
calling attention to the need for increased data retention and organization for
regulatory compliance and ediscovery requests.
... (1811 more chars)
When SAP vice president John Wookey announced the company’s plans to sell additional functionality to customers of its Business Suite ERP software under a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model at the Software & Information Industry Association’s OnDemand Europe conference in Amsterdam ... (1961 more chars)
Cloud computing has gone officially mainstream, with this New York Times article .
And as one who’s always scratched his head over the meaning of the term, I found
the definition that the article supplied (“in which vast stores of information and proc... (562 more chars)
“I can’t see any reason why I would ever use this information”, one of my students told me as I was helping him with an in-class assignment. The tool we were discussing is called a responsibility assignment matrix and it helps map out the roles and responsibilities of members on ... (2261 more chars)
I’ve seen very little coverage except on a few obscure tech
sites of the news earlier this month of Sears’ settlement with the Federal
Trade Commission over charges involving the retailer’s surreptitious use of
spyware.
I’ve also found it impossible to get attor... (641 more chars)
The Wall Street Journal reported today that Dell is ready to pull the trigger on an acquisition soon, with an unnamed source saying Michael Dell has said his company expects to buy a “significant-sized company” in coming months.
The Round Rock, Texas computer maker has certainly ... (2665 more chars)
Amazon suffered another outage to its Elastic Compute Cloud service this week, after one of its data centers was struck by lightning. The disruption lasted about seven hours, during which time customers were directed to use alternate instances of the service.
Now, a lightning strike to a da... (3084 more chars)
Apache Lucene seems to be turning into one of
the most fruitful open source projects managed by the Apache Software
Foundation, short of the original HTTP server that started it all.
A few months ago, I wrote about Cloudera, a firm started to offer
support for the Lucene distributed compu... (4093 more chars)
IBM can be seen everywhere these days with its Smarter Planet advertising series, promoting the benefits of an inter-connected, thinking world. That is in part why a news announcement by Duke Energy caught my eye.
The utility – the third largest in the country – wants to fast tr... (2044 more chars)
The rapid evolution of information technology is forcing companies to change the way they operate at a rate of speed never seen before. And as is common with uncharted territories, there are going to be unprecedented territorial disputes along the way.
Think back to the mid 90’s, when... (3112 more chars)
Google isn’t exactly looking over its shoulder at Microsoft just yet, but a study conducted by research firm comScore says Bing is off to a solid start.
According to comScore, the new search engine from Microsoft, dubbed Bing, increased its share of the market during the week of June ... (1542 more chars)
It’s been a big few weeks for fans of mobile phones.
Palm unveiled its Pre ,which, despite battery life that can be timed with a stopwatch , seems to be getting very positive reviews. Meanwhile, Apple’s iPhone 3G S, launched at its recent developers conference , has received... (1209 more chars)
This article raises some interesting issues for CIOZone members. The
relevant if obvious point is that Apple’s foray into corporate computing wouldn’t depend
so heavily on a big switch to its new operating system, Snow Leopard, if
companies allowed... (686 more chars)
When I first heard Larry Ellison suggest at Sun's annual JavaOne conference last week that Oracle might get into the netbook business, my knee-jerk reaction was that this had all the markings of a colossal blunder.
With Oracle on track to add Sun to its lineup, it obviously woul... (1742 more chars)
It used to be that when web applications broke down, users would be
presented with a lot of annoying technical gobbledygook about
undeclared variables or invalid database queries. With AJAX, those
asynchronous JavaScript apps intended to make the user experience
better and smoother, the symptoms... (6034 more chars)
It wasn’t that long ago when a slew of Fortune 500 companies, particularly in the financial services sector, announced they were opening captive centers in India to save a buck on a variety of back office tasks.
Now it seems many of those companies are auctioning off those centers as ... (2345 more chars)
Ever hear of StrongWebmail.com? It claims to work unlike any other form of email protection on the market today. “Your private correspondence remains just that – private,” it boasts on its website. “ No snoopers, no hackers - period! How do we do it? By using a telephone ver... (3067 more chars)
The debate about whether Apple can continue to thrive
without Steve Jobs at the everyday helm gained fresh currency yesterday when expectations
first were raised that he would appear at the new product demo, and then dashed.
Early on, in fact, it seemed that all anyone cared about ... (400 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: You know, I’m actually a pretty smar... (5452 more chars)
The much-anticipated Palm Pre went on sale over the weekend and some initial sales estimates are in. But exactly what they mean is a point of debate.
Most reports peg weekend sales somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000. The Wall Street Journal’s headline read, “Palm’s Pre Sell... (2004 more chars)
The critics already have their pens – or keypads - out to pan the upcoming Windows 7 operating system release. But while Windows Vista certainly will go down as one of the biggest technology failures of the last decade , Windows 7 has the makings of a blockbuster hit.
Here’s wh... (2961 more chars)
There’s an old saying that a rising tide lifts all boats, meaning that improvements in the economy will generally help all participants. But as enterprise software vendors have been taking a hit on new sales during the current recession, many providers have become much more flexible about t... (2543 more chars)
Achieving excellence in Business Information
Management (BIM) is but one of a slew of new differentiators that now separate market
leaders, from followers.
So who's tagged with the now arduous
responsibility of getting the right information in front of prospects,
customers and sup... (691 more chars)
With a lot of debate about Enterprise 2.0 and its impact on Cost/Productivity, there is a lot of thought aroud using Social Networking as an adaptive learning platform. Similar to what
Facebook / Linkedin does in the the
consumer market , can these tools allow businesses where
teams within an o... (683 more chars)
A report in the Wall Street Journal claims Apple CEO Steve Jobs is on to track to return to work by July 1. Jobs said in January that he intended to take a medical leave for six months to deal with an unspecified illness, which has since been described as a hormone imbalance.
Jobs, 54, was ... (2998 more chars)
Someone or probably several someones will try to hack your website today. First priority is
to stop them. Second is to learn from them, study them, figure out how
to block them better in the future.
This is the bane of all sorts
of contact and comment forms, and popular application... (4538 more chars)
According to a Reuters report , antitrust officials in Washington are looking into the hiring practices of some technology companies—including Google and Apple. Apparently, attorneys in the Department of Justice are concerned about alleged no-poaching pacts between the businesses.
I&... (3020 more chars)
In a keynote address presented at Interop last month, SAP CTO Vishal Sikka talked about components of the company’s cloud computing strategy. Sikka’s presentation included a discussion of SAP’s Business ByDesign on-demand suite which is targeted at midsized companies.
... (3356 more chars)
Globalization is reversible. That statement, made a year ago by CIBC World Markets economist Jeffrey Rubin, was on my mind as I prepared to attend a Global Sourcing Council conference in New York this week.
The statement by Rubin was made when oil was trading at close to $150 a barrel and Ame... (2842 more chars)
Yesterday, Dow Jones announced it was making changes to its famed industrial average. One of those changes was the addition of Cisco. The press release announcing the changes provided little insight into exactly why Cisco was chosen over, say, Apple or Google – two other companies thought... (1456 more chars)
For all the recent headlines about Twitter and its huge increase in traffic, a new study out from Harvard Business School shows that the median number of lifetime tweets is…wait for it…one. (Sample size: 300,000.)
What’s not surprising is that Twitter has confirmed the 90-10 ... (1742 more chars)
Someone, once told me, "The only way to understand user behavior is
to let them behave." Damned if I can find the exact quote, but I think
it was either a Yahoo engineer or one of the web gurus at 37Signals,
whom I know are big believers in the concept.
At any rate, the point was that you ca... (3281 more chars)
Today’s Times piece on the Supremos’ decision to review a lower court ruling
that narrowed the scope of business process patents is less than elucidating. Yes, the article
points out that the move is “troubling” to software developers but doesn’t
really explain wh... (2094 more chars)
After a 60-day review of the nation’s cybersecurity program conducted by Melissa Hathaway, Cybersecurity Chief at the National Security Council, the President is preparing to name a so-called cybersecurity coordinator who will direct national security policy from the White House.
The c... (4268 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: This shouldn’t take you too long.
... (5301 more chars)
Matt says he was taken somewhat aback by the negativity of my
most recent posts, so I’ll accentuate the positive in this one. Yes, indeed, this is clear evidence that April wasn’t nearly as cruel a month for technology
spending as it was expected to be. Take that, perma-bears!
... (658 more chars)
Can the plan, do, check, act or quality cycle apply to how we manage ourselves professionally? I think it does. In fact I think that managing your professional brand or image is really about using the quality cycle for your own development.
Plan – Be clear about what you want from your c... (902 more chars)
With consumers putting the brakes on spending, it would be logical to conclude that the nation’s top retailers are cutting back on their IT investments this year.
In fact, IT spending in retail is down slightly through the first half of 2009, according to market research. But it&... (2695 more chars)
This week researcher IDC came out with its survey of worldwide server sales for the first quarter of 2009, and not surprisingly, the picture was ugly. Worldwide server revenues sank 25% in the first quarter of 2009, the biggest quarterly drop IDC has seen in 12 years of tracking the market.
... (2866 more chars)
Jeff Veen (of Hotwired fame) and his cohorts at Small Batch have come up with a simple, genius idea called Typekit .
Typekit uses style sheets and new browser support for linking to a font file to bring real typography to the Web. As the announcement explains, “That means you can write... (1078 more chars)
Talk about timing. Time Warner announced its spin-off of AOL
the day before its earlier spin-off comes a cropper .
Sure enough, a heavy debt load that Time Warner shifted to
its former cable sub via the spin-off is to blame. Expect the same thing to happen at AOL .
And now that ... (613 more chars)
Hard to believe Dell’s shares rose on this news
Yeah, earnings after one-time items (if you assume
restructuring costs are a one-time event, and that’s quite an assumption) beat
estimates by a penny. But revenues fell 23%, missing expectations. In other
words, analysts were... (323 more chars)
Talk about burying the lead. The headline and top of this
Reuters story would make you think Intel's dividend is jeopardized by the
EU’s anti-trust fine. But that’s not what has investors concerned.
Not until you get to the end of the story do you see t... (598 more chars)
Last week the US Senate unanimously confirmed Aneesh Chopra as the nation’s first federal CTO and an associate director for the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy. Previously Chopra served as Virginia’s secretary for technology. He was chosen over such technolog... (3676 more chars)
A recent lawsuit filed by a stone and tile company against an ERP vendor is a blunt reminder of just how important it is to create agreements with enterprise software vendors that are aimed protecting users’ rights as well as the provider’s.
Last month, Ferazzoli Imports , which n... (2331 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: I would like to set up a meeting with ... (5670 more chars)
The future’s so bright for some cloud computing vendors these days, they gotta wear shades. This month CIOZone produced a special report on cloud computing. In particular we focused on the software-as-a-service (SaaS) segment. The reason for zeroing in on this arena was pretty clear: while... (2080 more chars)
Time recently published a list ofthe ten biggest technology flops in the last ten years. Compiling such a list isn't easy, and on the whole, we think the editor’s at Time did an admirable job with their selections. Still, we do have some quibbles with the choices. Here's our take on where Ti... (6055 more chars)
It’s nice for Facebook that it just managed to raise another
$200 million. But what does it say that the investor in question paid a third
less for its stake than Microsoft did for its piece of the social networking
company two years ago? Or that Facebook had to venture as far as Moscow
... (1466 more chars)
I can’t think of a more concrete metaphor for Internet
businesses trying to bring traffic to their sites than the stream of tour buses
that clogged the Netscape parking lot. One after another, they disgorged throngs
of tourists who would take pictures of our Web servers through a wind... (2126 more chars)
In one of my recent posts, I wrote that smart phones and netbooks/mini-notebooks need to converge into one device—and soon.
The genesis of that blog, for those of you haven’t dozed off already, is my monthly phone bill from Verizon. Currently, I’m paying for a land line, a... (1624 more chars)
The rising popularity of netbooks, those
popular mini-notebooks designed primarily for web browsing and email,
means it's time to once again re-examine the assumptions behind web
design and web application user inteface.
Sometime within the last few years, most web designers shifted away
... (2374 more chars)
The Federal CIO Council launched the site on Thursday, May 21, which allows access to varous datasets and tools across various executive agencies. Examples of data categories include, business enterprise, education, energy and utilities, population, etc. Once a data set is downloaded it can be acce... (2147 more chars)
As a member of the netbook crowd, I find myself toting the handy little device around with me much more often than I ever did with my old IBM Thinkpad. Seems I’m not alone. According to a new study released by Pyramid Research, booming sales of netbooks are driving an insatiable demand for br... (966 more chars)
Adversary Exploitation of Social Media
By David Carr
I
just came back from the Department of Defense Intelligence Information
Systems (DoDIIS) conference in Orlando, and one of the more interesting
sessions was on "How Adversaries Exploit Poor OPSE... (3814 more chars)
Okay, so we now know the Palm Pre will cost $199 and go on sale on June 6.
Some thoughts:
First, the phone actually costs $299, but includes a $100 mail-in rebate. The percentage of Americans who actually mail in mail-in rebates is roughly the same as those who actually have a nice day afte... (1859 more chars)
You can't have an event at MIT without an Academic Panel.
The academic panel was moderated byGary Beach,Publisher Emeritus from CIO Magazine.
If featuredProf. Erik Brynjolfsson,Schussel Professor of Management and Director
MIT Center for Digital Business (CDB),Prof. Thomas M... (2698 more chars)
When a publicist contacted me about Phil Simon's book, "Why New Systems Fail: Theory and Practice Collide," the title immediately
caught my attention.
Like several key CIOZone.com contributors, I used to work at
Baseline Magazine, where the centerfold feature was typically an
in-... (13031 more chars)
Here’s the Cliff Notes version of one the main factors that’s been driving America’s economic growth for the past few decades. A couple of really bright kids from MIT, Caltech. or maybe Stanford get together and come up with a new killer app or some hot new tech gizmo. These wunde... (4230 more chars)
The enterprise of the future will be driven by a networked architecture- patterns of linked decision processes- constantly morphing, reforming and adapting to a continuously changing social and business environment.
The traditional hierarch... (3014 more chars)
The Wall Street Journal is reporting Google has developed an algorithm to help it figure out which of its employees are most likely to quit, so it can use that information to help retain them. Kinda makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside.
Employee retention is unquestionably near the top of the... (2960 more chars)
One of the hottest areas in the cloud computing space has been the offering of storage-on-demand services. The arena now includes such heavyweights as IBM, AT&T, EMC, Symantec, Amazon and Iron Mountain.
What's behind the red-hot focus in this area? The simple fact that demand for digital sto... (2001 more chars)
AT&T is considering a cheaper data package pricing for the Apple iPhone, reports BusinessWeek , citing people familiar with the matter.
It's interesting that the rumor comes up at a time when sales of iPhone's are still booming. For the quarter ended March 28, the iPhone... (2212 more chars)
It appears that Sprint will announce its launch plans for the latest Palm smartphone sometime this week. As you know by now, early reviews of the Palm Pre have mostly been raves ( here's one from Wired , if you don't believe me.). And word has it that the Palm Pre will be sold in Wal-Mart... (1759 more chars)
The Redmond monolith's
debt-financed stock buyback is a sign that its biggest innovations are now financial rather
than technological, according to this thorough analysis.
It's hard to add much to it other than observe that Steve
Ballmer made a lot of noise to the contrary... (499 more chars)
Termites were dropping on my head and I had no clue!
I came back to my office and immediately immersed myself in answering communications, doing research for clients and jotting down ideas for new articles. I was having fun and experiencing my own joy in the job. I was extremely focused. An... (2808 more chars)
9:45 a.m. – 11:15 a.m. – Room 9-12 (1st floor) When The County Sheriff Says Evacuate - Why Your Plans May Not Work: When disaster strikes, will you be ready? Discover the differences between Emergency Management and Business Continuity Management. Explore issues in Emergency Manag... (583 more chars)
VCPI, based in Milwaukee, WI, earned their StormReady ® Supporter designation on May 12, 2009! This designation is valid through May 12, 2012. In doing so, they become the 3 rd StormReady ® Supporter in Wisconsin.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/news/d... (56 more chars)
My name is John and I'm a gadget junkie ("hello, John").
I freely admit to the problem. Generally speaking, the more electronic gizmos I own, the greater my inner contentment and spiritual satisfaction. While a religion based on this base tenet (or tenor bass) would no doubt be ridi... (1642 more chars)
As of this writing, CA’s stock price was up roughly 6% since the company issued its results on Wednesday. And some analysts are saying CA’s performance in its fiscal year 2009—in which revenues dropped by 5%—underscore the company’s ability to thrive during a severe downturn in technolo... (1940 more chars)
One of the more interesting announcements to come out of the SAP Sapphire conference, was a deal to acquire a little-known company called Clear Standards.
Clear Standards, based in Sterling, Va., is a privately-held company that provides "enterprise carbon management solutions." What t... (2469 more chars)
Reuters columnist Eric Auchard is predicting Oracle is now ready to go hog wild in the hardware space after its $7.4 billion deal for Sun Microsystems. He's no doubt bought into Larry Ellison's insistence that Oracle has no intention of unloading Sun's hardware business. Ellison did ... (670 more chars)
The new software IBM unveiled yesterday sounds spiffy (though I can't help but wonder why this stuff wasn't out years ago given all the hype I heard about the coming advances in transaction processing back in the day when I was tech editor of U.S. Banker, and that was ages ago). Real time is ... (518 more chars)
Bare-bones hardware and software, and all things virtual dictate the game of computing in a slow economy.
A recent advertisement by Microsoft caused a stir among the Mac-loving community of tech workers. The ad shows a flame-haired Lauren looking for a 17-inch laptop for und... (4723 more chars)
IBM was the first to jump out of the box- with the concept of the ‘smart planet’ and now the revolution has begun.
A new tipping point in human civilisation’s development has been reached. Information technology, engineering and applied mathematics has reached the point where the infrastr... (4545 more chars)
One of the finer points of being a chief executive is exuding confidence when it appears the world around you is falling apart. IBM's Sam Palmisano and Intel's Paul Otellini did their best to do just that the past two days as they each made presentations to analysts. Palmisano, for his pa... (1798 more chars)
By and large, subcultures are a wonderful thing. From ballroom dancers, to stamp collectors, to pro wrestling fans, participants in subcultures can be fascinating.
And then there's the iPhone folks. Don't get me wrong. Apple's smartphone is a great device. Its... (3242 more chars)
WordPress Plugin Development: Beginner's Guide
By Vladimir Prelovac
Packt Publishing, February 2009
WordPress is primarily known as a blogging tool, but many of its
fans argue that it is also a better content management system than many
another content management system.
... (3991 more chars)
Recessions force everyone to work twice as hard to keep going. Focusing on optimisation means either, making what you have already got work better or in cases where it can't be fixed, replacing the old.
The focus of this Best Practice Forum is to generate a list of 50 practical suggesti... (1503 more chars)
Is it just me or does it seem like there are more rumors about deals than actual deals going on these days? Today alone we have Microsoft and a New York Times board member denying reports about deals involving SAP in the first case and Google in the second.
I suppose that fo... (712 more chars)
SAP Chief Executive Leo Apotheker issued a call for increased transparency and clarity in business in his keynote address to company's annual Sapphire gathering in Orlando Tuesday. And he did so by announcing a new business intelligence offering that is so simple, even a CEO could use it.
... (1975 more chars)
A recent issue of the McKinsey Quarterly featured a story entitled Memo to the CEO: Why We Need an Annual Report for Technology. ”Although most companies realize that business units and the technology organization must be much more integrated, many don't know how to make this happen,” McKinsey t... (4572 more chars)
Process improvement part 1:
How to make a process improvement initiative fail
Note: I started
writing this blog intending to call it “Successfully introducing process
improvement” but thought the opposite approach much more fun :)
... (2704 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: He operates at a strate... (5973 more chars)
Six months after SAP's largest user group fired its chief executive amid growing unrest, the software giant is putting a positive face on its customer relations.
On the convention floor of SAP's annual Sapphire gathering in Orlando this week, questions over the change in leader... (2916 more chars)
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Microsoft revealed that it intends to issue debt to raise some additional capital. It's not clear just how much money the software giant plans to borrow, since company management left the dollar amounts blank in the SEC filing. Published... (2848 more chars)
Today's Gray Lady weighs in on Obamaite anti-trust policy now that its reporter got an advance briefing on DoJ heavy Christine Varney's upcoming speeches this week. And it's P1 at that (access journalism, anyone?).
Point is, the speechifying will be still more evidence that... (1102 more chars)
If you're subscribed to the Verizon wireless broadband plan the MiFi 2200 is a device you'll want to invest in.
The company announced today, "the MiFi 2200 lets customers create a personal Wi-Fi cloud capable of sharing the reliability and high-speed Internet connectivity of the Verizon Wire... (1460 more chars)
Sorry, folks. Any of you expecting a definitive answer to the question I posed yesterday about the significance of Symantec's forecast for security and storage software sales yesterday is going to be disappointed.
The answers I've managed to find to the question-Is it Sym... (2027 more chars)
In March of this year, a court noted that a corporation’s failure to adopt appropriation information polices can results in potentially costly legal sanctions. While sanctions themselves may or may not be substantial, the legal fees leading up to the sanctions will likely to be weight... (2445 more chars)
Symantec's expected revenue shortfall for the second quarter could be significant, with the forecast made this morning by the maker of security and storage software coming in as much as 5% below what analysts expected, enough, certainly, to help drive down the stock market.
The big que... (297 more chars)
Cisco System's chief executive John Chambers said he's seeing a "steadying" among his customers, a sign to him that an economic upturn could be here by the turn of the calendar year. And that appears to be giving him the confidence to strike some deals. "We don't want to come out of this slow... (1242 more chars)
If outsourcing is being used to help a
firm produce a better quality of products or lower their own costs, the
people affected by are it are very close to the production level. There
will obviously be an emotive impact on anyone who loses their job due
to an outsourcing decision and the... (2857 more chars)
Microsoft’s announcement that is has laid off about 5,000 workers this year, and may lay off more, is just another sign that, despite the hype, tech companies aren’t much different than manufacturers in how they treat their workers. Sure, most IT companies make a big deal about the work-life... (2430 more chars)
According to the US Department of Education, funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) should start becoming available in just a few days. That’s billions, as in almost 100 billion dollars worth of federal stimulus spending that’s expected to be distributed over the... (4467 more chars)
Just a rumor , of course, and one that could very well be spread by investors. But worth considering if only for the possibilities.
Just to follow up a bit, I can't help but wonder about the economics here. Twitter isn't making any money and while that didn't stop Newscorp, for ... (1010 more chars)
This is the continuing story of my adventures with the Facebook Connect API ( Part1 , Part2 ).
I don't mean to represent this as an in-depth or expert tutorial, just
an experiment I conducted to see how long it would take me to produce a
working application that did something useful. The ans... (7118 more chars)
Question: How would you rate your IT organization in terms of bench strength? With money extremely tight and many companies having drastically reduced headcounts, do you have the back-up capabilities in terms of personnel to keep to IT engines running on all cylinders in case key people are out fo... (3938 more chars)
Today's Times reports that the FTC under Obama will be going after Google and Apple's interlocking boards under an anti-trust provision that hasn't been much enforced.
Hate to say it, but I predicted as much in my previous gig.
Thing is, this could signal... (231 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: I make it a point to bu... (6034 more chars)
Despite a year in which India has endured fraud scandals and terrorist scares, it remains a top choice for corporations looking to outsource IT and various business functions, according to a poll conducted by CIOZone.
In the month of April CIOZone ran a poll which asked members: "Where... (2140 more chars)
“Isn’t this all just common sense?”
Wow, good question. This question was asked by one of my students while we were
discussing the importance of managing project resources and assignments based on
the critical path. And then some really good conversation ensued. This particula... (1907 more chars)
1 Year Month to Month Desktop OS Trend.
According to Marketshare ( hitslink.com ) data, the desktop operating system adoption and usage rate for the last year shows a continued growing adoption of both Linux and Mac operating systems.
Month
Wi... (2809 more chars)
This is an update on my experiments with Facebook Connect (a sequel to this post ).
I have been trying to figure out how easy it is to build a practical
application to connect an existing website with its own user login
scheme with this application programming interface. Facebook users
shoul... (5233 more chars)
Untitled Document
Coaching and counseling as management skills are often reserved for superb leaders,
yet are traits that all managers must possess to effectively do their jobs.
Although
very different, coaching and counseling are frequently lumped together ... (14161 more chars)
In today’s tough economic times, sourcing
can be an extremely touchy issue due to the large amount of lay offs occurring
in the US .
However, at the same time, organizations are more pressed than ever before to
provide better value to their stakeholders. O... (1145 more chars)
Given recent reports that cyber-spies from China and Russia may have left malicious software programs in the U.S. electric grid, Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), and Chairman Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security, are introducting the "Critical Electric In... (2000 more chars)
Enterprise software giant SAP signed an interesting agreement with Teradata this week that should go a long ways towards giving companies the ability to conduct complex analytical queries throughout their operations.
The companies announced that they had signed an agreement to pro... (2285 more chars)
Yes, all the major tech market research firms conduct polls of your peers & they can often connect you to your peers as well, but Do any of them allow you to create the poll or survey & return the results to you in a month or less? Will they then connect you to your peers who respo... (2230 more chars)
A few months ago, I got the bright idea of adding a little Facebook-like functionality to BlueBroward.org, a political organizing website for Democratic Party folk in Broward County, Florida, that I run on a volunteer basis.
Since it was started in 2005, the site has become fairly succe... (2691 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: I want to stay close to... (6183 more chars)
This week CIOZone is publishing a series of articles and features centered on our annual ranking of the CIOZone 100 - information technology's biggest and best companies.
The CIOZone 100 represents an ambitious undertaking and is painstakingly assembled by veteran technolo... (2858 more chars)
This is not the first time we’ve had to deal with a potentially pandemic virus. Remember SARs in 2003? The outbreak of bird flu three years later? This time around, however, we’re technically better equipped to mitigate its impact on business and governmental operations. In fact, there are ... (3668 more chars)
At a conference in Silicon Valley last week, more than 30 cloud computing start-ups gathered to pitch their offerings and business plans to venture capitalists. The upbeat mood at the Under the Radar conference was in direct contrast to a recent study by McKinsey & Company on cloud computi... (2933 more chars)
In today's climate, many top executives are now feeling the fear of losing their jobs, and for good reasons. After working with many C-Level executives for a long period of time, I have come to hear the good the bad that come with enterprise level responsibility. One of the ongoing top compla... (1174 more chars)
There has been a dramatic recent shift in sentiment in relation to choice of the best model for developing software systems. The shift has marked a change from the tradition of preparing a detailed requirements specification as the first phase in the development cycle, to a less rigid adaptive ev... (7373 more chars)
Note to Self: If I ever end up with the unenviable job of running a publicly traded company Never, Never, Never provide equity analysts guidance that you expect the current quarter's revenues to be flat or down compared to the year before. Especially, if we haven't even been hi... (4741 more chars)
Everyone is under pressure these days to cut costs, but saving money isn’t worth it if you cut your own throat in the process. Find out how to avoid making a very dangerous financial mistake.
Outsourcing is supposed to save you money. R... (1168 more chars)
Last
week we discussed the first 9 (top 9) in the CWE Top 25 Most
Dangerous Programming Errors. This week, we'll discuss the second 8
on the list, which have been grouped into a category called “Risky
Resource Management”.
Risky Re... (10930 more chars)
While researching a previous post on multi-tenancy , one of the fundamentals of Software as a Service (SaaS) and cloud computing architectures, I came across a company called Apprenda, Inc. , that aims to provide software infrastructure that other software vendors, and in some cases enterprises... (4265 more chars)
For business and governments much of the environmental focus over the last several years has been on sustainability. That buzzword can mean many things to many people, but on a larger scale it refers to maintaining a balance.
Environmental sustainability doesn't mea... (2674 more chars)
Okay, the economy is in the tank. Money is in short supply, and just about everyone is cutting back. That doesn’t mean, however, that CIOs shouldn’t be on the lookout for ways to innovate. In fact, some intense right-brain, non-linear thinking may be just what IT chiefs need to get their org... (3608 more chars)
At some point in their careers, most technology professionals will nurse an idea that they hope to one day turn into a viable business.
At CIOZone, our own Chief Technology Officer Bill Gerneglia has had considerable experience in doing just that: taking an online busi... (1151 more chars)
Yesterday I read an article that reminded me of a childhood saying or chant, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me.’ Or some people would say ‘words can never hurt me’. From a physical perspective this is certainly true. But when people look back on a profess... (1361 more chars)
According to the “2009 Verizon Business Data Breach Investigations Report”, more records were breached in 2008 than in the previous four years combined. The investigation found that in 90 confirmed breaches some 285 million records were compromised.
More disturbing, the financial s... (1695 more chars)
InfoStreet founder and CEO Siamak Farah says he was selling software as a service long before that term, or its acronym SaaS, entered the computer industry lexicon.
As far back as 1994, InfoStreet was marketing early versions of what became a bundle of web-based business applications so... (7110 more chars)
In the realm of electronic discovery, technology teams often confront resource gaps that exacerbate the discovery issues that legal teams are confronting. The right toolset, one that proactively prepares the enterprise for discovery, can benefit both the legal and technology teams on several fron... (2333 more chars)
The
Electronic Discovery Triangle -- Technology, Communication, People
Many people pontificate on keywords and
search technologies and the need to grasp the fundamentals of how they operate.
Others discuss cost savings or the destructive effect electr... (3187 more chars)
Windows 7 is Microsoft's latest version of the global desktop PC operating system.
It seems most enterprises will eventually migrate to Windows 7, but they are not in any hurry to do so.
More astoninshing, almost half of the enterprises surveyed are considering a s... (2237 more chars)
Recently I attended an IQPC conference
where John Muldoon, from EMI Capital, and I were co-presenters, speaking about
the Legal Business Marketplace and how rapidly it is growing
. One
question that was raised during our presentation was, “Is the EDRM ... (1916 more chars)
What’s a CIO’s worst nightmare, other than being handed a pink slip? Well, one of them likely is appearing in front of an executive committee meeting and being asked a question by the CEO you can’t answer. For instance: “Fred, what are we doing to protect ourselves from ... (3936 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: Work space will be desi... (6244 more chars)
For Cloudera , the exciting part of bringing Hadoop to the masses lies in going beyond the web companies that are already embracing it and capturing the attention of biotech, financial services, oil and gas, and other industries. In particular, the company is looking for organizations that fac... (7177 more chars)
At CIOZone we've reported a lot in recent months on developments in the mobile space. As companies like Apple and RIM launch newer and more advanced versions of their smartphone devices, IT executives are finding these devices are becoming their primary link to email and the Web in general.
... (2287 more chars)
Can we keep jobs in the US and still take advantage of the economic benefits of outsourcing? This is a question that’s flared into a contentious debate, one that’s not going away as long as Americans continue to lose jobs. .
It’s also an issue that is of vital concern to CIOs, y... (3899 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: We were waiting to info... (6370 more chars)
Electronic Discovery Resource Gaps March 2, 2009 by danielgarrie
In the realm of electronic discovery, technology teams often confront resource gaps that exacerbate the discovery issues that legal teams are confronting. The right toolset, one that proactively prepares the enterprise for discove... (2377 more chars)
Companies seeking to deploy electronic discovery (eDiscovery) solutions
could benefit substantially by gaining visibility into the cost
associated with the life of an email message–from an individual’s
machine to the courthouse. This visibility into the cost can provide
companies wi... (1899 more chars)
Ok, so not exactly live, but what do you want... it's a blog. I just came out of the Cloud Computing Summit here at Storage Networking World & I wanted to highlight & summarize Ben Woo's presentation. Mr. Woo is a VP at IDC focusing on Storage Systems Research. I found Mr. Woo's pre... (5244 more chars)
Do you do things because you SHOULD do them or because you WANT to do them? How many times have you said something like this?
“I SHOULD wash the car.”
“I SHOULD call my sister.”
“I SHOULD take this job offer.”
When most of us use the word should it i... (1228 more chars)
Out of Work? Underemployed? or Just Starting your Own On-line Business?
Build Your Website Cost Effectively
The biggest mistake I see most start-ups & individuals make is
spending way too much money on custom development of their website.
They believe the si... (7288 more chars)
In what may sound like a poorly conceived April Fools' joke, the Texas state Senate on April 1 gave prelimary approval to a budget that would require government agencies to get legislative approval before adopting Microsoft's much-maligned Vista operating system.
The proposal came... (1251 more chars)
None of the other books I've read on computer security do quite as good job of explaining how criminal hackers work as this one:
Chained Exploits: Advanced Hacking Attacks from Start to Finish
By Andrew Whitaker, Keatron Evans, Jack B. Voth
Addison-Wesle... (6037 more chars)
I took the family to the Grand Canyon for spring break last week, and despite my attempts, found it difficult to log onto the hotel's wireless Internet. So, I can be somewhat forgiven for having missed the predictions of doom associated with the Conficker 1 virus.
Now that I'm back i... (2327 more chars)
I just came upon two recent reports that should be required reading for any CIO concerned with risk management: “The Snooping Dragon: Social Malware Surveillance of the Tibetan Movement” put out by the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory; and “Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cy... (3781 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: He wanted a higher sala... (5754 more chars)
Information integration- combining information from different sources into a unified format, poses one of the most complex and critical technology challenges to the future enterprise. Huge volumes of transactional, customer, logistical and operational data are now being generated as organisations ex... (4756 more chars)
As you may know the open for questions feature on the whitehouse.gov has been visited by 92,935 people who have submitted 104,042 questions and cast 3,604,880 votes. The purpose is to allow citizens of the United States transparent access to the administration through the use of the internet.... (1543 more chars)
Novell is talking up the results of a market survey conducted on its behalf by IDC showing "a surge in the acquisition of Linux driven by the worldwide recession." More than half of the enterprises surveyed said they would accelerate Linux adoption this year.
In addition, more than 72 perc... (4598 more chars)
By Laton McCartney
Call me old fashioned—a laggard on the adaptation curve—but I’m a little leery of the Web 2,0 social networking tools to the extent that they’re being touted as mainstream business aids.
In particular, Twitter, makes me a mite apprehe... (4196 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: Good question -- we are... (5880 more chars)
By Gene Leganza
In past years, enterprise architecture has made a journey up the value chain and 2009 will be no different. However, due to economic conditions, there's no doubt that the road will be bumpy at best.
... (4729 more chars)
The "Great Consolidation" of 2009 appears to be underway based on recent CSCO & IBM news. I believe most in the technology & investor communities knew it was just a matter of time given macro economic conditions & what has been an overly congested space. Now the fun is to figure out "Who's Next... (2427 more chars)
Last week we introduced the CWE Top 25
Most Dangerous Programming Errors in Part
1 of a 4 part series. This week we will discuss the first nine,
which have been categorized in a group called “Insecure Interaction
Between Components”. Being the first nine, they are als... (16037 more chars)
It has been a very interesting week on the datacenter front.
First, Cisco announced its entrance into the server market , unveiling what it calls the Unified Computing System. In short, Cisco has begun selling servers aimed at datacenters that combine computing, storage and ... (2896 more chars)
The New York Times has a good write-up on Cloudera, a company formed to produce an commercially supported distribution of Hadoop, the open source project that replicates key distributed computing technologies used internally at Google (see: Hadoop, a Free Software Program, Finds Uses Beyond Sear... (4302 more chars)
By Laton McCartney
As far as I know, we can’t lay any of the blame for the current economic downturn at the doorstep of the nation’s CIOs. .
Did CIOs issue any sub-prime mortgages? No to that. .
Did CIOs leverage their companies’ investments by a ratio of 3... (4356 more chars)
Global Financial Crisis is a time to reduce technical debt
As witnessed recently, a build up of toxic debt can lead to
a major crisis. I am not talking of
financial debt that caused the GFC here; I am talking of the build up of technical
debt. Just like... (4300 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: We have preserved our ... (5878 more chars)
Once upon a time, there was a manager who led a Program Management Office (PMO)
in an Information Technology department. The project managers in this
organization worked for the PMO. One day, the PMO manager was on her way to
lunch. She had been in meetings all morning and had n... (2138 more chars)
The White House confirmed Friday that Vivek Kundra, the newly named Federal Chief Information Officer, has been placed on leave, following arrests involving a Washington, D.C. government office he headed until recently.
According to the Washington Post , Kundra was being pla... (1637 more chars)
By Claire Schooley
There may be a silver lining to the current state of the global economy after all. The world's economic woes present new opportunities for innovative forms of learning using technology like informal learning, eLearning, and blended learning.
Wit... (4207 more chars)
We all know there's numerous, if not more than enough technology market intelligence research providers currently doing what most would say is a fair to better than average job.
On the positive they stay current & sometimes even ahead of the trends of Red lighted & Green lighted technologies, as w... (4097 more chars)
Poor software project management often means missed deadlines, cost overruns or even outright failure of the project. How can your company avoid this industry-wide problem? In our brief you'll learn best practices for successfully completing software projects.
Software development projects ... (11982 more chars)
This week, we'll take a look at the recently published CWE Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors . Since the Top 25 are broken into three main categories, it makes sense to address the list in three separate segments. But first, let's review what the CWE Top 25 is and its importance.
... (3251 more chars)
One of the more interesting conversations about software development I had over the past year was with the CIO of a major cruise line, whom I'd been introduced to by a consulting firm that wanted to tell the story of its contributions to a successful agile development project. But to the CIO, the s... (6915 more chars)
Here’s my question of the day. For thirteen years Bernard Madoff was able to carry out a Ponzi scheme of staggering proportions, duping, by one estimate, as many as 8,000 or so clients out of $50 billion dollars. .
Of course, we now know that during that period Madoff never actually ma... (4660 more chars)
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"I'm all that's left of me." - Arlo Guthrie
I like Lean.
A... (5356 more chars)
In the months prior to the appointment of a new Federal Chief Information Officer, speculation had mounted on who President Barack Obama might tap for the critical role - or to a corresponding position of Chief Technology Officer.
For the most part, the candidates were senior statesmen of the ... (3167 more chars)
By Marc Cecere
It seems like every CIO I talk with has or is creating a plan to reduce costs. Whether they’re shooting for a svelte, wiry, emaciated or lean organization, there are a number of common roles that senior IT people say are critical to this goal.
IT planners set up the mechan... (2114 more chars)
The AbiComp project is one of the cooler things I saw at CeBit, the information and communications technology trade show in Hannover, Germany.
This is hardware and software technology for controlling multiple embedded systems that work in concert – the example on display was a couple of ... (1940 more chars)
The economic recession is clearly creating anxiety among IT professionals over the threat posed by fired or disgruntled employees. However, a poll conducted in the month of February by CIOZone found that risks posed by careless employees are still deemed the No. 1 security threat.
CIOZone asked... (2182 more chars)
Just a few highlights from Jason Fried's talk at the Future of Web Apps conference in Miami last week. Because of business travel, I'm just getting a break to write about it now.
Fried is CEO of 37 Signals , the company best known for producing team and personal productivity applications like... (3605 more chars)
The Web is now beginning to host an immersive 3D sensory environment that combines elements of social and virtual worlds such as Second Life with increasingly dense geographical mapping applications using Google Earth and Microsoft's Virtual Earth.
Representations of the earth’s natural and urb... (2904 more chars)
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ManagementSpeak: We took a cold, hard look at our bottom line and had to make... (5184 more chars)
The term “tipping point” is usually defined as "the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable."
In other words, like it or not, you can’t ignore what’s become inevitable.
Now, I have no empirical basis for this, but many CIOs, I believe, have yet to recogni... (2689 more chars)
As Jeffrey walked into the room, he made sure to introduce himself to any new faces. Right away he stuck out his hand and said, “Hi, I am Jeffrey Zieba; you have probably heard about me, I am the youngest person ever to be promoted to an executive position at our company.” Attendees who alre... (2011 more chars)
In January we reported that research firm Gartner had cancelled two of its showcase conferences, the Symposium ITxpo scheduled for Las Vegas in May, and the Symposium ITxpo scheduled for Barcelona, Spain.
Now comes word that supply chain software specialist i2 Technologies has pulled the plug o... (2542 more chars)
Consultants fill immediate needs, are easily engaged and disengaged as opposed
to hiring and firing, and can help businesses get over many humps and solve
many stubborn problems. Although well and good in theory, the overwhelming
experience in hiring consultants is tepid at best. This is bec... (8589 more chars)
AJAX applications have revolutionized our expectations of what we can do within the browser. But what more would we be able to do with browsers that were just a little smarter. Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith of Mozilla Labs offered some clues in a "What is the Future of the Browser?" session at th... (5282 more chars)
By Laton McCartney
Today just about every technology consultant, research firm and IT pundit is coming out with ideas that can enable CIOs to help stay off the effects of the current economic crisis without necessary slashing staff to the bare bone. Some of these ideas are pretty good, and fra... (2822 more chars)
Reprinted from Keep the Joint Running .
ManagementSpeak: We’re looking for someone with Windows, Linux, and SQL skills.
Translation: We don’t value critical thinking, adaptability, maturity, and good judgment.
But we value accurate translations, like this one from ... (5071 more chars)
Recently, there has been some discussion about how open source software initiatives should be embraced and given equal
time in the federal stimulus plan as a tool to help the US federal government pull us out of the current economic
recession.
Bill Synder of InfoWorld sent a letter to the O... (2296 more chars)
Artificial intelligence support within the enterprise continues to expand, driven by the never-ending quest for global competitveness.
A number of AI techniques are rapidly reaching maturity and will be an essential component of the enterprise e-commerce and web intelligence revolution of the fu... (3982 more chars)
By Alexander Peters, Ph.D.
In this tough global economy, your firm must innovate with less. For you - as a CIO- this means pursuing two apparently orthogonal strategies in parallel: reduce costs through higher efficiencies in operations, while in parallel investing in technology-enabled capa... (4020 more chars)
As companies struggle through the recession, a question that frequently arises is whether chief information officers are in danger of losing clout within their organizations. The theory goes, companies will be so focused on cutting costs that they will look to CIOs to simply keep the lights on rathe... (5908 more chars)
For the three years, Yahoo! has been encouraging others to rip off big chunks of its user interface, and it's becoming increasingly common for major websites such as LinkedIn to take advantage of the offer.
I'm talking about the Yahoo User Interface Library , a set of user HTML/CSS/JavaScri... (5532 more chars)
Management Speak: Please apply for this position using our online application process.
Translation: You're a number. Don't bother calling us.
We consider KJR Club member Mark Rathbun, who provided this week's translation, to be much more than a mere integer.
Ready for ugly?
... (5054 more chars)
OK, I actually read the so-called American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, AKA the Senate's $787 billion Economic Recovery Bill that passed last week.
To be perfectly honest, I tried to read it with an eye to determining which areas of the technology industry stand to gain most from this... (3693 more chars)
According to industry analysts, a company with more than 10 legal matters a year should evaluate the acquisition of an electronic discovery solution. Besides the potential financial savings, a company can achieve the peace of mind of controlling their own data.
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People who seek perfection can be wonderful team members. They are usually smart; detail oriented and approach problems systematically. They tend to be excellent subject matter experts. Their strengths include accuracy, organization and being goal oriented. So how could the rest of us ever have a... (1427 more chars)
Four Steps To Optimize Your Application And Project Portfolios In Volatile Economic Times
By Phil Murphy, Margo Visitacion
The current global economic instability is forcing organizations to make tough decisions: some will cut costs; some will proceed with business-as-usual; while sti... (3790 more chars)
Often, part of what makes a great website great doesn't take place on the web at all. A great Internet site embraces other ways of communicating with its audience, and prime among them is email -- the quality of the confirmation messages, receipts, password reminders, newsletters and bulletins you ... (5682 more chars)
By ExecutiveBrief Staff.
Following these nine steps may be the ultimate secret weapon to winning business and successfully delivering new easy-to-use software that meets and exceeds expectations.
Has your company developed entirely new software or added to software already in use t... (11687 more chars)
Why do technical staff often have no respect for IT management, and how do we improve the perception? I'm sure this is true for other domains, but my experience is in IT as is the focus of this site and the subject of today’s blog.
As an example, a friend of mine works for a company where the... (2520 more chars)
News a month ago that research firm Gartner was canceling two of its showcase conferences hit the IT community like a bomb. Sure, things are tough out there, but the Gartner conferences have always been well attended and were thought to be a key moneymaker for the research firm.
The Gartner new... (1985 more chars)
I'm not quite sure how this came about, but many CIOs have been given a major new responsibility—that is implementing an enterprise risk management system.
As you likely know, risk management software is one of the few technology segments where spending is projected to increases in 2009... (4108 more chars)
An interesting article published earlier this week on Information Week's website here called "Web Applications: Achilles' Heel Of Corporate Security" discusses the tremendous rise in web-application breaches and attacks this past year.
IBM's 2008 X-Force Trend and Risk report which was re... (2593 more chars)
The recession is clearly having a major impact on organizations, but that still doesn’t appear to have taken the focus away from a traditional IT priority: IT/Business Alignment.
During the month of January, CIOZone conducted a poll on the Top Technology Priorities of 2009. With the economy c... (2605 more chars)
My name is Alex Silberman. I’m a management consultant. Although reasonably bright, I’m probably not smarter than many of my clients, and in more instances than I care to admit, I’m probably less so. I don’t provide staff augmentation, I’m not a body shop, I don’t follow the framework of... (5342 more chars)
Can you do everything? If you can, please stop reading and start writing. Please reply to Margaret@MeloniCoaching.com with your secret, right away. I know the rest of us would benefit from your expertise.
But just in case none of you respond, let’s talk about asking for help.
Do you m... (1630 more chars)
I just read the article “Does PCI compliance work” (at http://www.ciozone.com/index.php/Blogs/view/2668/.html ) and decided to blog this instead of adding it as a discussion to that article. The article discusses “purpose and usefulness of PCI DSS and other similar regulations”
There... (2622 more chars)
Given the presence of yet another very high-profile data breach from a supposedly PCI-compliant organization, many have begun to question the purpose and usefulness of PCI DSS and other similar regulations. There is a valid argument here, but let’s consider the purpose for these regulations.
... (1909 more chars)
Recommender systems are helping online consumers make purchasing decisions based on user information that is most relevant to them. Users offer feedback on purchased items and the recommender system then uses that information to predict future preferences, customised within a personal context.
Mo... (4034 more chars)
There has been a lot of press, effort and money focused on Web Application Security over the past year–and rightly so. The attack footprint for many publicly-facing web applications has been growing as new web and browser-based vulnerabilities are being discovered at a scary pace. The PCI DSS pu... (2223 more chars)
There are plenty of reasons to be positive about the role that outsourcing will play in the global economic resurgence. Here are some of the projections for the industry in 2009.
"Whenever there’s a downturn people outsource more, not less. Organizations want to take costs out wherever the... (3344 more chars)
The onset of electronic discovery was predictable and logical, but its
effect on business has been disruptive and confusing. Fortunately,
electronic discovery (eDiscovery) technologies have been evolving
quickly, arguably quicker than the courts in some cases. The onset of electronic discovery ... (1097 more chars)
(If you keep doing the same old things)
You have probably heard or seen the expression, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” This expression has been attributed to Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein and others.
... (2546 more chars)
"ITMatchOnline.com" is the World’s leading outsourcing/freelancing portal, dealing in to providing the service buyer contact details.
Post Project requirements FREE on: projects@itmatchonline.com and save you project cost upto 70%.
Benefits to Post Project on ITMatchOnline?
- World’s No. ... (984 more chars)
Recently I had the opportunity to read the rough cut edition of the book “Designing Cisco Network Service Architectures (ARCH) (Authorized Self-Study Guide), Second Edition”, ISBN 9781587058431, thanks to Pearson Education and Safari Online for offering an access the rough cut.
You can see the ... (319 more chars)
There have been many warnings that the technology sector cannot escape the damage being caused by the current recession, but news arising out of the technology research firm sector this week showed how deep the impact may be.
In a clear sign of the times, Gartner, the venerable Stamford, Mass.-... (1113 more chars)
The number of data breaches increased dramatically in 2008, according to a report released by the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC).
According to the non-profit organization, businesses and other organizations disclosed 656 breaches in 2008, a 47% increase over the 446 reported the year bef... (1584 more chars)
Customer or Consumer Support Systems- CSS, are designed to enhance business-customer relations by supporting consumer decision-making.
There is increasing pressure on enterprises to provide support for CSS as a Customer Demand Chain process designed to channel the flow of information between busi... (2275 more chars)
Dear Friends in this upcoming series of posts I would like to concentrate on Etherchannel , what is Etherchannel? , what rules and restrictions are applied to an Etherchannel and finally I will show you how to configure an Etherchannel in Cisco Switches both layer 2 as well as layer 3.
For furthe... (219 more chars)
More and more of my work these days is moving from isolationist IT strategy development to fully integrated approaches to business and IT strategies combined. The notion that IT is premier is certainly gone; it has been replaced by the realization that business is enhanced, nay fully realized, only ... (619 more chars)
Why Sox Sucks
By Laton McCartney
It's been awhile since I've heard anyone talk about Sarbanes-Oxley, Sarbox or SOX.
You may recall that the so-called Sarbanes-Oxley Act came into being in 2002 in the wake on the Enron scandal and other corporate shenanigans that involved smoke, m... (2832 more chars)
2008 will be remembered for many things, including the presidential election, the massive brokerage failures and the ensuing economic meltdown. But around here at CIOZone, it is significant for another reason.
With the beginning of the New Year, CIOZone officially turned one year old.
And... (5060 more chars)
Compliance programs directly affect IT operations, policies and prcedures and IT budgets.
Organizations often leave their back-up and recovery policies and procedures up to their IT departments. What organizations forget to realize is that these programs must be aligned with their compliance init... (667 more chars)
For many weeks now you have listened to one of your colleagues say, “I really should dust off my resume, this position is not growing my career.” In spite of this it never occurs to you that your colleague is truly going to make a job change. You hear many people talk about what they should d... (1858 more chars)
No, that is not an error. This story is called ‘The Price of Right’; not to be confused with the game show, ‘The Price is Right’.
What is ‘The Price of Right’? It is that toll we pay when it is more important to be right than it is to exercise tact.
What made me think of th... (1823 more chars)
Using real-time simulations, manufacturers are working out problems in their processes and plant operations, without building costly prototypes. Computer simulation and collaboration technologies, known collectively as digital or virtual manufacturing, are being used by car, drug and aerospace compa... (3813 more chars)
A variety of factors are driving frenetic change in the 21st century, including major shifts in the geopolitical, economic, environmental and technological landscape. Two major trends are Globalisation and the volume and complexity of information processing, driven in large part by the service econo... (4048 more chars)
Over the last ten years enterprise market–based services and service value networks have become the main drivers of productivity and economic growth. Globalisation, increasing automation, growth of the Internet and dynamic componentisation of business, are all driving the growth of the service eco... (2677 more chars)
Studies show that most successful projects were those that followed agile principles, proving that model-driven methods are not always the best when it came to managing changes, fast-paced project implementation, or even meeting market demands.
The concept of agile development is not new. H... (3875 more chars)
As a person who frequently travels for business I have been struck in recent months by the number of people I see leaving their laptops behind in favor of a BlackBerry, iPhone, or one of those nifty Netbooks.
Increasingly, they are finding they can not only make do with a smartphone, bu... (1319 more chars)
Success Imperatives: Forrester's guide for CIO success during the recession
By Bill Band, Forrester Research
In light of the recent sudden and dramatic deterioration of the economic climate, what are the key trends driving customer management strategies and the adoption of CRM techno... (4315 more chars)
Much has been said lately about Software as a Service (SaaS), which is often interchangeably referred to as “cloud computing”. While pundits may disagree on whether SaaS is cloud computing, its primary feature is application provided as a service to customers via the internet. Because applicat... (2987 more chars)
One of the surprising findings to come out of an international study on climate change practices at corporations was that among the top technology firms, consumer favorite Apple Inc. came in last.
And it didn’t just come in last by a slim margin, there was an iceberg-sized gulf between it and... (3875 more chars)
Dear Friends Cisco Systems has announced the availably of CCIE Wireless Certification and it’s confirmed. So what are waiting for, you can start planning for the prestigious CCIE Wireless Certification, again Cisco proves they are concerned about the latest technological developments in the field ... (252 more chars)
A biometric is a unique physical or behavioural attribute that can be used to identify an individual uniquely. By applying biometric technology to online marketing, the user can be uniquely identified and associated with an individual consumer profile. Increasing interest in biometrics has led to ra... (2980 more chars)
If technology is so critical to the success of the company, then why is it being outsourced to different parts of the planet? These suggested strategies can prove that there is more to outsourcing beyond cutting costs.
The most oft-cited reason for outsourcing parts of business operations ar... (3375 more chars)
An interesting trend seems to have been developing of late. In several recent chief information officer or chief technology officer hirings, companies have announced that the new IT chief would not only be responsible for information systems, but also head up marketing operations.
At first blus... (2592 more chars)
Unfortunately a recurring complaint from customers regarding Information Technology professionals is lack of communication. Apparently our end users and customers cannot read our minds!
Here are some examples:
“We reported that the system was not available. We used proper channels. Ev... (1140 more chars)
Whatever the economic realities may be, technology is an integral part of majority of business operations the world over. How do you maintain your tech-reliant operations in the midst of a challenging business climate?
Most global businesses depend on technology and business partners to r... (3664 more chars)
SAP’s largest user group has fired its chief executive, Steven Strout, amid a growing controversy over the software company’s decision to hike maintenance fees.
The America’s SAP Users’ Group, or ASUG, issued a statement saying that it had “released Strout from his duties.” Strout w... (2415 more chars)
You may have heard the phrase, don’t kill the messenger. It means if someone has the unfortunate task of delivering bad news; don’t take it out on them. This phrase is frequently attributed to the ancient Greek and then later Roman custom of employing messengers to carry news throughout the e... (1135 more chars)
Maverick Telemarketing
Rise of the Professionals!
Many organisations in today’s climate are questioning their investment into lead generation and appointment making…so should you be considering outsourcing?
The success of Telemarketing has proven to outweigh that of field sales. It als... (6334 more chars)
Buying electronic discovery solutions what are the golden rules? Over the next couple of weeks, I am going to post them and ask everyone to comment.
Rule #1: Koolaid eDiscovery Test
Whomever is selling you the solution knows that they or at a minimim the software company uses the soluti... (499 more chars)
The Virtual Enterprise is based on the thesis that selecting and channeling a dynamic group of organisational individuals, functional units and resources such as web services, processes, data sets and computing capacity drawn from multiple sources, can best implement a particular project or common s... (4144 more chars)
Day before yesterday, I attended the CEO forum organized by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). Whole event was very well organized and most experts from the telecom and mobile field in general were there among the attendees. Mr. Anssi Vanjoki (EVP of Nokia) was the key speaker for the... (2066 more chars)
United States of America (Press Release) November 27, 2008 -- Philadelphia, Lindon, USA; London, UK; Hyderabad, India; November 28, 2008: AppLabs, the world's largest independent testing, quality management and certification solutions company, today announced that it has been named to Deloitte's pre... (414 more chars)
I really, really, don't like licensing these days. One vendor for a product we use requires an entirely new license key file every time we install the product. Same machine, same version, same user, support contract still active.
I'm all for companies protecting their I.P. But why place *such* a ... (374 more chars)
Courtesy really matters in confined areas where many people, mostly strangers, are sitting side-by-side.
While sitting in coach class seating on a recent trip I was reminded that personal space becomes even more important when we can’t pick our seat mates.
As the middle passenger, there were... (3048 more chars)
If The Pope doesn't get shot…We've got an Event!
A colleague of mine tells a true story about a PR event that he managed several years ago. As an expert PR guy, his plan and execution were flawless, but the event received almost no media coverage. Here’s that story.
In a small city in the ... (3136 more chars)
This Christmas shopping season will likely be one of the toughest on record for retailers as consumers tighten their belts in the wake of the economic downturn.
As a result retailers are expected to battle more than ever before on the Internet for shoppers by offering a wide range of online-onl... (1443 more chars)
Yes, information technology professionals, like everyone else, feel more connected to other people thanks for smartphones, instant messaging and other immediate communication tools. Still, less urgent communications – such as e-mail and face-to-face conversations – are the preferred form of com... (1320 more chars)
Bill Lang Quoted in For the Record: Disaster Recovery — Lessons From Tulane’s Response to Katrina
Monday, March 02, 2009
Milwaukee, WI -March 2, 2009- Bill Lang, CBCP, CBCV, MBCI, VCPI’s Business Continuity Program Manager, was interviewed by For the Record’s Alice Shepherd last Decemb... (5794 more chars)
Cloud computing is far more advanced than many people realize. Google is leading the charge offering free or low cost apps that compete with the Microsoft Applications we run on our desktops and servers, without the need for complex server infrastructures. Gmail can support the most organizations w... (906 more chars)
I wanted to let the CIOZone community know that we've launched a points program which will allow our registered members to accumulate points for participation on the site through comments, forum posts, group posts, etc.
Please leave a comment below and let me know if you've had a chance to see ... (87 more chars)
Attendees at AIT Global’s GreenTech conference, which was held last week on the Brooklyn campus of NYU-Polytechnic, generally came away with six points about Green IT.
No. 1. There’s a big problem out there. There’s too much equipment, generating too much heat, in too little space... (2578 more chars)
As the economic clouds continue to darken, research firm IDC is now predicting that spending on information technology will be slashed significantly from earlier forecasts in 2009.
IDC is still predicting growth in IT spending, but in the United States it says that growth will be reduced to a tr... (2446 more chars)
The team behind Barack Obama’s presidential campaign set the bar for how the Internet will be leveraged in future elections. But already the president-elect is demonstrating the effectiveness of the Internet in maintaining an ongoing dialogue with the electorate.
His transition team has erect... (1696 more chars)
Oh there is a problem alright. And it starts with the fact that you have a boss, peer or subordinate who is completely in denial about the chaos that is all around them. If they do see any kind of issues, well those issues start with you. This is not meant to be spiteful. This is the behavior of so... (2418 more chars)
Recently, in a discussion I was having with a colleague,
they got a basic concept: it does NOT make sense to keep a large amount of
information when it does NOT make them money.
Recently, in a discussion I was having with a colleague,
they got a basic concept: it does... (1218 more chars)
Gartner recently released some surprising news about service-oriented architecture adoption.
While the majority of large organizations are moving ahead with SOA, the IT research company said, a growing number are holding off plans to deploy the software development framework, which allows comp... (1433 more chars)
The victory of Barack Obama is a historic moment for the United States and one of the issues has been health care reform and cutting costs that arise from the use of paper.
According to the barackobama.com site:
"Lower Health Care Costs by Investing in Electronic Information Technology Sys... (1187 more chars)
As we enter the holiday shopping season, a survey by AppLabs finds that more than 25% of
respondents are concerned that their websites are at risk for failure. AppLabs is the largest independent global IT services company specializing in quality management, testing, and certification solutions.
... (439 more chars)
As Americans take to the polls, there is a sense at home and around the world that this election will be one for the ages.
Not only is it the first time a black American could be elected president, but it also takes place against one of the most dramatic backgrounds of the past century: an econ... (3953 more chars)
A paradigm shift is defined as a change from one way of thinking to another.
Since the beginning of the Internet we have experienced many paradigm shifts, such as the invention of the browser & World Wide Web, eCommerce, and the various forms of communication that have driven the usage of the med... (3742 more chars)
Harnessing the evolutionary biological process via software simulation, offers a rapid computational process that can learn and become expert in almost any knowledge domain. This provides a powerful means of solving complex engineering and design problems, often involving non-linear and chaotic proc... (1841 more chars)
Do you raise your voice at the office? When you are happy do you let out loud exclamations of joy? When you want to make a point, do you raise your voice for emphasis?
Maybe you have one special person that you talk to when you need to vent. You probably look forward to talking with this perso... (1826 more chars)
I really need a IT mentor as I have this problem where after working at a organization for over 4 years, Im not going somewhere within the team.
People are just slaving of me, and move up the leather after I mentored them. Mananement are overlooking me, and I don't kno what the problem is. Is there... (57 more chars)
Some good news for IT staffers. Some not-so-good news for CIOs searching for talent – especially those looking for Web developers, top programmers, and help desk staffers.
According to a just released report from IT staffing firm Robert Half Technology, IT unemployment remains low relati... (1748 more chars)
One of the great promises of data mining and business intelligence software is that companies can use insights gained to more finely tune their marketing and sales campaigns.
By better understanding their customers, their income levels, shopping habits, and behaviors, companies can personalize ... (2503 more chars)
Did you know that 9% of all IT workers in their 20s are looking to change careers not just their jobs. Many of them do not enjoy working with computers and would rather apply their problem solving and analytical skills in a different way.
- Fortune Magazine
Another interesting tidbit
"To... (986 more chars)
Datawarehousing company Teradata welcomed five members into an elite new club this week – one that it dubbed the “Petabyte Power Players.”
The members of this club each have data warehousing environments that exceed one petabyte, a capacity that not so long ago seemed far beyond the need ... (2171 more chars)
I’d like to share or bounce it off from someone in case that you have similar policy or considerations.
The concern is obviously from client perspectives, and with consideration of accommodating internal politics (hey who does NOT have them?). The intention is to establish a set principles at a... (1669 more chars)
Gartner, the market research company, just came out with its list of the top 10 strategic technologies for 2009. On the list:
Virtualization. Not just server virtualization, which allows different operating systems to run on a server simultaneously, but also storage virtualization (which ... (4899 more chars)
Stephen Breyer, a justice on America’s Supreme Court,
recently expressed concern that, with ordinary cases costing millions just in
e-discovery work, “you’re going to drive out of the litigation system a lot of
people who ought to be there” so... (2647 more chars)
The new social media has manifested in a number of ways including – mobile media, ubiquitous media and media tagging and semantics.
The mobile media model makes media access available anywhere and anytime, on demand and interactively, including an ever-widening variety of formats- wikis, blogs,... (2992 more chars)
Let’s face it, misery loves company. So while you’re bemoaning the current state of your stock portfolio, you might be wondering just how bad Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and the other tech gazillionaires are faring these days.
Technology stocks may not have been hit as hard as the bank, hou... (1454 more chars)
Harvard Business Publishing just published the following statistic on social networking:
“25% of Internet users in the U.S. spend time on social networking sites, according to the Conference Board's Consumer Internet Barometer, and about half of them visit these sites multiple times per... (194 more chars)
Cutting capital projects and reducing headcount are the most popular means to reduce IT costs. CIOs often fall into this trap and experience a creeping operating cost structure in subsequent years after the cost cut. In my previous blog entry, I had explained this phenomenon in detail. In this one,... (9265 more chars)
Gartner earlier this week came out with some words of wisdom for CIO working on IT budgets for next year – plan on doing a lot of re-budgeting.
Given today’s economic uncertainty, the research company advised IT decision makers to put together a number of contingency plans for next year t... (782 more chars)
So, given the state of the economy, where are IT budgets headed?
The latest insight comes from the Society for Information Management (SIM), the national organization of CIOs and other IT professionals.
SIM reported earlier today that despite a discouraging economic outlook,... (1270 more chars)
It’s clear Bank of America has a difficult challenge ahead as it looks to integrate several large financial services organizations. But work performed at Merrill Lynch over the last several years to implement a service oriented architecture (SOA) framework, could help ease some of those pains.
... (1774 more chars)
Do you suffer from TMI? What new disorder is TMI? You may know it as ‘Too Much Information’ syndrome. TMI often surfaces when you are the recipient of more information than you care to absorb from another individual. Or information that quite frankly you could do without. Think about the co-w... (1939 more chars)
Social computing has traditionally applied computational and analytic techniques to the study of social and cultural behaviour and the modelling of social interactions and communication.
In a more recent trend, social computing applications now frequently focus on web-supported online communities ... (3081 more chars)
The turmoil on Wall Street has been difficult on most people employed in the financial services industry, and the heads of IT departments are no different. There have been a number of changes at the top ranks in recent months, so much so that it's getting hard to keep score without a program.
... (4832 more chars)
What can IT professionals learn from a youngster about technology? Perhaps simply that today's trend is tomorrow's toolset. The world of communications is always changing as we know, below are some new trends.
According to a recent Survey by HarrisInteractive :
According to this national s... (1061 more chars)
According to a recent CIO Jury Poll:
"In silicon.com's latest exclusive CIO Jury poll, the respondents revealed they were still steering clear of the application, with 10 out of 12 saying their IT teams are not testing it."
The Jury Members included:
Chris Broad, head of IS and Techno... (1584 more chars)
I just learned of another information technology area that doesn’t seem to be feeling much, if any, squeeze.
IDC reported this week that the U.S. managed security services market is expected to grow at a compound rate of more than 17% and hit $2.8 billion by 2012. It’s a bit of a slowdow... (891 more chars)
Starting as IT firm in small level is so easy, with one or few customers! But you should have the vision and mission plan for your company! It’s very important. And being an IT guy if you started a company by trusting your tech skill, you cannot run it in long run. i saw so many guys who started e... (302 more chars)
Hi,
We employ approximate 1200 apprentices in Western Australia.These apprentices are usually aged between 18 and 24, and we hire/train them and they then gain their apprenticeship at a host company. Being in WA, that will be in construction or mining.
Currently we require the apprentice to com... (685 more chars)
CIOZONE Blog Entry – September 23, 2008
(Written by Anthony Giacobe and Yoav Griver)
Utilizing technology to manage discovery is not just a sound method of lowering the costs of litigation and compliance (as discussed on this blog before), but is necessary simply to satisfy a company’s lega... (2558 more chars)
Have you ever applied your mind to know what Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP is all about? Quite likely the answer would be mostly ‘no’. Some of you might have already ventured into this rather exciting, though complex world of ERP, but there are many others who may not have got any f... (10219 more chars)
The only thing I said is what you heard.
I can’t take credit for this expression because I learned it in a coaching skills course a few years ago. Once I took a minute to process the sentence, (because my mind had one of those ‘Hey, wait a minute, what are you saying?’ moments); it rea... (1933 more chars)
Volumes have been written and spoken on how to manage changes while implementing an ERP project. Most of these writings do, however, instead of clearing the air, often end up making it misty creating problems for the people to clearly see the changed scenario. There are very few articles whic... (4535 more chars)
ERP generally symbolizes a class of business level automation products that integrates the business processes by what is called mapping or modeling. The definition is very broad indeed. It conceals more than what it reveals. The definition conjures of a myriad of visions about the power and lim... (4336 more chars)
For service providers to cope with the growing scale, complexity and time constraints of applications, supporting systems must become largely automatic- that is capable of managing their own operation with minimum human intervention. Such self-management is a hallmark of autonomic computing systems.... (2711 more chars)
There may be worries that overall IT expenditure may be trimmed, but worldwide telecommunications spending isn’t slowing. The market will likely reach $2 trillion this year, a 7.6% bump over last year’s $1.8 trillion, according to a just-released report from Gartner.
In the telecom s... (1006 more chars)
It may take months for the dust to settle from this week’s financial meltdown, but when the clouds do disperse Bank of America will clearly emerge as a major victor.
The bank capitalized on the credit crisis facing Wall Street institution Merrill Lynch & Co. by striking a deal to purchase the... (1765 more chars)
Alignment once again topped the list of key issues for IT managers, according to a just-completed survey from the Society for Information Management.
But, what, if anything, can chief information officers do to make sure IT and the business are better aligned?
Jerry Luftman, a... (1031 more chars)
HP announced plans to integrate EDS which would lead to streamlined costs, invest in growth and drive shareholder value.
The restructuring program will take hold over three years and lead to a streamlining process leading to a reduction in 7.5 percent reduction of the combined workforce. The co... (488 more chars)
Is this a question too far fetched? No so…
Last week our Web site went down for two hours, I was forwarded the major incident report on Monday morning. The report detailed the incident resolution process by minutes, where I found that the direct cause was the failure of the second power supply ... (2299 more chars)
On September 14 Tim Berners-Lee in Washington, D.C. announced the creation of the World Wide Web Foundation and stated the following as it's goals:
to advance One Web that is free and open,
to expand the Web's capability and robustness,
and to extend the Web's benefits to all people on ... (1146 more chars)
A few months ago, as oil prices were climbing to dizzying new heights, I wrote a blog about having a supply chain playbook ready in case key price thresholds were breached.
The argument of the blog at the time was that should oil climb to $125, $130 or even $150 per barrel, companies may need ... (2234 more chars)
How could today’s financial news – Lehman’s bankruptcy filing, BofA’s takeover of Merrill Lynch – affect CIOs?
Larry Dignan at ZDNet posted a blog in which he sees the following impact on information technology:
- There will be a pullback in overall financial IT sp... (613 more chars)
{mosimage}Automated Decision Making - MIS as a Business Driver
Tanmay Roy
General Manager (C&IT)
Bhilai Steel Plant
Automated Decision Making - MIS as a Business Driver
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Organizational Hues
3. Managerial Hues
4. Ownership & Management
4.1 Ownership
4.2 M... (37822 more chars)
The conference is being co-produced by O'Reilly and Techweb from September 16-19 with presence from a range of companies including fortune 500 to startups. It's a great opportunity for attendees to build their network and learn more about the new generation of web in their scheduled workshops and fr... (757 more chars)
Apple recently released update 2.1 which fixes a bevy of issues impacting the iphone.
There were numerous complaints regarding dropped calls, data connections and overall slowness with applications while using the device.
Here's a list of fixes incoroproated in this firmware upgrade:
... (210 more chars)
I’ve had an article published in Continuity Insights Magazine.
Excerpt:
Too often, business continuity professionals rely on being able to communicate and give people "the word." Most business continuity practitioners invest heavily in robust communications technologies, acquiring systems an... (572 more chars)
As you may already know RIM released its' new flip blackberry 8820 recently. Here are some reviews of this new product release:
CNET:
RIM BlackBerry 8820 (AT&T)
Engadget:
Hands On Review
Mobiledia:
Feature List
While the standard blackberry is an accepted ente... (309 more chars)
A survey released this week by Forrester Research confirmed what most in the industry have suspected: IT budgets are being cut in the face of a global economic slowdown.
In a survey of 950 large organizations in North America and Europe, Forrester found that 43% of companies have already trimm... (1594 more chars)
No is not always negative. It is not a bad or incorrect response. Saying no does not make you a difficult or uncooperative person. And as a leader you should definitely not be afraid to tell your team no. Please read all of that again, out loud. Saying no is more honest than a false yes, it will ... (2111 more chars)
Google version 0.2.149.29 fixes security and javascript issues that could have interfered with facebook functionality.
The company did not discuss specific fixes in this release since not all of the user base has applied this upgrade.
In a statement Google said, "Google Chrome will aut... (323 more chars)
The latest commerical for Microsoft Windows is making an effort to connect with a newer generation of users and attempting to mimic the apple sense of humor demonstrated by the mac vs pc ads.
You can view the ad on youtube .
The new campaign has generated a lot of buzz around the w... (264 more chars)
A new force is shaping global political, social and business culture. The millions of blogs permeating the web and covering every conceivable topic are now starting to provide a meta-communication platform of incredible power and complexity when linked together into intertwining communities comprisi... (2701 more chars)
How do you handle ethical dilemma's at work? For instance, if a company promises to let you keep the product you are reviewing or sends you a gift card for a positive review or recommendation do you accept the gift?
This thought came about from a recent CIOZone Survey for IT exeuctives which ... (803 more chars)
Robots are slowly but surely edging towards more advanced states of cognitive development, sentience and higher intelligence. This will change the way society and business integrates this technology within its own processes and workflow, creating the emergence of a robotics industry as significant a... (2584 more chars)
I was doing some research on where the political candidates stand on the IT issue and
since Sarah Palin is in the spotlight here's the information I've found when I did a search on "Sarah Palin IT":
Sarah Palin on the issues:
http://www.ontheissues.org/Sarah_Palin.htm
Alaska Gov... (546 more chars)
I was up and running on this browser in less then 2 minutes.
In my first few minutes with the application I noticed the following:
1. Pages loaded faster then IE7 (ciozone.com, cnn.com, nytimes.com)
2. The status bar has been removed to leave a lot more room for the page.
3... (483 more chars)
So another browser to worry about for web developers. That was initial reaction to the latest news by Google. The rationale behind this release according to Google is that they think they can add value for the user and at the same introduce innovation on the web.
From their annoucement blog e... (793 more chars)
The concept of adaptability is rapidly gaining in popularity in business. Adaptability has already been introduced into everything from automatic car transmissions to sentient search engines to running shoes capable of adapting to the preferences of each unique user over time, to business management... (2511 more chars)
No, we cannot all get along all of the time. It is unrealistic to think that all team members will absolutely agree with you or with each other all of the time. If every time you are together, there is never any disagreement, look out – you have problems. Sure, maybe the first time you meet you ... (1835 more chars)
Virtual Worlds in the form of multiplayer internet online games are rapidly becoming the new marketing focus, with enterprises setting up and experimenting with virtual businesses. Worlds such as Entropia Universe and Second Life have real cash market economies. Owners of artifacts buy and sell virt... (3355 more chars)
The Wall Street Journal had a great point today that technology
companies are beginning to realize the value proposition of lowering
the costs around discovery. What seems to get lost in translation is
the reality? I am not sure how many lawyers really have rolled up their
proverbial sleeves an... (2340 more chars)
Agents in the form of small intelligent autonomous programs are playing an increasing role in managing business services and processes.
When agents interact with each other cooperatively they form a collaborative multiagent system, which greatly enhances their level of operational efficiency and ... (2688 more chars)
The Web will soon host an immersive 3D sensory environment that combines elements of social virtual worlds such as Second Life with increasingly dense geographical mapping applications such as Google Earth and Microsoft's Virtual Earth.
Representations of the earth’s natural and urban environme... (2178 more chars)
Globalisation, increasing automation and growth of e-business, are all driving the growth of the service economy. In turn the service economy is driving the growth of web-based services across the internet.
Major productivity increases are now being seen in most industries due to the automation ... (3660 more chars)
The outsourcing of IT services to a host of new external providers has been gathering momentum over the last few years, but outsourced business functions are now becoming more diverse including- telecommunications, engineering, financial and public sector processes. For example, India is not only th... (2834 more chars)
The emerging Decision Engineering Architecture of the 21st century represents a major shift in managing the operations of the future enterprise. By optimising the decision networks of an organisation, greatly improved levels of efficiency, adaptivity and quality of decision-making can be achieved be... (2047 more chars)
Sensor webs or networks are collections of wireless processing nodes that can capture local sensor data and transfer it to a processing component which can be either local or centralised. The opportunity now exists for integrating sensor networks with the global internet to create a new class of app... (3229 more chars)
A major shift is underway in the way corporations conduct business. From a self-interested point of view there is a dawning realisation that what is good for employees and community in general is also good for enterprise survival and profitability. It is also increasingly realised that social issues... (2401 more chars)
In addition to standard risk management processes such as credit, foreign exchange and market risk, CFOs are increasingly being asked to report on ways to minimize risk in a wide variety of other areas including- new product investments, acquisitions, HR, brands, market share, customer acceptance an... (3399 more chars)
Recent research in network analysis triggered by the boom in social networks on the internet, has made a significant contribution to a more profound understanding of networked behaviour in business ecosystems. Networked ‘swarm’ behaviour for example demonstrates an increase in collective intelli... (3067 more chars)
Prediction markets are an increasingly important forecasting tool based on evolutionary information aggregation and selection. Participants trade in contracts whose payoff depends on unknown future events, as in any financial or betting market, with the price of contracts directly interpreted as a m... (3721 more chars)
Enterprises of all types- small, large, commercial, government and non-profit, are examples of Complex Adaptive Systems and are therefore bound by the same characteristics and rules of evolution of all such adaptive systems, patterned on biological life.
This common categorisation can therefore p... (2754 more chars)
Today, we see law suits that cost millions. The question is how does that happen? While lawyers might be making more money, the real reason is that companies have to pay third-party companies to preserve, archive, produce, and etc their own data.
Companies should own their information systems an... (161 more chars)
Software bugs are all too common these days, but it’s not too often one threatens to bring down core enterprise systems and result in a personal apology from the software provider's chief executive.
That is exactly what happened to VMWare this week, when a bug in its ESX 3.5 software prevent... (1897 more chars)
Much of the coaching work I do with clients is about how their behavior shapes the perceptions that other people have about them. And those perceptions tie directly to performance appraisals, promotions and other opportunities.
It is really about professional image or professional brand. Hav... (2423 more chars)
After 20 years of battling it out to be an independent software vendor, i2 Technologies surrendered this week, agreeing to be acquired by JDA Software.
JDA of Scottsdale, Ariz., will purchase Dallas-based i2 for about $346 million in cash.
The deal brings together two of the leading cont... (2106 more chars)
Dell Computer announced this week that it has met its goal ahead of schedule of becoming a carbon neutral company.
The computer manufacturer announced in September of 2007 that it would undertake a variety of initiatives to achieve a carbon neutral goal by the end of 2008. Chairman and founder... (1266 more chars)
It’s getting crowded in the computing skies.
This week several developments occurred on the cloud computing front. For starters, it came to light that Dell Computer is attempting to claim the term as its own and has filed for a trademark patent.
Dell apparently filed an application wit... (2564 more chars)
In the hey-day of the dot com era, JupiterResearch carved a name for itself for having some of the brighter analysts covering emerging Internet technologies. During my days with a weekly magazine that covered the news of the Internet – Interactive Week – I would often pick up the phone to pick t... (2197 more chars)
According to Oxford Dictionary Blind Spot is : 1. The point of entry of the optic nerve on the retina, insensitive to light. 2 an area where a person’s view is obstructed. I was reading an article on Road Safety - " Always Check your Blind Spot " on Ministry of Transport of Ontario Websi... (5307 more chars)
A lot of companies are talking about investing in green technologies to save energy, but Bank of America appears to think it could also be a profitable investment.
The Charlotte, NC-based bank announced this week that it has made an undisclosed investment in Field Diagnostic Services Inc. (FDS... (1410 more chars)
Should the CIO be now called CFO-IT?
IT cost reduction or “budget-management” (to put it in softer terms) is the most important aspect of the CIO’s job. It is perhaps the most critical key performance indicator for CIOs that are either in low-growth or highly competitive industry verticals.... (4590 more chars)
For a while, it seemed as if the IT profession might skip the current downturn. But now a couple of reports suggest the economic backslide might be affecting IT employment.
Gartner just released
a report that said, while recruiting and retaining IT staffers continues to be a key organ... (1744 more chars)
A new report released this month by Forrester Research sheds some interesting light on the relationship between who a CIO reports to and how they view their role within an organization.
To prepare the report Forrester surveyed 503 senior IT executives on how IT is run in their organizations, ... (1488 more chars)
Lee Gomes of The Wall Street Journal asks an interesting question in his column: “Should a president -- of the United States, or even of a company, for that matter -- use a computer?”
First thought: Just a quick easy hit against John McCain, who’s been an easy target for his comput... (1030 more chars)
Dramatic pictures seen in recent days of a car-sized hole in the fuselage of a Qantas jet are no doubt causing nervous flyers to grip their arm rests extra tight as they head off on summer vacations.
Such incidents are indeed rare, and Qantas has an admirable safety record. So those with a fea... (2093 more chars)
From personal experience, one of the biggest frustrations of walking around the streets of any city these days are the PDA-crazed zombies zigzagging their way across the sidewalk madly banging away on their iPhones and Blackberries. They walk into buildings, stumble over sidewalk cracks, shoulder b... (1083 more chars)
The use of open source software is undergoing explosive growth and that is driving demand for IT professionals with open source skills in the enterprise, according to a new report.
The report published by O’Reilly Radar, titled Open Source in the Enterprise , finds that with IT budgets und... (1914 more chars)
Amazon posted some pretty solid results this week, as tech companies seem to be showing resilience in the face of an economic downturn.
The company said second quarter sales were up 41% to $4.06 billion, and profits doubled to $158 million, or 37 cents per share. Analysts had been looking to A... (2451 more chars)
Have you ever heard the expression, ‘You teach people how to treat you’? It means that as people are getting to know you they are learning how they can or cannot treat you. And you are getting to know the same things about them.
This is true on a personal and a professional level. In gener... (1693 more chars)
Tom Austin, Gartner VP, says that if IT deploys new or innovative technology in a uniform and disciplined way, their clients with the closest eye on the new wave of technology will become disenfranchised and be strong critics of the "plodding" IT organization. Tom's input tot the iT community is to... (683 more chars)
Jeans manufacturer Levi Strauss is the latest company to report that its financial results were severely impacted by difficulties encountered with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation.
The storied San Francisco company reported earlier this month that its second quarter results ... (2932 more chars)
A new study ranking the money supply chains of the country’s largest financial institutions gives JPMorgan top marks for extending its services into such areas as purchasing cards and payment systems.
The report by Financial Insights, an IDC company, took at look at how seven of the largest ... (2001 more chars)
Despite increasing signs of doom and gloom on the economic front, there’s yet another report that hiring in the IT sector is expected to continue to be healthy through the remainder of 2008.
According to the CareerBuilder.com Midyear Employment Forecast, which was conducted from May 22 throug... (1376 more chars)
A new Goldman Sachs report that says information technology spending will drop from an expected 7% growth rate to a 5% growth rate this year was met with much gloom. After all, Goldman, which regularly surveys corporate CIOs about their IT spending plans, has a reputation for closely reflecting wha... (640 more chars)
With the launch of the new iPhone 3G over the weekend, there have been plenty of stories about consumers waiting in frustratingly long lineups, and slow activations.
But if you can ignore the negative reports for a moment, the iPhone launch appears to be a supply chain triumph for Apple.
... (998 more chars)
With all the pressure on the job market – the unemployment rate is hovering around 5.5% and, in June, nonfarm payrolls fell by 62,000, the sixth monthly drop in a row – you would think that IT workers would be feeling some of the heat.
But that doesn’t appear to be the case.
... (1903 more chars)
Financial firms might be cutting back departmental spending and laying off workers, but they’re still spending on IT, according to
The Wall Street Journal, which reported on a new information technology spending survey of 200 IT execs.
The survey, which was done by IBM in partnership wi... (484 more chars)
The IT workforce is at a record high, topping 4 million people, and tech unemployment is near record lows, at 2.3% -- half that of the national unemployment figures – according to
an analysis of just released U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics by CIO Insight magazine.
“Why would IT... (577 more chars)
No matter where you look these days, the price of oil is having a dramatic impact on the economy.
In April, I attended a conference where i2 Technologies chief executive Pallab Chatterjee asked supply chain executives, ‘what would your companies do if oil climbed to $125 per barrel?’ At the... (2017 more chars)
In the early days of excitement around using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to streamline supply chains, OATSystems emerged as a leading light.
The Waltham, Mass.-based company was able to secure a blue-chip customers list including Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark, and Unilev... (2433 more chars)
“I disliked working with those people so much that I don’t even know if I hate doing this for a living or it was just those people at THAT place.”
That is exactly what someone shared with me just a few days ago. Isn’t that sad? But this isn’t the first time someone has shared these t... (1386 more chars)
As mentioned in a
previous blog, business travelers lose more than 12,000 laptops a week in American airports, according to a new report by the Ponemon Institute, which offers education, research and verification programs around information and privacy management.
So, what can toda... (1013 more chars)
The 9th Circuit rules text messages stored by 3rd parties are out of bounds. What does this mean? Well, if I use my personal blackberry to do some belligerent activity and I use my phone to take inappropriate photos with my camera. My employer’s recourse? Zilch!
Now looking to the practical impl... (738 more chars)
That laptops are misplaced or stolen isn’t exactly news – not with all the high profile cases over the past couple of years. But the fact that business travelers lose more than 12,000 laptops a week in American airports, according to a just-released report by the Ponemon Institute,
is nothi... (1044 more chars)
If IT and legal were to work ahead of time to resolve the complex issue of policy and technology alignment, a company would realize substantial savings and lower the overall legal costs and risks.
Why does this not happen? Well, it may be that there simply is a perception gap. Technologist see l... (1162 more chars)
As if IT workers aren’t picked on enough.
The Wall Street Journal’s Tom Weber posted a blog yesterday on a new book by Johns Hopkins’ Romance languages and literature professor P.M. Forni that’s titled “The Civility Solution: What to Do When People Are Rude.”
As Weber ... (1145 more chars)
Does Microsoft’s Windows operating system need a new foundation?
A column in the June 29, 2008, issue of the New York Times by Randall Stross points out how bloated Windows has become and then states flatly: “The best solution to the multiple woes of Windows is starting over. Complet... (1622 more chars)
My colleague Chris Warner recently did a nice writeup of how Thomson Reuters is using Mashups for their scientific ventures. I have paraphrased his article here:
Thomson applied mashups to one of it's scientific community portals , a 'gateway to researchers and their published works'
for 'ac... (1705 more chars)
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When it comes to work, what do IT professionals say is the most important thing to them?
Ninety-four percent of those polled by trade magazine Computerworld s... (1276 more chars)
2008 Certified Business Continuity Vendor (CBCV) from Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRII)
2008 Member Business Continuity Institute (MBCI) though Business Continuity Institute International
2008 Community Emergency Respons Team through Milwaukee County Sheriff's Training Center
... (107 more chars)
A study earlier this year by management consultants McKinsey & Co. found that some 74% of the companies it surveyed were open to using on-demand software applications from a third party, which is also knows as using software as a service.
But going with an SaaS solutions isn’t as eas... (1739 more chars)
If you do X, what is the worst thing that could happen? Now, what is the best thing that could happen? Are you prepared for both scenarios?
These are three simple questions to ask yourself when you are trying to make a decision. I confess, I have used these questions to help myself for many ye... (1749 more chars)
Grace Monahan, the CIO at Henry Schein, the $6 billion distributor of medical, dental and veterinary supplies, gave a presentation during a recent lunch hosted by the Long Island chapter of the Association of Information Technology Professionals, a national organization of IT workers.
Grac... (1179 more chars)
In recent weeks I have taken a look at the bankruptcy suffered by fire truck manufacturer American LaFrance due to what the company claims was a botched ERP implementation.
As a result I took particular interest in a report published this month by the British Computer Society on why IT projects... (2163 more chars)
The CIO Executive Briefing blog recently had the opportunity to listen to Mark Halloran, chief information officer at Medco Health Solutions, make a presentation at the Columbia University CIO Institute, a three-day training academy for IT executives looking to move up to the next level. It’s run... (555 more chars)
A lot is made of IT jobs being sent to India. But the CIO Executive Briefing blog was a bit surprised to find out that the top six India-based IT service providers -- Satyam, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant and HCL Technologies (which are also becoming known by the acronym Switch) -- accounted for j... (1985 more chars)
In the global world it seems a shift is starting. It seems that a company to successfully operate must successful merge the IT, legal, and business needs to manage internal risks and costs.
A central driving force: e-discovery. It seems in the morass of technology deployments underlying the rapi... (812 more chars)
This is the third part in a series looking at fire truck manufacturer American LaFrance’s efforts to emerge from bankruptcy protection following a botched ERP implementation. Sunny Delight Beverages chief information officer Greg Winholt has steered his company through two successful ERP transitio... (7030 more chars)
American LaFrance, a 175-year-old manufacturer of fire trucks and emergency vehicles, emerged from bankruptcy protection in May – a bankruptcy it blames in part on a botched ERP implementation. The company is now attempting to return to full production following a painful reorganization.
Here... (10111 more chars)
Who should Outsource?
Just about everybody, from entrepreneurs in the SOHO (small office home office) segment to SMEs (small and medium enterprises), to large businesses and empires with diversified interests and varied business processes. Every business benefits hugely through outsourcing becau... (6382 more chars)
Do you people feel there is a disconnect between the legal policies and process set-forth for managing and information and the technologies underlying them?
It seems that the blunders of e-discovery that are constantly in the papers demonstrate that there is some communication lapse, no?
Let... (49 more chars)
Here is a very nice place to meet people who are into information technology.Africa is growing very fast in ICT.I will like to meet people who want to invest in ICT in Africa.{mosimage}
I am looking for any company or personnel that are in the West Cleveland area to help me work on new projects I have coming up, or willing to work in this area.
1. Looking for a Security System Vendor-I need to install and setup IP cams on a business site.
2. Looking for a Web 2.0 Vendor-To setup ... (555 more chars)
American LaFrance, a storied manufacturer of fire trucks and other emergency vehicles, is attempting to bring its operations back into full production after emerging from bankruptcy protection two weeks ago, on May 23.
The court approval of its reorganization ends a sorry chapter in its proud h... (2895 more chars)
I find this statement quite disturbing: “We are keeping all the work in-house, trying to keep our economy up!” Outsourcing does not mean anyone is stealing jobs of anyone else. Beside the fact, their is accute shortage of technically qualified people around the world. One of the main reason bein... (1127 more chars)
I have always felt that people who claim themselves as quite intelligent or the “I know it all” are in essence a sap. These days we all have heard that we need to master the art of THINKING, and we need to think, reason, and question. We teach our kids the same thing. But what puzzles me is - do... (1463 more chars)
Last week I was going through the merger which happened, or atleast was suppose to happen, between HP and EDS. Mark Hurd - CEO of HP has an amazing idea of trying to automate things and have un-manned sites. Which I feel is quite a different way of thinking. People are always the real resources - no... (1533 more chars)
Do you know me?
I am smart and funny. I am truly quirky and proud of it. Sometimes I create or get caught up in drama. My life can be fast paced. Some people think of me as highly creative, others see me as some type of genius or mad scientist.
I am really messy, I just can’t help it ... (2181 more chars)
I'm always amazed at how companies use Excel to such a great extent. There are many statistics citing the fact that knowledge workers
spend up to 60% of their day cutting and pasting into Word and Excel,
and I know from experience that it is true, having been a knowledge worker myself for several... (1338 more chars)
Apple has some of the hottest selling consumer electronics on the market, a credit to the company's sleek designs and skillful marketing.
But there's one aspect of its success which also deserves recognition — its supply chain. In the past Apple has been criticized for its inability to ... (3595 more chars)
Gartner - recently published a short update on the status of IT and overall Corporate Risk Management. Bottomline - Risk Management in Companies is receiving increased visibility in these turbulent times. Both natural and man-made issues affecting corporate stability are happening with more frequenc... (250 more chars)
What is the point of having policies if your technologies can not support the retention requirements?
How do you go about identifying these gaps?
What is the way you find most effective working with your legal team?
With e-discovery really starting to get traction in the courts, it is a m... (684 more chars)
Speaking engagements
Apr 2009 Continuity Insights Chandler
May 2009 Oklahoma Association of Health Care Providers
Oct 2008 AHIMA Seattle
Aug 2008 THCA Gatlinburg
May 2008 CPM Las Vegas
March 2008 DRJ Orlando
Feb 2008 MHHA Minneapolis
Oct 2007 AHIMA Philly
June 2007 AHIMA LTC H... (12 more chars)
Another sign that virtualization software is taking root in a wider range of corporations comes from career Web site Dice.com.
In its latest marketplace trends report, Dice senior vice president Tom Silver, says technologists who are trained in particular in VMWare’s products will find they ... (1101 more chars)
Retailers have been concentrating on the processes and practices that improve back office functions. Now it's time to improve the store experience. What can retailers do to make the store experience more rewarding for customers? Your thoughts will be made a part of the Big Ideas Board at the Shopper... (42 more chars)
I had two conversations with a couple of Wall St. Managing Directors this week about Mashups. They were from different firms.
Firm A was just hearing about Mashups for the first time. Their epiphany was this: “Instead of the big projects,
what about the small stuff, where Mashups could knock... (1098 more chars)
CIO's are facing more turmoil in their industry sectors and individual businesses this year than usual. Executive suites are talking internally about tactics that best fit the short range economic outlook. It appears that while many are cutting spends and holding back on projects, others see opportu... (308 more chars)
The news this week that Hewlett-Packard has agreed to purchase Electronic Data Systems (EDS) for $13.25 billion, sets the stage for HP to mount a serious challenge to IBM’s dominance in the computer consulting and services industry.
HP has long desired to be a serious contender in the consult... (2458 more chars)
A very well written and comprehensive article from Gartner on Social Networking and retailers. Many of the points are valid, if retailers are not utilizing the latest Web 2.0 tools (I really like the Digg.com lab Slack tool), then they will quickly find themselves out of touch with what is being wri... (692 more chars)
One of my favorite blogs is by JP Rangaswami , an MD at BT, and former CIO of Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. He writes the following about large organizations, which really rings true with my experience as employee and consultant to many such firms:
"We stress the importance of human resourc... (1044 more chars)
VDI is being seen as a way of managing desk tops applications. Security is also a big risk and challenge that can be solved with VDI. VDI assumes the application images being stored in the network and they are being sent over the network by clicking the applications on desk tops. This concept is not... (125 more chars)
What is the next great supply chain question to be tackled, i2 Technologies Chairman Sanjiv Sidhu posed to the company’s annual i2 Planet gathering in Phoenix last week.
After a pause, he provided his response: “Carbon dioxide emissions.”
Sidhu may be ahead of the market with his... (3378 more chars)
MIS , the acronym for the ‘Management Information System’ is a buzzword in today’s business world. Found in abundance in the literature of management science, the practicing managers of Business& Industry are happy to make use of it more as a managerial jargon than anything else. Quite often... (10365 more chars)
Exciting news on a Forrester webcast the other day. Their forecast for Mashups: to be a $628M segment by 2013. Even by 2009, the Mashup market will be a $100M segment, says Forrester. They mention that there is a current air of confusion about Mashups, and what they can do for the enterprise. Man... (414 more chars)
I thought I'd share some of the use cases that I hear frequently on how to apply Mashups to the Enterprise. If you have some ideas, I’d like to hear yours, too.
1. Alleviate the data pain of growth by acquisition. If you have multiple ERP systems, you can consume data from them for a unified ... (1449 more chars)
Bob McDonald, chief operating officer of Procter & Gamble, gave a great keynote presentation at the RFID Live conference in Las Vegas last week, on P&G’s journey towards adopting radio frequency identification technology.
McDonald talked about the coming together of P&G and Gillette, which... (1744 more chars)
How does one balance the legal-business needs with the technology costs against the legal risks that present themselves if your company gets hammered by e-Discovery.
Chesbrough talks about innovation models in his book Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology (HBS Press, 2006.) The idea is that black box innovation in today’s world is more costly, redundant, and exclusive than open innovation, which embraces available i... (2495 more chars)
When Wal-Mart first announced its ambitious plans to deploy radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology in its supply chain in 2003, the hype around the potential benefits and uses quickly spun out of control.
It was predicted RFID tags would soon be popping up everywhere – on pallets,... (2038 more chars)
It turns out we are still dumping a great deal of our e-waste from computers and electronic appliances in China, India, and Africa. In my recent trip to China and India, I saw how kids dismantle these stuff using their hand and chisels. In India they were burning them and young men and women breathi... (440 more chars)
An average American emits about 16 metric tons of CO2 per year. The world's average is about 25% of US. To sustain living on the earth we need to drop to two metric tons. Can we make a commitment both on a personal and business level to make this happen?
LiveScience.com on Friday posted a report about two computer science researchers who discovered black holes on the Internet – spots where, for a period of time, messages just seem to disappear.
And, they said, it appears that transmissions around the world are constantly getting swallowed... (818 more chars)
Gartner this week came out with a list of IT Grand Challenges , which the research firm defined as fundamental IT challenges that, if overcome, will have “broad and extremely beneficial economic, scientific or societal effects on all aspects of our lives.”
Making predictions is always... (3545 more chars)
Mashups are hot. They were named a ‘Top 10 Technology for 2008’ by Gartner. They were spotlighted recently by the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, McKinsey, IDC and The Economist. They were the topic of the opening panel discussion at the 2008 Web Services on Wall Street conference in New Y... (2236 more chars)
A report created for McAfee released March 18 expressed alarm that only 46% of CIO's get to have any interaction with their corporations boards of directors. Even more disconcerting was a statistic that in 20% of corporations, the CFO handles the board briefings when it comes to IT matters.
Durin... (471 more chars)
Let me state the obvious, that anyone that can guarantee quick legitimate top ten ranking in the keywords, key phrases and category or industry specific listing in the top search engines and keep them there would be doing that for themselves. This is because like in great real estate it’s all abou... (2692 more chars)
At RegionalLink.com, we provide Joomla CMS Templates, Custom Joomla CMS Components, Joomla CMS Modules and Content Management System Design. Joomla CMS has been recognized as the most powerful web CMS for websites.
The CMS based sites have a front end which your website is seen by the public or y... (914 more chars)
Royal Dutch Shell’s decision this week to award a $4 billion outsourcing contract to three global technology and telecommunications suppliers, will no doubt again set off alarm bells within the IT ranks of corporations.
Under the terms of the agreement, some 3,000 IT staffers will transfer ... (2218 more chars)
A new week. A new data breach.
Advance Auto Parts, a car parts retailer, said yesterday that it was the victim of a network intrusion and that an internal investigation found that the financial data of up to 56,000 customers might have been compromised.
The company did not detail the se... (669 more chars)
I am frequently amused by organizations and even entire companies that are stuck in the 'program' rut. Innovation is all to often treated in this manner; as a program. No sure fire way exists to stifle innovation, or indeed any creative thinking, than by christening a program. Innovation is not some... (479 more chars)
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, thi... (11777 more chars)
I have seen hundreds of I/T organizations, and the single-most determiner of success is leadership. You can't be a leader unless you have followers, you won't have followers unless you have a vision, and you won't materialize your vision if you don't have a plan.
I see so many I/T managers that are... (213 more chars)
I was sitting with a client the other day, when he made the following comment:
“I really like going to lunch with my team and they invite me all the time, but I think I should only go when I have some type of work related information to share with them.”
This was not the primary reason for... (1147 more chars)
Some times what looks like a good deal turns out to be a mistake.
When I go to someone’s house to look a problem you never know what you are going to run in to. My customer owns an hp all-in-one printer, and for the longest time would use remanufactured printer cartages. This time he put in new... (302 more chars)
It is very hard to associate a medium size company with the big players in the IT industry, everyone says it takes time for a business to grow and become firmly established,
however what does a person do when patience is running out?
There was a time when equipment disposition was easy. One would procure bids; the buyers would write a check and the old gear would disappear. Then we were bombarded with everything from environmental issues, which eliminated the “landfill” solution and federal privacy regulations that made a da... (4420 more chars)
At a recent software development conference, I overheard a discussion involving a project which had run substantially over budget and schedule. The question posed was what did the group learn about how to avoid such overruns. The Answer? Break the project down into the smallest possible units, and ... (2779 more chars)
Business-IT alignment is by far the “mother of all reasons” why IT organizations fail to deliver. However, when asked about “alignment” in more detail, CIOs as well as business stakeholders fail to provide a succinct interpretation of what it is in the “real” world. A macro-level defini... (4604 more chars)
What is the best way to drive offshore value in terms of Total Cost Ownership as Opposed to just hourly rate..
I see TCO should include, code quality, time lost in debuging, time lost due to attribtion, time lost in untrusty relationships etc.
Is IT industry waking up to do cost savings this ... (9 more chars)
BMC on Monday agreed to buy data-center automation company BladeLogic in a stock and cash deal value at about $800 million.
BMC, which offers automation tools for monitoring and managing IT systems, will combine its software with BladeLogic’s more targeted product line, which helps compa... (2625 more chars)
As the events unfolded in New York this week concerning now former Governor Eliot Spitzer’s dramatic fall from grace, there was a piece of irony to the scandal.
Well, truth be told, the whole affair is filled with irony when you begin with the nation’s highest profile crime fighter gettin... (2629 more chars)
An article in the March 10 Wall Street Journal, “How To Tap IT’s Hidden Potential” generated a lot of discussion in CIO circle over the past couple of days.
The feature highlights some very key issues and outlines seven steps that will help “shatter the wall between IT and the rest... (4355 more chars)
Just when you thought it was a bit safer to download software from the Internet, another threat jumps up to reinstate a healthy fear.
On the win one side, a U.S. judge has ordered a spyware distributor to hand over funds he received from tricking consumers into downloading screensavers loade... (2264 more chars)
When it comes to reducing IT energy consumption, there is no one technology solution.
That was Vijay Sankaran’s message to the 200 information technology managers gathered in New York last Thursday for IDC’s Green IT Forum.
Sankaran, the director of infrastructure operations at Ford... (2543 more chars)
Data quality expert Tom Redman recently published a White Paper on data quality that lists the 10 habits practiced by companies with the best data.
While Redmond, president of Navesink Consulting Group, has spoken about these habits before, data quality remains a big issue for most companies... (4621 more chars)
How time flies when some $260 billion worth of goods and services are being sold online. At least that was the estimate of the total value of goods and services that would be sold in the U.S. in 2007, according to a study released a year ago by Forrester Research and Shop.org.
Next Tuesday, M... (2209 more chars)
There are two modes of thought when it comes to the Dummies series of books. One – let’s call it the cynic’s theory - is that when a topic makes it into the Dummies series, the fad, technology, or movement behind it has probably passed its peak.
The other theory is that when a topic like ... (3392 more chars)
CIOZone Platform Update - APC, OpenAds, Fedora Core 7
2/18/08
As previously mentioned the CIOZone.com platform is comprised of 100% Open Source Components. Several new enhancements have been made to our implementation of the Joomla CMS along with LAMP stack on which it runs. The first is t... (1621 more chars)
Is Silicon Valley set to become Solar Valley?
There answer, according to an
article in Sunday’s New York Times, seems to be yes. The article notes that some of the area’s smartest people are focusing their attention on ways of finding cheaper and more plentiful solar panels.
... (970 more chars)
Gartner, the IT market research and consulting company, just put up a list of 10 events and developments that it says will shape the IT landscape this year and beyond. Gartner is using the list to show CIOs and other IT executives where they should be concentrating resources now so that they're in ... (4396 more chars)
In just the past couple of days, there have been reports of two moves the feds are making to protect the country’s vital information infrastructure from cyber attacks -- both of which are sure to attract the attention of privacy advocates.
The Washington Post reported that President Bush au... (3340 more chars)
Like millions of other football fans, I’ll be firmly planted on the couch this Sunday taking in the battle between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants in the Super Bowl.
That's partly why I was attracted to doing a case study looking at the implementation of a fully converged ... (4949 more chars)
Never underestimate the power of a big stick.
In July 2005, Hewlett-Packard set out on a mission to half the number of applications it used and shutter 79 of its 85 data centers. The move, as The Wall Street Journal reports, was part of HP CEO Mark Hurd’s goal to drastically cut the percen... (1567 more chars)
With daily questions about the economy and capital spending, one has to wonder what will happen to corporate information technology purchasing.
Well, according to a story in Saturday’s The New York Times, there will be some belt tightening – and perhaps deep I.T. cuts at some financial c... (1726 more chars)
Get with the RFID program, or else.
That's the strong-arm message Wal-Mart has issued to some of its suppliers who have been dragging their heels in complying with the retailer’s radio frequency identification (RFID) strategy.
Suppliers shipping products to the Sam’s Club distri... (1534 more chars)
Think its tough supporting mobile workers now? Well you ain’t seen nothing yet.
IDC predicts that the number of mobile workers will reach 1 billion by 2011 – with 75% or the U.S. workforce being able to work outside the office.
But, as most CIOs are all too aware, an increasingly ... (346 more chars)
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The Wall Street Journal’s BizTech blog had an interesting item that noted more than a dozen companies had changed chief information officers in the past couple of weeks.
Why the turnover? CIOs running out the door after collecting their year-end bonuses, com... (3638 more chars)
The growth rate is still well into the double digits, but the mobile business applications market will slow down this year, according to market watcher In-Stat.
Growth in mobile business applications revenue will come in somewhere near 50% between 2006 and 2007, says In-Stat, and will slow to... (981 more chars)
New York City was scheduled this week to hold a hearing on a recycling proposal that would make television, computer and MP3 manufacturers take back their products after they’ve been used, according to the Newsday article.
It's a step in the right direction.
Computers, for in... (753 more chars)
Gartner just released an eye-popping statistic: Only about one-third of the 359 corporations it surveyed are prepared for business outages lasting more than a week.
With the threat of disasters such as fires, hurricanes, terrorist attacks and pandemics hanging over businesses around the wo... (1938 more chars)
CA, the Islandia, N.Y., software company that sells a line of security products, just released its latest Internet Security Outlook Report, listing its eight security predictions for 2008.
CA sees big threats this year for users of social networks, online gaming sites, and instant messagin... (1882 more chars)
The global outsourcing market will grow at a brisk 8.1% this year, predicts Gartner. Yet, the research house notes, many organizations' IT sourcing strategies and governance structures are, it says, "immature, lacking altogether, or misaligned with enterprise objectives."
Which is a good rea... (597 more chars)
Anyone managing an information technology operation knows that it’s difficult to keep qualified talent. In fact, in the latest member survey from the Society for Information Management, the national organization of chief information officers, employee hiring and retention was listed as the number... (1480 more chars)
With this beta release of the CIOZone.com, we will have deployed several Joomla based open source social networking applications including Community Builder, GroupJive, Fireboard Forums, and Mamblog blogger. We wish to thank the Joomla community for all of the contributions they have made to our de... (593 more chars)
The CIOZone.com is built on the open source LAMP stack using Joomla 1.0.13 as the content management system. Social Network functionality for the site is deployed via a set of plugins and extentions.
Community Builder is the primary plugin component used. A complete list of plugins appears be... (1446 more chars)
