As companies shape their IT budgets for the year ahead, there may be some uncertainty about the best way to proceed in the current business climate. According to the 2012 Gartner Executive Programs CIO Survey, IT budgets had been Read more
A Memorial Day post of a piece a group of us did in 2008. Featuring Marty Keil, Bill Barrett, Lonnie Wilson, and myself. We all salute our fallen warriors and the families they left behind…both gave up much in Read more
Security is coming up more recently in the light of high profile data thefts and new threats to your private information. According to many experts cloud computing increases data center risk, as both cloud and virtualization create new vulnerabilities.
Read more
“Wikibon believes that successful enterprises will be aggressive and early adopters of a mega-data center strategy.” David Floyer, Co-Founder and CTO, Wikibon
David Floyer only writes about major shifts every couple of years but as most will tell you Read more
Believe it or not the cost to a business of the average data center outage is going up. At $7,900 a minute, up 41% from 2010’s cost of $5,600 per minute, there are very few industries that can afford Read more
There was a time when taking space in a data center owned by someone else meant limitations on who you used for access and often high costs mixed with low performance. Thankfully the new preferred model is now available Read more
“Data center design, construction, technology and administration is sufficiently expensive, specialized and scalable, both horizontally to bigger facilities and vertically to multiple tenants, that data center operations are increasingly a game for specialists.” Kurt Marko, IT Analyst, Information Week
Melbourne Health’s recent deployment of a new data warehouse and the adoption of a business intelligence (BI) platform, to gain greater insight into how well it is serving patients while still controlling costs, is a look at what Read more
Departing from my normal tech oriented news and blog posts, I offer up a classic Kompoz instrumental jam fest. Featuring the talents of Bill “Rhythm King” Howe, Mark “Spin Meister” Bowen, Jeff “Let it Rip” Chalpan, Read more
Genuitec’s MyEclipse Blue want’s to release you from being tied to RAD “expand your development horizons.” A leader in the Eclipse Foundation open source community Genuitec provides both platforms and development tools for developers and companies building applications using Read more
Many seasoned mobile application developers are realizing that the consumer app market is getting very saturated. They also understand that the cloud and its many permutations are creating new opportunities for more business-oriented mobile application development.
Virtually every business Read more
During the SharePoint conference early March, Microsoft exploded with integration after integration based on multiple acquisitions and technology platforms they are taking to the “cloud”. One of two social networking technologies the big M announced was its new search Read more
In her blog “Forrester’s Top Trends For CRM In 2014”, Kate Leggett points to 14 trends that are going to drive customer relationship management (CRM) this year. A couple of the trends caught this writer’s eye and point Read more
This year’s Mobile World Congress included a lot of buzz about “wearable tech”. From smart glasses to smart watches many tech companies and developers are eyeing these new devices as opportunities for new business.
Take for example Samsung’s “Gear Read more
If you read the McKinsy Global Institutes report, “Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy”, you will note that of all the disruptive technologies the very most disruptive will be the growth Read more
It was interesting to note in mobile application developer Lauruss Infotech’s recent press release that the subject was their launch of a “responsive” website on which they would be selling their mobile apps.
The reason this caught Read more
Probably the most profound creation since the invention of the telephone and the industrial revolution, the world wide web is now 25 years old. It is important to note that there is a difference between what we usually simply Read more
It is safe to say that WordPress was a revolution of sorts in the world of content management systems (CMS). Certainly not the first, many of us were developing CMS platforms as early as the late 90s in one-off Read more
With the 2014 SharePoint Conference in Vegas wrapped up it left in its trail many new features, capabilities and updates that the SharePoint customer base must now consider or incorporate. Many are long awaited expansions of the integration of Read more
It’s safe to say that Microsoft has a long track record for using strategic acquisitions to bring together the ammunition it needs to go after a competitor. And their target this time is an old foe, Salesforce.
Three new Read more
Or is Big Data simply one of two “camps” that exist within the business intelligence community as Eric Lebson and Ian Christopher McCaleb point out in their Holmes Report piece “Speaking Intelligently On Business Intelligence”. They rightly look at Read more
We wrote about this union not too long ago but ShoreTel’s recent unleashing of its sizable partner channels has increased the importance of this new addition to the already robust SF platform.
As much as we would like to Read more
Announce last year the deal between the two rivals, Microsoft and Oracle, allows Oracle apps to be certified to run on Windows Server, Hyper-V and Windows Azure is being cemented by the software becoming available on Windows Azure Read more
Another “something different” musical post. The last one got such good reception, probably because it wasn’t boring tech stuff, I thought I do it more often.
From my SpinDizzy & the Fusion Clowns CD “Do Electric Clowns Dream”.
Featuring Read more
According to the “Magic Quadrant Report” for 2014 the market for business intelligence (BI) and analytics platforms is predicted to grow at a rate of 7% through 2017. Some analysts have predicted even faster growth in cloud based BI Read more
It’s Friday and not a day to dwell on technical subjects for a change. So instead today’s post is musical. The result of my participation in an online community of recording musicians, Kompoz.com, is this little ditty reminiscent of Read more
Author’s Note: This is an article written for a client in the IT and Application Development industry.
Red Hat’s big news on February 11th was the launch of JBoss Data Virtualization 6, making the feature rich platform for Read more
Two new additions are joining companies that are integrating their services with the Salesforce cloud in order to support customer service as well as sales. Announced on February 18th this year both ShoreTel and SearchBlox bring some powerful Read more
Zeus Malware and its many variants has been around for quite some time. One of its many children was used in recent news making attacks on retail giants Target and Michaels. And although it was primarily designed to specifically Read more
There is a trend towards bringing some IT jobs that were once being outsourced back in-house and the number of H-1b visa bearing engineers and developers is slowing down. Part of this is because the kind of innovative talent Read more
Author’s Note: This article was written for a client last week. According to GeekWire’s coverage of the speech we are pleased to report the following had it nailed as far as his focus, with the exception of comments relating Read more
Microsoft is never shy about its goals and the launch of Power BI for Office 365 is not any different. Microsoft’s goal…bring business intelligence tools to a billion screens.
Once the domain of analysts and data scientists, increasingly companies Read more
Both Oracle’s President Mark Hurd and high profile CEO Larry Ellison showed up for the company’s first HCM World conference this February, underscoring the importance of this space to Oracle’s future. Hurd even joked about how rare this Read more
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, often outspoken and often given to move aggressively when the spirit moves him, is redefining who Oracle is actually in competition with. It used to be primarily IBM and SAP but as the aggregate collection Read more
According to an article in Forbes recently Ellie Cachette thinks the fear of outsourcing technology development is holding back entrepreneurs. In the article she focuses on female Chief Executives like herself, but thinks fears about outsourcing technology Read more
Now that the Salesforce1 has lifted off and some of the excitement is beginning to fall into more practical considerations, Salesforce.com is set to roll out a big upgrade to their industry leading CRM product. The Spring ’14 edition Read more
According to SharePoint expert Christian Buckley whether you are considering updating your SharePoint platform or implementing one for the first time, your top consideration should be productivity. As he puts it in his piece for CMS Wire, Read more
One could argue that if there is a place for the much ballyhooed “Big Data” it lies within at least the systems purview of Business Intelligence (BI). A tedious process for years involving statistical analysis and weeding through tons Read more
Still carefully balancing its existing product set, SAP is now pushing a bit harder to build its cloud business. Addressing primarily larger enterprise level organizations, the European software giant is increasingly building partnerships to deploy private cloud based versions Read more
The adoption of mobile devices in healthcare has already started and early on was driven primarily by the continuing evolution of the “electronic health record”. With HIPAA and a number of other laws providing a framework and timetable for Read more
Proximity marketing as a concept is not new. It is often described first in terms of the type of device it can address in the hands of a potential customer. Essentially the concept has always been sort Read more
First the bad news. Recently Microsoft changed its licensing model for the Enterprise edition of SQL Server 2012 to a “per-core” basis. They have grandfathered users who deployed under the old model, which was per-processor licensing, but new customers Read more
If you listen to Forbes contributor Gene Marks, Microsoft is about to put Zendesk, Autotask and Freshdesk out of business. As he puts it, “…I’m probably exaggerating when I Say that Microsoft is going to put them Read more
Although originally written as a message board Drupal is easily one of the first open source content management systems. Like many software development projects, the original aspiration was to be a commercial boxed product. However creator Dries Buytaert allowed Read more
From Websters:
ho-lis-tic: adjective
Characterized by comprehension of the parts of something as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole.
Let’s get something straight from the start, I have both owned and worked with ad agencies Read more
It is still hard to make a sweeping prediction or even a sweeping commendation about whether it is better to have a natively developed mobile application or one that is a browser-based cross-platform. The later is facilitated by the Read more
Small and mid-sized businesses are faced with increasing competition from large enterprises who are reaching their customers using mobile marketing, proximity GEO driven offers, and sometimes taking the business away when the customer is in their store via their Read more
Just a few years ago Salesforce was banking on the “social enterprise” to be the pitch that would drive their growth. Now even they admit that did not resonate with potential customers and that performance, a more comprehensive platform Read more
Although there has been growth in the business intelligence market, 2013 is described by BI Scorecard Founder Cindi Howson as not the best, that was in the mid-90s when the BI market was growing at 40% per year. She Read more
If you speak with “old school” networking folks they will tell you that Larry Ellison’s interest in “the cloud” is because he has been involved in building it since he built his first database (working for another company Read more
Rolled out last July at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston, Power BI for Office 365 was met with a great deal of excitement. Released in August Power BI brings together a number of data modeling and visualization Read more
There are a number of predictions about the evolution of mobile applications and what design principles will guide them. One that is getting a lot of attention lately is the addition of voice to individual applications rather than just Read more
The debate over application design for mobile and whether it should be natively built, HTML5 or a hybrid continues, it seems to have resulted in a “draw”. In a recent survey conducted by Kendo UI of 3,500 developers (you Read more
The first part of a Wired Magazine’s article on the subject push v.s. pull in mobile app design, written by IBM WebSphere Chief Technology Officer Jerry Cuomo and Program Director Robert Vila, compels us to consider carefully their Read more
Back in September the FDA issued what it is referring to as “Final Guidance” concerning how medical device regulations will be applied to mobile medical applications. The push has been on to firm up how these will be regulated Read more
According to a recent study by Realtor.com, more than half of the listings viewed online were viewed on a mobile device. They also found differences in which devices used as they found in markets where property prices are Read more
Red Hat, Inc., arguably the largest corporate contributor to the Linux open-source project and founded in 1993, is responsible for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Dell, the struggling PC integrator, was once a powerful force in PC sales both Read more
If you listen to Microsoft, SkyDrive Pro combined with either Sharepoint 2013 or Office 365 is the best thing since the invention of the Internet. For enterprises this may eventually be true but there are concerns from many sides Read more
In addition to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s announcement about “SuperPod”, which we wrote about earlier this month, was the launch of the long awaited upgrade to SF deemed “Salesforce 1”. Although not a completely new product it is a Read more
You might say it is moving like a freight train through companies large and small. In fact if you are not considering mobile applications as part of either your business operations thinking or your marketing and customer support efforts Read more
The evolution of Salesforce from application to platform has been dramatic with their “cloud” growing in size, capability and available third party support. Now one of their largest clients is joining forces with them a deal that has many Read more
As of early November 2013, Oracle will stop offering commercial support for new version of the open-source application server GlassFish. This leaves customers who require their support with only the option of moving to WebLogic Server.
This comes just Read more
If a recent survey conducted by Ovum, an independent research firm focusing on primarily biotech and pharmaceutical companies, indicates that virtually all intend on increasing dramatically their spending on business intelligence (BI) and analytics tools.
The survey drew Read more
For many years Facebook has been building its own machines using an approach that ensures they pay only for what their specifications require and strips out the hardware and software features not needed for FB’s specific applications. It is Read more
It seems you don’t read quite as much hype about “Big Data” these days but some industries are diving in with both feet. Healthcare has even adopted its own use of the term “Big Health Data” as more and Read more
When most of us picture a “remote worker” or someone who works from home for a larger company we think of a desktop with maybe some access to company applications and files. After all, the use of “virtual desktops” Read more
Between the release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, to the new capabilities in the upcoming Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 update to its flagship ERP product, the big M is trying to delivered something for everyone…everywhere.
And Read more
In recently conducted research by Vanson Bourne, an independent global market research firm, 48% of testing and development projects are outsourced by CIOs. Yet the study revealed that the change in dynamics involved when your IT becomes more Read more
Although in the open-source content management system (CMS) world WordPress still maintains a significant lead with 19% of all websites running it, number two ranked Joomla! at 9% is striving to offer advancements that may well help them close Read more
Currently SharePoint is still king of the Intranet for many enterprises and mid-sized companies. However, making the move from on-premise deployment to one of the new cloud based alternatives is going slower than expected. In a recent report by Read more
Not quite as noisy as its competitors, IBM has been methodically growing its share of the application server market that as of 2012 IBM WebSphere had 60% of the market, easily moving it to being a defacto standard. On Read more
Using OpenStack’s Summit in Hong Kong this month, Red Hat, Inc. has announced multiple new innovations designed to support Red Hat’s open hybrid cloud vision for the future. This includes the availability of a beta version of Red Hat’s Read more
There are now so many different solutions being offered for building your own social network, either in a “cloud” online or “behind the firewall” as a business tool, that the list is becoming overwhelming for some companies wanting to Read more
Between Yammer, the recently acquired private social networking platform, and providing further email integration features like participating in discussions via email, SharePoint user adoption seems to be one of the big benefits. Add to that the further ability Read more
According to Raj Jain, CEO of Intalio, speaking of the company’s release of its new portlet for SharePoint Web Parts, “SharePoint users looking for an enterprise-level business process management platform to automate their mission-critical complex processes had few Read more
Although it continues to look like HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript are growing as development choices for mobile applications occasionally your project might need to go “native”. According to a study conducted by Embarcadero and Dimensional Research 74% of the Read more
From manufacturing to healthcare to just about every business that involves any sort of process is looking to automate all or part of their operation. Manufacturing has been moving this way for over twenty years but business process Read more
According to Enterprise Architect Scott Robinson in a recent TechTarget article the SharePoint libraries included in the 2013 platform “…frees users from dependence on IT while urging them toward true collaboration.”
He believes this is an essential change and Read more
And the winner is…hybrid.
Well not completely yet but in many circles it continues to be one way that larger companies are balancing the ease of entry via a public cloud against the greater security and control of a Read more
Seems that business is starting to grow for the logistics sector thanks to increasing movement of manufacturing sites from Asia to North America and Mexico. Part of what is making the move successful, according to Fleet Owner contributor Sean Read more
To quote Wikipedia; “the Internet of Things (IoT) refers to uniquely identifiable objects and their virtual representations in an Internet-like structure.”
To read the entire entry might make fans of “The Terminator” nervous when they realize that the Read more
Netscope, a cloud application analysis and policy development firm, recently released some analysis of their “Cloud Confidence Index” showing industry sectors that have sufficient “confidence” in the usefulness, security and/or performance of cloud services and applications.
Looking Read more
Even after years of web based travel and booking sites, the travel industry continues to see technology as key to their continued success. From large travel agencies to hotel chains to whole countries and destinations, web and mobile applications Read more
It has been many months since Salesforce.com acquired leading email service provider turned cloud innovator ExactTarget, but the integration of the two clouds is already becoming a reality.
Marketing departments, the primary users of the email service and the Read more
According to Automattic founder and president, Matt Mullenweg, WordPress should be powering the majority of all websites. Tiger Global Management thinks so too. It’s only been months since they paid $50 million for a secondary stake in the Read more
Oracle’s Larry Ellison basically declared war on HANA.
HANA is SAP’s flagship product and it integrates database, data processing and application platform capabilities in-memory. Ellison was hinting about the announcement next week concerning the addition of an in-memory Read more
After a decade’s long career as a pioneer in software development Dan Bricklin isn’t done yet. Now the CTO for Alpha Software Corporation, Bricklin is providing leadership in the development space. He is also advocating the use Read more
As U.S. healthcare organizations begin to incorporate the new business model that the “Affordable Care Act” creates for them, the idea of delivering health services and information by way of mobile applications is gaining momentum. Physicians are Read more
Market Wired reported in late August that MoTwin, a mobile platform provider for business applications, had outlined what they consider the key problems enterprises face in crossing the “mobile cliff”. The mobile cliff is a metaphor for the Read more
Oracle, in its continued effort to move from a premise based software provider to one more in step with current technologies, released recently its Oracle BI Mobile App Designer. The app designer allows business developers to create interactive Read more
Bring your own device (BYOD) has skyrocketed in companies large and small, placing increasing pressure on internal IT staff to provide mobile access to business tools employees use every day. However security continues to be a concern that IT Read more
Only a couple of months ago Oracle’s Larry Ellison was proclaiming that the “Oracle Public Cloud” would be “the most comprehensive cloud on the planet Earth,”. He was explaining the seven year long process that Oracle had undertaken to Read more
It’s clear by now that there is a hungry audience for applications developed for use on their mobile devices. The hunger extends now well into business and mobile savvy employees are clamoring for apps that extend to business use. Read more
Oracle’s new BI Mobile App Designer recently unveiled by the business intelligence giant runs in a browser and has a drag-and-drop design format. This allows end- users to mash up graphs, tables and other types of data to, ask Read more
Further staking its claim as a major cloud provider Salesforce.com is, as Simon Bisson of CiteWorld put it, “encouraging an app renaissance” with the release of new design templates, API integrations and a set of sample applications. With around Read more
Salesforce.com doesn’t just want you to buy apps…they want you to build them yourself.
Cloud pioneer Salesforce.com, perhaps one of the first companies to offer an “app store” for their sales and marketing set of services, looks at Read more
One thing is for sure…the cloud has started to make some strange bedfellows.
The cloud is a metaphor really for an intricate set of elements, operating systems, virtualization tools and of course data centers, high-speed networks and security software. Read more
How Microsoft has been quietly pulling ahead in the BI market.
Gartner’s Magic Quadrant report issues in February of last year was the early warning signal that the Microsoft’s long time effort to build the best of the best Read more
For the better part of 15 years businesses have been using websites as part of their marketing strategy.
At first the new medium was widely accepted and virtually every business, with a few exceptions, felt compelled to have one. Read more
I read a strategy professors use of these two musical genres today as a way of showing the difference between and the downside of two different management styles. according to him, an organization that had grown or was growing Read more
Whether you believe it or not, there have been recessions before. There have been thousands of businesses that have seen tough times in the past. They managed to survive and, best of all, grow. For many their growth was Read more
