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I was going back through some of the articles I have written for this column, and I came across one written in October 2006. In the article I described how the East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy) was initiated in 2002 with the intention of completing it in June 2005. As it is now mid-2008 we might as well see how things are going in EASSy-land.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 25/06/2008 - Terry White
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The two technologies of server and storage virtualisation have developed from a very similar base, and address very similar concerns and issues, such as increasing utilisation rates, increasing organisational flexibility, and reducing operational cost. However, these two solutions have been developed by different sectors of the market and are only now being seen as complementary technologies rather than separate unconnected technologies.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 25/06/2008 - Roy Illsley
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What would you consider the value of your company’s data to be? Would you consider offering a public reward to anyone who could supply any information relating to apprehending the people responsible for the theft of every piece of valuable and confidential data that your organisation possessed? Would you actually still have a job? Would you know if it happened?
Butler Group Review Articles - published 25/06/2008 - Calum MacLeod
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Despite a few commentators who are insistent on giving Enterprise Architecture (EA) a bad press, it is clear that this vital discipline (and we should indeed ensure it is a discipline), is becoming a mainstream element of business strategy and planning.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 25/06/2008 - Tim Jennings
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Top of the hype-curve right now is the simple appendage ‘2.0’, with Web 2.0 heading the list. Without that tag, a product, architecture, or business initiative is simply not cool. This in itself is a very good reason for a healthy dose of cynicism – bandwagons based on fashion trends tend to roll to a stop unless there is something more material adding to the inertia.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 25/06/2008 - Rob Hailstone
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Although service providers, and especially managed services providers, claim their solutions are highly applicable to the Small- to Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) sector, a recent Business Insights Report notes that the propensity of SMEs in the UK for using third-party providers is still relatively low.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 25/06/2008 - Maxine Holt
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Creating a service portfolio allows organisations to gain a better understanding of the relationships that exist between the organisational requirements and the services that are to be made available.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 25/06/2008 - Mike Thompson
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There are both advantages and disadvantages of owning ‘legacy’ technologies. In answer to those who propound any and every technology that is new, defenders of legacy technologies often fall back on the adage that the definition ‘legacy’ signifies something that actually works reliably (which, of course, cannot be said for immature technologies, or for implementations of more modern technologies that cut corners). But that does not make ownership of, and dependency on, legacy technologies, a comfortable option.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 25/06/2008 - Alan Rodger
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The delivery of consistently-secure information and application protection solutions that relate to the specific needs of the business community, continues to be a major challenge for most organisations, as IT struggles to understand who is doing what with corporate data.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 25/06/2008 - Andy Kellett
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To look at SOA from a marketing perspective, it has yet to successfully ‘cross the chasm’ (to use the term originated by Geoffrey Moore). In most cases ‘crossing the chasm’ refers to moving from a closely defined vertical industry sector into wide-scale, cross-industry adoption.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 25/06/2008 - Rob Hailstone
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Zoho has fascinated Web 2.0 aficionados ever since the parent company AdventNet, from Chennai, India, developed a series of online productivity applications in the 2002-04 period. The company has been prolific since then, launching a series of online business applications, and numerous upgrades to its productivity suite.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 25/06/2008 - Somak Roy
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Last month, in the first part of my ‘Coping with SharePoint’ article, I wrote about the rising popularity of Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0, and also how this free offering from Microsoft differs from its portal product – Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 25/06/2008 - Richard Edwards
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The potential of a Project Portfolio Management (PPM) solution to provide more accurate reporting on current and planned projects, and to improve the process of selecting, prioritising, and managing IT investments, is a relatively straightforward proposition.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 25/06/2008 - Roy Illsley
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Business information breaks down into structured and unstructured data. We have the tools to analyse the 20% of structured data but often miss out on valuable business information through limited insight into the other 80%.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 25/06/2008 - Angela Eager
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The art of software Project Management (PM) can be turned to something nearer to a science, or at least engineering, with the practice of project estimation techniques. The value in (good) estimation is two fold – it allows for budgeting and planning resources ahead of a project, and by tracking project actuals against original estimates, it informs management on project progress and whether targets will be met.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 25/06/2008 - Michael Azoff
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Web 2.0 is a modern-day phenomenon that has caught many organisations napping. However, private sector companies have started to catch up with the technology and make use of it, but the non-commercial world – the public sector – is still to act. The question is can the sector dance to the music of time and take advantage of Web 2.0 technologies to transform itself into Government 2.0?
Butler Group Review Articles - published 25/06/2008 - Sarah Burnett
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The pressures on the Public Sector to do more with less and deliver further efficiency savings are mounting by the day. Many organisations in this sector are grappling with major projects that require software systems and cutting-edge technology just to respond to Government targets, let alone their own on-going business needs that require support and enablement from IT.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 25/06/2008 - Sarah Burnett
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Organisations implementing a content management system all too often fail to take account of their existing information during the implementation project. It is not until the new system has been deployed that they even consider their legacy information, and how much of it should be loaded into the content management repository.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 25/06/2008 - Sue Clarke
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IT organisations are under pressure to develop an effective strategy and to deliver services that meet the objectives of the enterprise. In order to meet these requirements, it is essential that IT management has a thorough understanding of what they have got, where the business is headed, and what are the transformation activities necessary to navigate the changes.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 25/06/2008 - Mark Blowers
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The power needed to run a data centre will continue to rise, due to the expected increase in data storage requirements, but this is completely contrary to organisational requirements to cut power costs and reduce their carbon footprint. Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea (or a rock and a hard place for our US readers), organisations need a strategy to ensure that both aims can be achieved.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 04/06/2008 - Mike Thompson
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The day-to-day requirement of business organisations to work with an extremely diverse range of multi-faceted, often Web-driven information systems is the driving force behind the continued demand for identity-based protection and access control systems.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 04/06/2008 - Andy Kellett
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Our baby is leaving home. Now I know he’s only 23 and has only been in full-time employment for the last several years but my wife doesn’t know how the baby is going to cope. After all he’s never had to cook, wash, and take out the garbage. His mother has even done his tax returns for him!!
Butler Group Review Articles - published 04/06/2008 - Calum MacLeod
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From a state of obscurity only a few years ago, virtualisation of IT resources is widely seen as an approach that is realistically likely to transform many aspects of the delivery of IT, within the majority of organisations. While virtualisation technology is certainly innovative, its popularity is not driven by organisations wanting to be ‘clever’ for the sake of it.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 04/06/2008 - Alan Rodger
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I came across a report that the Nigerian Federal High Court ordered two GSM operators, MTN and Celtel, to compensate their subscribers for poor quality of service experienced up to January 31.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 04/06/2008 - Terry White
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At the turn of the century there were a good number of large IT Outsourcing (ITO) contracts signed with the leading services vendors of the time. Many of these contracts are now nearing their agreed end, and as such the customer organisations will be taking their decisions on whether to renew with the existing supplier or request proposals from alternative providers.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 04/06/2008 - Maxine Holt
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