|
In his new book (The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google), Nicholas Carr examines the technological transformation that is currently underway as software applications that were once stored on the PC move to the Web, or to the ‘cloud’ as some now call it. For many, the title of Carr’s book will trigger thoughts of a time for turning, shifting, and changing; but if one were to follow Carr’s electrical utility analogy presented in his book to its ultimate conclusion, then perhaps we should…
OpinionWire Articles - published 27/06/2008 - Richard Edwards
|
|
With the introduction of Google App Engine, the company is joining the likes of Amazon and others with its cloud-based application creation and instantiation services. But as Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho, highlighted in a recent blog posting, we are seeing the emergence of various layers of Web services operating at different levels of abstraction, serving different market needs.
OpinionWire Articles - published 17/04/2008 - Richard Edwards
|
|
The World Economic Forum has recently released its Global Information Technology Report 2007-2008. According to the organisation’s Web site (www.weforum.org) summarising the Report and the associated Network Readiness Index (NRI), Denmark is the most networked economy in the world, followed by Sweden and Switzerland. The Report noted that among the top ten, the Republic of Korea (ninth position) and, to a lesser extent, the US (fourth) post the most notable improvements. The UK, in ninth position in the …
OpinionWire Articles - published 17/04/2008 - Mark Blowers
|
|
The announcement that Microsoft is to reduce the price on the retail boxed copies of several consumer versions of Windows Vista is a clear indication (despite claims to the contrary) that Vista has not had the expected uptake in the home market. As with all things from Windows desktop, the business market tends to reflect the home market, so one could extrapolate that the business uptake is similarly disappointing. Whilst Microsoft is keen to point out that retail sales is only a small part of their tota…
OpinionWire Articles - published 11/03/2008 - Mike Thompson
|
|
Since the VMWorld conference in September 2007 the way in which organisations can implement virtualisation has witnessed a plethora of new and different solutions to enable customers to deploy a virtualised infrastructure, but is all this choice killing the goose that lays the virtual golden eggs?
OpinionWire Articles - published 11/02/2008 - Roy Illsley
|
|
The leading outsourcing advisory company, TPI, last week discussed its analysis of the outsourcing and services market position at the end of the fourth quarter of 2007, and the year as a whole. This time it covered outsourcing deals with a value of over €20 million, rather than the previous threshold of €40 million, owing to an increasing amount of outsourcing activities taking place in the €20-40 million bracket. Although TPI does not advise on outsourcing deals with the public sector, its quarterly ca…
OpinionWire Articles - published 23/01/2008 - Maxine Holt
|
|
In order to provide the best possible service to our subscribers, Butler Group continually polls its readers and the attendees at its events to discover what are their major concerns, and what they are having to focus upon in order to keep IT up-to-date. The surprising (?) fact after having correlated the latest findings is that nothing much has changed over the last several years. Despite the promotion of ‘new’ technologies such as involvement in virtual worlds, intelligent searching, and new architectu…
OpinionWire Articles - published 27/09/2007 - Mike Thompson
|
|
India’s big software and services companies have been on a roll for years now. The largest of them have reached the first rung internationally, and “made in India” in the software industry is now as likely to have connotations of high quality as much as low cost.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 06/09/2007 - Graeme Philipson
|
|
Riverbed Technology, a supplier of Wide-area Data Services (WDS), recently announced the release later in 2007 of its new Steelhead Mobile product, a software client version of its WDS technology. The solution aims to provide LAN-like application performance to remote workers, and those connected wirelessly in the office. More than 40 Riverbed customers and partners, including AccuVal, Golder Associates, JEO Consulting, and LexisNexis, are currently beta testing Steelhead Mobile.
OpinionWire Articles - published 09/08/2007 - Mark Blowers
|
|
The success of Open Source Software (OSS) in IT infrastructure and application development tools is reaching into other areas of IT, with OSS-based businesses offering hitherto ‘higher food chain’ products. For example, in Business Intelligence (BI) reporting there is the Eclipse platform BI and Reporting Tools Project (BIRT), as well as Jasper Reports, and in Customer Relationship Management there is SugarCRM.
OpinionWire Articles - published 26/07/2007 - Michael Azoff
|
|
Michael Dell, chairman and chief executive officer of the PC and server company that bears his name, recently hosted a town hall meeting packed with Dell customers in New York as the company launched its Vostro line of desktop and laptop computers aimed at small businesses around the globe. Vostro, which is Latin for “yours”, is a new product line for companies with fewer than 25 employees, and is based on feedback from Dell customers.
TECHwatch Articles - published 26/07/2007 - Datamonitor Analysts
|
|
Before the dot.com bust at the turn of the millennium, Storage Service Providers (SSPs) were a key area for venture capital investment – service providers that would rent data storage capacity to businesses. Potential customers were sold the usual stories about economies of scale and the benefits of outsourcing requirements for non-core competencies.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 01/06/2007 - Maxine Holt
|
|
Following a Butler Group Strategy Briefing this week on Document and Records Management, a key theme of the event was retention periods. Regulations and legislation are in some industries dictating that information should be retained for very long periods of time, potentially well over 100 years. There are also legal documents that need to be retained for a long time.
OpinionWire Articles - published 24/05/2007 - Sue Clarke
|
|
When you buy application software, services, or some other technology from a vendor, or when you need to recruit skilled staff to fill more senior roles, it may cross your mind to wonder what education may be the relevant background for such positions. With skilled staff in seemingly perpetual short supply, what type of educational background is likely to inculcate the relevant skills? How can technology and business best be combined? A new course may have some of the answers.
OpinionWire Articles - published 22/03/2007 - Teresa Jones
|
|
Mule is an open source Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) that has been designed to support high-performance multi-protocol transactions. Organisations that have more than one system or application will face the challenge of integration at some stage, and that challenge is based on the fact that changing each application in order to facilitate integration is not always feasible – what is needed is a non-invasive integration capability. Mule provides this in a developer-oriented manner, by providing the basic i…
Technology Audits - published 12/03/2007 - Teresa Jones
|
|
Outsourcing IT is gaining in popularity again in local Government. This is coming about as IT spending by the sector is expected to fall following the boom in investment of the last five years. The boom was brought about mostly by the e-Government programme, which saw increases in the number of IT staff as well as in new technologies and software, as services were brought on-line. Now the focus is shifting towards making the most of those investments, and optimising service delivery through shared servic…
Butler Group Review Articles - published 01/03/2007 - Sarah Burnett
|
|
Although the term ‘information security’ is habitually used in discussion, businesses have, for the most part, traditionally implemented IT security, a techno-centric subset of the whole gamut of information security. Security has traditionally been deployed within budgets based on a proportion of overall IT spend, and has primarily focused on the protection of physical infrastructure and data as technical assets, without significant recognition of their individual intrinsic values to the business.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 01/03/2007 - Mike Barwise
|
|
The Clearswift Bastion and DeepSecure products have been developed to support the data protection requirements of organisations that operate in highly-sensitive environments. The combined role that Clearswift has set for its Secure Message Gateway products is to make certain that secure domain-to-domain connectivity relationships between two or more networks can be assured, whilst at the same time providing the ability to otherwise guarantee total network separation. In operational use the Bastion and De…
Technology Audits - published 29/01/2007 - Andy Kellett
|
|
Standard Life has deployed a natural language voice recognition system, affectionately known as ‘Sheila’, for its Life and Pensions business, which was developed by VeCommerce, a provider of intelligent call steering, voice self-service, and speaker verification systems.
OpinionWire Articles - published 25/01/2007 - Mark Blowers
|
|
This week has seen the likes of Tesco, BT, and British Airways announce they are joining together to extol the virtues of Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility (CSER). In the IT world Michael Dell, founder and chairman of Dell Inc, announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last week that it was time IT took a lead in environmental issues.
OpinionWire Articles - published 18/01/2007 - Roy Illsley
|
|
All the latest news from the computer industry appears to be centred on the digital home. According to all the pundits we will be streaming, downloading, and storing data as never before. What is less clear is how much this will cost, and the ramifications it will have on the business consumer, as IT vendors see quick wins and large profit margins by focusing on the home consumer.
OpinionWire Articles - published 18/01/2007 - Mike Thompson
|
|
This week the UK Government’s plans for the creation of a super database to hold details of private citizens came to light. The creation of such a database has so far been prevented by the Data Protection Act (DPA). The UK Government is reportedly planning to ease the privacy protection law to make way for data sharing between departments.
OpinionWire Articles - published 18/01/2007 - Sarah Burnett
|
|
In December 2006, IONA announced the availability of Celtix Enterprise, which is positioned as yet another Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) to provide the software infrastructure behind SOA implementations. What differentiates Celtix Enterprise is that it is an open source product created by assembling key open source components, including the services framework and message-queuing from Apache Incubator projects, and tooling from Eclipse. Celtix Enterprise just provides core ESB functions, leaving users to s…
OpinionWire Articles - published 12/01/2007 - Rob Hailstone
|
|
Ipanema Technologies, a provider of application traffic management systems for Wide-Area Networks (WANs), recently announced the results of The Tolly Group’s evaluation of its solution. The results were summarised using the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) for Voice over IP (VoIP) and Application Performance Index (APDEX) performance metric for all other software. APDEX, developed by the Apdex Alliance, is a numerical measure of user satisfaction with the performance of enterprise applications. These metrics are…
OpinionWire Articles - published 12/01/2007 - Mark Blowers
|
|
Yet another Customer Relationship Management (CRM) vendor has recently been taken over, and taken into private ownership. Shortly before Christmas 2006, KNOVA Software (itself a result of the merger of ServiceWare and Kanisa) agreed to be acquired by M2M Holdings, the owner of Made2Manage Systems, which earlier in the year also bought Onyx software. Are the days of separate CRM vendors numbered?
OpinionWire Articles - published 04/01/2007 - Teresa Jones
|
