Information workers are engulfed in an avalanche of data – becoming ‘digitally snow blind’ as they stare at endless screens of information, trying to decide which link or which search result will provide them with the information they need to do their job. Traditional knowledge management solutions provide users with a place to look for information, but alas they provide very little guidance on whom to ask. Knowing whom to ask in an organization or business network can often be of critical importance in …
White Papers - published 23/07/2010 - Richard Edwards
We all fill out paper forms at some time, when opening a bank account, filling-out a job application, or completing a survey. From a data-processing perspective the downside of paper forms is that the extraction and collation of the data gathered via paper forms is costly, time-consuming, and error-prone. Electronic forms solutions address these issues, and enable organizations to do things differently while improving business efficiency as they do so. The business benefits from these often specialized s…
Technology Audits - published 23/07/2010 - Balachandar Ganesh, Richard Edwards
Digital pen-and-paper technologies have been around for several years in various guises, yet no single offering has managed to break into mainstream use. Pen-input devices and handwriting-recognition technologies are featured on a range of handheld personal digital assistants (PDAs) and tablet PC designs, but they are seldom used. You only have to look around a typical meeting room to see that pen and paper is still the preferred option when it comes to capturing ad hoc information. In the last couple of…
Technology Audits - published 08/07/2010 - Balachandar Ganesh, Richard Edwards
CloudView is a next-generation search and information-access platform for enterprise, web, and OEM use. Its scalable service-oriented architecture provides advanced data-extraction, indexation, and text-analytics features, and is suited to a wide range of usage scenarios, from traditional web and enterprise search to search-based applications.
Technology Audits - published 08/07/2010 - Mike Davis, Richard Edwards
The Google Search Appliance (GSA) can natively crawl and index documents in popular content-management systems including EMC Documentum, IBM FileNet, Microsoft SharePoint, and Open Text Livelink. Furthermore, the GSA has an open content connector framework that enables organizations to connect the appliance to virtually any other content-management system. It integrates well with existing security and access-control systems, and offers end users many of the same benefits they have come to expect from Goo…
Technology Audits - published 28/06/2010 - Mike Davis, Richard Edwards
KENSHOO Search is a search engine marketing (SEM) platform that automates the entire process of building and optimizing cross-channel search campaigns. It helps marketers deal with increasing SEM complexity across multiple search engines. KENSHOO Search is a browser-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering that runs off of a private cloud architecture. It connects with important media ad channels, such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Baidu, and Ovum is impressed with the way this solution enables marketer…
Technology Audits - published 23/06/2010 - Richard Edwards
Most of the collaboration solutions on the market today were designed primarily to meet internal collaboration requirements. Traditional on-premise enterprise collaboration solutions were not designed with collaboration with external partners in mind, and many of the early hosted collaboration tools did not offer enterprise-class functionality. Huddle is seeking to bridge this gap.
Technology Audits - published 27/05/2010 - Richard Edwards, Sandeep Mishra
The consumer space boasts of many successful collaboration applications that overcome the traditional barriers to communication. Such applications frequently highlight elusive consumer insight by providing unique incentives for participation, creating valuable social communities in the process. However, many of these successful communities, applications, and vendors are dismissed by the business fraternity as being frivolous and of no commercial value. Most businesses have yet to discover and exploit the…
Technology Audits - published 04/05/2010 - Richard Edwards, Surya Mukherjee
Windows 7 is Microsoft’s successor to the much-maligned Windows Vista PC operating system. Compared to Windows XP, which is the current “standard” operating system for enterprise PCs, Windows 7 offers improved system security and a range of general enhancements. It does this while maintaining adequate performance on existing hardware and good levels of compatibility with existing software and peripherals. When deployed alongside the Microsoft Desktop Opmtization Pack (MDOP) for Software Assurance (an opt…
Technology Audits - published 18/03/2010 - Richard Edwards
The Kalido Information Engine is a business-model-driven information-management foundation that governs data across the enterprise and automatically feeds information to industry-standard BI platforms and applications. By defining business rules in simple easy-to-understand graphical terms, and providing a way to easily enforce those rules, Kalido enables organizations to get the accurate, consistent information they need to make better decisions. Ovum believes that data governance can offer many benefit…
Technology Audits - published 17/03/2010 - Richard Edwards
planningIT is an enterprise-architecture management solution aimed at optimising IT investments and improving the alignment of IT to business strategy while supporting and maturing IT-planning capabilities. It does this by providing integrated business-demand management, solution assessment, and project-portfolio optimisation modules based on a logical IT inventory that also supports technology standardisation, architecture patterning, migration, and release management. The solution captures data related…
Technology Audits - published 01/03/2010 - Aanchal Sabharwal, Richard Edwards, Somak Roy
IBM Mashup Center provides organisations with a relatively mature platform for the development of dynamic business applications. Business users continue to demand new applications, and yet few of these are strategic enough to warrant immediate development. As a result, users make do with what they have and this often results in poorly optimised business units or processes. Using Mashup Center, IT departments can offer an alternative approach to traditional application development that has more in common …
Technology Audits - published 17/02/2010 - Richard Edwards
Mindbreeze, a business unit of Fabasoft, offers an enterprise search solution that provides search services across file systems (Windows, Linux, and Novell), e-mail platforms (Exchange, Notes/Domino, and Novell GroupWise), Microsoft SharePoint, and Fabasoft’s own applications and Intranet/Internet sites. Mindbreeze also provides an SDK to help integrate with other repositories of structured and unstructured information (such as document management systems and address information repositories), enables IS…
Technology Audits - published 03/02/2010 - Richard Edwards, Somak Roy
Safend Data Protection Suite (DPS) from Safend is a well-integrated portfolio of endpoint security products designed to protect organisations’ confidential information from loss or theft by monitoring, detecting, and restricting data transfers to or from Windows-based computers. All digital files are prone to loss or theft as a result of either benign or malignant behaviour, but facilities within successive Microsoft operating systems lack granularity and operational flexibility, leading organisations to…
Technology Audits - published 01/02/2010 - Alan Rodger, Richard Edwards
CloudView from French company Exalead is a next-generation search and information access platform designed for enterprise, Web, and OEM use. The offering’s scalable service-oriented architecture provides advanced data-extraction, indexation, and text-analytics features, and it is suited to a wide range of usage scenarios, from traditional Web and enterprise search to search-based applications. By supporting security at the data layer, application layer, and network layer, CloudView provides full complian…
Technology Audits - published 20/01/2010 - Richard Edwards
Information workers must carry out their tasks and duties in a complex and increasingly regulated world, and so business leaders, and CIOs in particular, must find new ways to empower the beleaguered workforce without transferring that burden to an already overstretched IT department. In most circumstances this means delivering more with less, and with the ‘credit-crunch’ affecting almost every business sector, now rather than later. With over 80% of salary costs now associated with ‘information work’, t…
White Papers - published 04/01/2010 - Richard Edwards
Alcatel-Lucent has a series of IP telephony solutions and a Unified Communications (UC) portfolio comprising unified messaging, conferencing (audio, Web, and video), and single-number reach. There is also instant messaging, integration with desktop platforms, mobile access to the UC features, Web services that enable the embedding of communication capabilities into enterprise applications, and a contact-centre solution with a comprehensive feature set. These UC features are coupled with telephony and mul…
Technology Audits - published 14/12/2009 - Mark Blowers, Mark Clark, Mark Egan, Mark Fullbrook, Mark Kusionowicz, Mark Morris, Mark Strauch, Martin Butler, Martin Gandar, Martin Maters, Martin Read, Martin Richmond-Coggan, Martin White, Matt Peachey, Matthew Hopkins, Maxine Holt, Menno Van Doorn, Merlijn Gillissen, Michael Azoff, Michael Callahan, Michael Cross, Michael Gough, Michael Kenward, Mike Adami-Sampson, Mike Barwise, Mike Davis, Mike Hill, Mike Lenette, Mike Lynch, Mike Small, Mike Thompson, Mychelle Mollot, Neil Chaney, Neil Meddick, Nick Kalisperas, Nick Sears, Nicola Byers, Nigel Hawthorn, Nobby Akiha, Owen Cole, Paul Brown, Paul Grossman, Paul Hollingsworth, Paul Lavin, Paul Strassmann, Peter Dorrington, Peter Gandy, Peter Mitteregger, Peter Woollacott, Peyman Mestchian, Philip Padfield, Phillipe Reynier, Professor Fred Piper, Professor Leslie Wilcocks, Professor Margaret Ross, Raj Lotey, Ray Woabank, Richard Blanford, Richard Brierton, Richard Edwards, Richard Sheppard, Richard Sprong, Rick Cudworth, Rick Marshall, Rob Hailstone, Rob Rachwald, Robert Coles, Robin Wilson, Rod Perry, Roddy Adams, Rodrigo Fernando Torres, Roger James, Ronan Lavelle, Rory Nolan, Roy Illsley, Roy Lee, Russ Thornton, Sally Flood, Sally Whittle, Sara Cullen, Sarah Burnett, Sarim Khan, Sheila Childs, Shuna Kennedy, Simon Edwards, Simon Forge, Simon Stevens, Simon Wardley, Somak Roy
According to a survey organised by Credant Technologies amongst licensed London taxi drivers, passengers leave around 10,000 mobile phones a month in the back of taxis (which equates to one every two months per taxi), and more than 1,000 other handheld devices, including iPods, laptops and memory sticks. Statistically, a London taxi cab is good place to lose your mobile device, as 80% of cabbies managed to reunite passengers with their lost property; however, with the party season fast approaching, and m…
OpinionWire Articles - published 08/12/2009 - Richard Edwards
Kapow Web Data Server from Kapow Technologies is a product that automates the extraction of, and enterprise access to, Web data. With so much useful data and intelligence residing on the Web, organisations are compelled to make use of it as best they can. Kapow Web Data Server, which is currently in its seventh iteration, offers a codeless visual development environment for the creation of custom data extraction and integration components that run on a Java-based server. Automation components known as Ka…
Technology Audits - published 01/12/2009 - Chandranshu Singh, Richard Edwards
Omniscope, by Visokio, is an end-user tool for data visualisation, analysis, reporting, and information publishing. It enables business users to analyse enterprise data without the need for heavy involvement from SQL-savvy business analysts or the IT department. Omniscope picks up where tools like spreadsheets leave off, by offering 16 different data views, auto-refresh of data sets, and automated multi-tab report/presentation distribution. The product provides comprehensive analysis and visualisation ca…
Technology Audits - published 01/12/2009 - Chandranshu Singh, Richard Edwards
I’m beginning to wonder if our experience with consumer-oriented applications and services is setting an expectation that in-house and off-the-shelf enterprise applications can never live up to in terms of their ‘joy of use’. With ‘cool’ and ‘sexy’ now de rigueur for consumer apps, I sense that the time is fast approaching when line-of-business applications will be expected to be the same, albeit in a pin-striped suit and polished pair of Oxfords.
OpinionWire Articles - published 26/11/2009 - Richard Edwards
The Thinkmap SDK is a Java-based platform for developing applications that aid organisations in visualising sets of dynamic, complex, structured data. The solution offers native support for relational databases, XML, and flat files, and ships with a flexible data source API that lets organisations integrate the application with any underlying source data set. Once developed, Thinkmap applications can be embedded as a Java applet and published via any standard Web browser, or can be embedded within Java-b…
Technology Audits - published 25/11/2009 - Balachandar Ganesh, Richard Edwards
This week sees the formal unveiling of Microsoft Office 2010, with beta versions available to customers, partners, and third-party developers. When Microsoft Office for Windows was launched back in October 1989 there were already competing offerings on the market, and today is no different. However, today’s knowledge worker wants to use the Web as well as the desktop for office productivity applications.
OpinionWire Articles - published 20/11/2009 - Richard Edwards
Last week saw the official launch of ‘Windows 7’, the desktop operating system successor to Windows Vista. However, contrary to Microsoft’s branding of its new operating system, Windows 7 is in fact Windows ‘version 6.1’. Because no IT manager likes a ‘point-zero’ release of anything, Windows 7 should in theory appeal to organisations planning desktop system upgrades, just as Windows XP (version 5.1) did soon after the release of Windows 2000 Professional (version 5.0).
OpinionWire Articles - published 30/10/2009 - Richard Edwards
Sample our Research
Sign up to receive complimentary monthly Research and download a copy of our 10 Axioms for Measuring IT Cost and Value.
