Backblog

Since the inception of this blog back in 2005, we've been talking about the importance of edge computing devices and the movement of more of the business interaction out to the edge. Yesterday's announcement of HP's purchase of Palm shouldn't have come as too much of a surprise - although I was not involved in the purchase in any way. Palm has a range of patents that span the mobile hardware & software space that should strengthen HP.

HP released a whitepaper recently on Predicting the Future With Social Media. In this case looking at the relationship between twitter chatter and the popularity of movies. It made me thing about the use of these kinds of analytic techniques for Good and for Evil.

In last quarter’s TPI Index, I was happy to report that the market which had bottomed in the first half of 2009 had made a turn in the second half, signaling the beginning of a gradual recovery in the outsourcing industry. In today’s 1Q10 Global TPI Index, we reported that total contract value (TCV) rose 25 percent from the first quarter of 2009, but the underlying market is recovering slowly and unevenly.

Early this week, I saw a note from Christian Verstraete (CTO for HP's Manufacturing and Distributions Industries Worldwide) where he mentioned cloud and the impact of the ash cloud on travel last week:

Winning bidders in auctions often experience buyer’s remorse, a gnawing sense that they have paid too much for something that they don’t need and perhaps no longer want. Something similar can happen in reverse when a client selects the cheapest service provider in a competitive tender for outsourced services.

The office of the Auditor General today released a long awaited report on the state of Electronic Health Records in Canada. Important challenges are identified including the adoption and implementation of EMRs in doctor's offices.

This is the 40^th anniversary of Earth Day (in the US), a day rooted in our awareness of environmental responsibility that bypasses national borders. It was founded in 1970 and has steadily increased in energy ever since, inspiring awareness and appreciation for the land, air and water we all share. Earth Day is a catalyst for advances in environmental policies and perspective. On a more personal level, it serves as a reminder that we can make a small change today that will make the world better tomorrow.

B2B sales people are incredibly results oriented yet, according to CSO Insights, sales performance continues to degrade. In such chaotic conditions, Slywotzki's ideas on Profit Patterns and Tufte's ideas on Visualizing Information, hold promise as a potential way out of this muck. We'd strive to measure process productivity, then depict it visually, as patterns, in ways that change how people behave. We'd produce higher performance via 'Patterns of Performance'.

The past couple of years have been an exciting time for CIOs needing scalable IT platforms that are cost-effective and support rigorous security standards. In addition to cloud computing, a currently less-publicized technology called “VDI” is gaining momentum and credibility for those who need similar attributes with added benefits.

Recently there were announcements of new options to provide virtualized desktops. This new bare metal approach should allow for greater control as well as higher performance. Now that Microsoft has clarified its approach to licensing virtualized desktops, it should be an option for more.

Here is a slideshare presentation of a research piece that I wrote for MPartners earlier this week.

One of the areas the fellows within HP Enterprise Services have been talking about for a number of years is the waves of computing technology and how that has changed the way business value is generated by IT. Jeff Wacker and I were discussing the other day parallels in the sensing space. Where computing moved from a corporate view (mainframe) to a personal view (PC) and then a shared view (Internet) to now a computing everywhere perspective.

Not too long ago, I shared an observation in a recent post about the Demand-Supply syndrome. I noticed that subdued demand resulting from recessionary pressures and supply exceeding the industry requirements of manpower were impacting the offshoring industry. Companies were unable to create new jobs or even sustain full operating capacity because demand in the market was so weak. Consequently, service providers needing to reduce staff shifted the balance of power to employers after several years of considerable growth and hiring in the outsourcing industry. Now in 2010 we are again witnessing the reversal of this trend.

Privacy controls in social networking sites seems to be endlessly discussed. Facebook seems to regularly tinker with its user privacy controls and many users routinely ignore them. One thing that I feel is missed in privacy discussions is that it is not a binary conception - either I’ll keep things just to me, my friends or network or I’ll share it. Such decisions are a foundational privacy issue. However, the information I want to share is often more complicated. It’s not a question of whether a user is an online recluse or virtual exhibitionist.

I saw this article the other day stating that less than 48% of adults surveyed in the US watch new TV shows when they are first broadcast. "Thirty percent said they used a DVR to watch new episodes of their favorite shows, while 10% went online"

I got a note about OSCON from Fred Trotter this morning and read it with great enthusiasm: "I am happy to spread the news that OSCON, probably the most important Open Source conference in the country, will have a healthcare track in 2010."

Several of our mid- to large-size ERP software clients turn to Panorama for assistance in choosing between the two industry behemoths: SAP and Oracle. Since these two solutions own a commanding share of the enterprise software market, this is not at all surprising or uncommon. What is surprising, however, is how different these two ERP vendors really are when you look under the covers of each.

In the current IT marketplace, the service catalog is becoming a critical part of an evolving framework for effective IT service management focused on delivering a customer-centric order-to-invoice experience. The service catalog is more than just a standalone procurement tool. It is evolving into a “menu” that describes to IT customers and users their choices.

This morning, I had an opportunity to talk with Paul Roemer who writes an interesting blog called healthcareitstrategy. There are many physicians who have built their own EMR out of a desire to improve their internal practice operations and care delivery - often at significant cost.

The term "social business" seems to be taking root. It seems currently to be accepted as a positive force for addressing in humanizing ways the lingering effects of the industrial-era workplace, and is spreading wide pretty quickly.

This Technology Review blog entry describes a "enhanced vision system" from General Motors that can highlighting landmarks, obstacles and road edges on the windshield in real-time. The video in the entry also talks about integrating with GPS systems, to clearly mark desired locations. By using a variety of sensors, various hazards and points of interest can also be shown.