Backblog

A month ago I wrote about the benefits of virtual desktop technology to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) for desktop management, while providing an equivalent or better end-user experience than what is available with a physical PC. But you don’t want to virtualize without a clear understanding of your current state, encompassing many aspects of technology, processes and organization. Just as you would get ready for a vacation, a job interview, the weather, or a test, getting ready for your virtual desktop program is essential.

I was talking with some folks the other day about the way mobile devices are changing the way people behave as well as how business processes can function - how even a minor enhancement to memory or awareness can be a lever to significantly greater performance.  The mobile device's ability to enhance daily life (since they're with us all the time) is definitely evolving.

Lately, I’ve refined my research focus from online usability to user experience (UE). Yesterday, I told a colleague that I was studying user experience, to which she replied “You mean usability”. Her statement seems indicative of the prevailing thought on how we plan and evaluate online design.

One of the perceived weaknesses of cloud technologies is the area of security. I was just reviewing an HP viewpoint paper: Security and Cloud Services that looks at many of the aspects of Everything as a Service. Inside the document was a list of concerns and benefits that have been bandied about for a while in this blog and others:

So get inputting, everyone. Industry Minister Tony Clement announced at the Canada 3.0 conference on May 10 that the feds want to hear what we – all Canadians – think our country should do to drive our digital economy strategy.

I was catching up on my reading the other day and came across an article from SD Times SOA's Best When Business Pulls the Strings. A couple of people quoted in the article were from HP: Tom Hall and E.G. Nadhan.

It’s no secret that the odds are stacked against ERP implementations. As we’ve covered at length in this blog and in our white papers, most projects go over budget, take longer than expected, and/or fail to deliver expected business results. In fact, according to our research, there is a 72% chance that at least one of these outcomes will affect a project and a 34% chance that two or more will do so.

This morning [May 9, 2010] marked the launch of the Cloud Communications Alliance. This consortium was founded by 8 hosted opertors, and they feel the time has come for serious cloud communications. To do this, they know they need some scale, and that's what CCA gives them, along with a whole lot more.

Today is the fifth anniversary of Mesh, Canada’s web conference. After four years attending, I can spot perennial patterns.

Over a week ago Canada's federal government, led by Industry Ministry, released their Digital Economy Consultation to surprisingly little fanfare or resulting news coverage. Citizens have the next 52 days to offer their own ideas and/or vote on other ideas. Despite the opportunity to help guide our country's digital future, few Canadians are participating. The top items have no more than 55 votes.

Volcanic ash continues to disrupt travel and business across continental Europe without predictability, while also compounding environmental and climate change issues. IT executives globally are pausing to reconsider whether their existing data center facilities can stand the test of time and the ever-more-frequent tests of nature making headlines almost daily around the world.

Earlier this week, I was on BNN TV talking about Shaw Communications and their pending acquisition of CanWest. Add to this their planned entry in to the mobile market, and Shaw is anything but a regional cable operator.

This is a companion piece to our look at what execs carry in their go bags from the June/July/August issue. Below is my list of must-carries, in rough order of importance. I may not cart every item all the time, but for longer or more important trips I have all of the following with me.

It is common for companies to jump into an enterprise resource planning initiative without first conducting the due diligence and planning required to make the ERP implementation project successful. Organizations first need to “get their house in order,” which means to analyze exactly who they are as an organization, what they want to be in the future as well as pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses, core competencies, and areas in need of improvement.

On Friday April 30th, at 3:15, I was guest on BNN discussing three mobile ecosystem companies that I initiated official coverage on with Mpartners.

I've written about the Canadian wireless market a fair bit, and the plot continues to thicken. The latest twist comes from Shaw Communications, the major cable operator serving Western Canada.

In my view, improving B2B sales productivity requires provoking sales people to confidently change what they're doing to improve their Return-on-Effort. This requires giving them a viewfinder that lets them kill tactics that aren't working and inspires them to practice, more often, practices with the highest Return-on-Effort. This viewfinder needs to provoke them to act, wisely, with a knowledge of how what they’re doing every day is affecting results.

As we move into an age where we move from viewing computers as things to computers in things, one of the logical places will be in our clothes. In this article a number of examples of ten articles of smart clothing are described. Some of them are networked while others have standalone functionality.

Last week I facilitated a discussion by Allen Brown of The Open Group. Before the meeting, we were able to discuss some of the implications of IT on the future of business as well as the role of architecture. One of the areas we discussed was the work of Peter Drucker: The Next Information Revolution.

If you think of general business process services trends, it is no different from using vendors for several other goods and services to run an enterprise. These may range from mail/courier services and car rentals to facilities management or procurement of raw materials, peripheral equipment, etc… The rationale, at its simplest, is that organizations specializing in a particular area would offer that service to another business that may not consider it to be a core service of its business. As a result, the business world becomes an inter-dependent, complex web of organizations working or partnering with each other to deliver core services as efficiently and competitively as possible.

Last month, I tried my first e-Reader. I've read e-books on my PC for a few years, but hadn't tried a portable e-Reader until last month I took a Kindle for a test drive. Reading my comrade Bargainista's blog, she just got her hands and eyes on the latest e-Reader to hit Canada, the Kobo. Check out her blog post for an excellent review of Kobo.

Some of our recent clients and industry peers have been asking us how they can best incorporate best practices into their ERP software initiatives. After all, the reason most CIOs and other C-level executives select and implement new ERP solutions is to improve the way they do business.