Features

Content Development as an Integral Part of Your Marketing Plan

Fri, 27 May 2011 12:07:00 EDT

There was a time when marketing content was straightforward. Advertisements were sent out. Blogs were posted. Articles appeared in various venues. But now that the line dividing search marketing and social media marketing has become less and less clear, the content itself is more and more important. According to eMarketer, almost three-quarters of businesses with a social media strategy use content in their campaigns. But free content isn’t free to the company providing it. Resources – people – are needed to supply the content: write the articles, provide the tweets, make the blog posts. And that kind of time commitment can add up. So it’s important to know what content you want, and where you want it to go, before you start taking a scattergun approach to throwing it out there and hoping that something sticks. You need a plan, a strategy that will keep your content in line with your other marketing campaigns. Everything that your company puts “out there” needs to be working toward your company’s overall marketing goals; content plays a vital role in achieving those goals.

Translating Network Performance into Lower Costs

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 07:00:00 EDT

The return on investment (ROI) for any given technology can be justified any number of ways, but in hard times the bottom line rules. Point to productivity improvements from better collaboration, and you’ll get a polite hearing. Show hard dollar savings, and you are more likely to seal the deal. WAN optimization technology is often sold on the basis of productivity improvements. Figure out a way to deliver higher performance over the limited bandwidth of a wide area network (WAN), and branch office employees will spend less time watching the hourglass spin on their computer screens while waiting for a report to download. That’s nice, and all other things being equal, we’d like to eliminate some of those frustrations and help workers be more productive. But translate that into money saved or earned, and you’ve got a better business case.

zLAMP: Web's Most Popular Software Stack on IBM System z

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 17:00:00 EDT

In recent years, web development and deployment has become extremely fast and easy with the usage of open source software development tools and frameworks. The usage of open source software has reduced capital and operating expenses for web startups to a greater extend that there is a significant increase in the volume of new internet startups with applications developed using open source software. One of the widely used open source stack for web application development is LAMP. As the expansion implies, LAMP stack consists of a web server (Apache), a database server (MySQL) and a set of scripting languages (PHP/Perl/Python) that can run on any flavor of Linux. In general it is described as an open source operating system, open source web server, open source database server and open source programming languages. The Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP) stack can provide an efficient and cost effective open source architecture to build and run web applications. This article introduces LAMP software stack on zLinux (Linux on IBM System z). Let's call it zLAMP. We will delve into configuring and starting up individual components of zLAMP and then downloading, installing and testing few LAMP based off the shelf open source applications.

The Tau Index & Revolution: Who's Next? (Update)

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 07:45:00 EST

In Cairo, fear and trepidation of Facebook and Twitter ran high enough to prompt the government to flip a Liebermanesque Internet kill switch. But perhaps it's not these two sites in particular as much as IT in general that's causing the problem for the world's dictators. And perhaps it is those countries that have tried to have things both ways—encouraging economic freedom while controlling political freedom—that are most prone to disruption, even revolution, today. Disruptive Stuff Countries that have moved from state planning to more open markets have experienced widespread disruption as the inequalities of capitalism announce themselves. When a country moving toward economic liberalization doesn't liberalize its press and political freedoms in the process, oppressed anger often builds to dangerous levels. Add to this the notion that IT is disruptive, even revolutionary, and you can be crafting a toxic brew. Through Internet connectivity, small computers, smart phones, and a universe of free websites, people in all corners of the world can communicate in ways that were simply not possible even a few years ago, and with opinions that will invariably run afoul of an oppressive, controlling government. IT disruption cannot be measured accurately simply by looking at pure investment levels. In fact, the wealthier, more equitable, more stable nations of the world also invest the most on IT on a per-person (per capita) basis: Switzerland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands are the world's top five.. The next five are Hong Kong, Finland, Denmark, the UAE, and the UK. After that come Japan and Canada. All have internal problems, pressures, and loudmouths, of course, but none seem ripe for revolution. Where, on the other hand, are the places that are truly dynamic—truly kinetic—in their level of commitment to IT? Which countries may be most prone to truly disruptive IT? This was my question when I created the Tau Index a few months ago, in which I factored income inequity and local cost-of-living into per capita IT spending. Doing this created a Top 25 list that was far different from the simple Top 25 per capita list. There were only two countries in the Top 25 of both lists: the Czech Republic and South Korea. And whereas most of the world's Top 25 IT spenders per capita are located in North America and Western Europe (plus Japan), most members of the Tau Index were located in Southern Asia, Eastern Europe, and Northern Africa. Combustibility There are some combustible places on this list. So given the revolutionary events in Tunisia and Egypt—both of which are on the Tau Index Top 25--it occurred to me to examine an extra dimension, one that measures government oppression. For now, I've settled on the Press Freedom Index (PFI), published annually by Reporters Without Borders. Although some places rate poorly due to a general climate of fear and lawlessness rather than government oppression—the Philippines, a Tau Index Top 25 country, is the classic example—we can generally connect the dots between a poor PFI ranking and a nasty government. I then connected the dots between high Tau Index ratings and poor PFI rankings—between the most kinetic (ie,disruptive) IT environments and the most restrictive media environments. Doing so resulted in a list that, not surprisingly, includes Egypt and Tunisia. Integrating their Tau Index rating with their Press Freedom Index rating puts them in a red zone of sorts that, in retrospect, may have been a good indicator that revolution was ripe. Who's Next? The big question then becomes, if this connection is meaningful, who's next? I've already tweeted the names of a few places that fared badly in this latest Tau Index view. Some were expected, but others not. I'll demur from listing them here, as I do more research into what is happening in those countries. Certainly, we all should abhor violence and the incitement thereof. Revolutionary talk is dangerous talk, and words do have consequences. The prediction business is also a very imprecise business, and one to be taken very seriously when it comes to predicting revolution. But the Tau Index components—per capita IT spending, Gini coefficient, and GDP PPP per capita—are all public knowledge, as is the Press Freedom Index. So anyone can pursue this path on their own if they wish. Or contact me if you'd like to discuss.

No Internet Kill Switch Perhaps, But Internet Buzzkill To Be Sure

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 07:15:00 EST

There's a marvelous scene in the 1969 movie, Midnight Cowboy, in which the Dustin Hoffman character, “Ratso” Rizzo, starving, starts filling his pockets with food from a lavish buffet at a party that he's crashed. A young woman tells him, “You don't have to steal the food. It's free,” to which he responds, “Well, if it's free, then I'm not stealing it!” The reality was that Ratso, or Rico as he preferred to be called, was stealing the food. This exchange reminds me of the renewed efforts by Sens. Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins, with what I assume is the tacit approval of the Obama Administration, to introduce a cybersecurity bill that has been widely tagged as “the Internet kill switch bill.” This terminology is inaccurate, as the powers granted to the President by this proposed legislation are specific in nature, and don't grant the power to disable all Internet connectivity in the US. A mouthpiece for the Senate committee involved with this bill (currently known as S. 3480) has been quoted as saying “we're not trying to mandate any requirements for the entire Internet...but only to assert governmental control over those "crucial components that form our nation's critical infrastructure." Where's the Logic? But why bother with granting new, specific powers? The President, you see, already has general powers to shut down “any (communications) station or facility” under the Communications Act of 1934. So why does he need additional, specific powers to create a list of websites that he can shut down after declaring certain types of emergency? The thinking seems to run like this: Smart people: You don't need control over the Internet, because you already have it. Dumb senators: Well, if we already have control, then we're not trying to get it. Maybe I have the wrong analogy. Maybe this is more worthy of Yogi Berra or Kafka. Another Freaking List The key aspect of this proposed legislation is not cybersecurity in general, but rather its granting the power to create a list of sites that would come under its purview. Creation of yet another “list” by the Federal government should chill the spines of anyone who remembers J. Edgar Hoover's FBI lists, President Richard Nixon's enemies list, and who-knows-what lists that have been created by the Federal government since 9/11. One woulc also hope that the list envisioned in this bill is somewhat more accurate than the risible advisory and no-fly lists that have emerged within the air transportation industry since 9/11. Part of the plan here is apparently to include IT systems connected to things such as nuclear power plants as worthy of a Presidential shutdown. To wit, the bill in its current proposed form states that a facility would come under jurisdiction here if it had “the potential for the destruction or disruption of the system or asset to cause a mass casualty event which includes an extraordinary number of fatalities.” Where Does it Begin & End? Seems like a worthy enough goal. But it would also cover disruption of a system that would cause “mass economic consequences.” What are these? Banking sites? Airline sites? Google? Ebay? Facebook? Where does this list begin and where does it end? I would wager that any business that finds itself under a serious cyberattack would have the wherewithal to recognize this and shut things down on its own if circumstances warranted. The last thing they would need is a bumbling Federal bureaucracy making a bumbling decision for a business about which it knows nothing—and there are pages and pages of bureaucratic process talk in S. 3480. We can also be sure that if this bill makes it through the Senate, then through the House, then through a Presidential signature, it will be continuously amended over time to grant ever more powers to a Presidential office that already has plenty of them. And guess what, a true Internet kill switch will be one of those powers some day. It'll be like Rico crashing a number of parties to steal ever more free food.

ABC of Patenting: Why, What and How?

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 07:15:00 EST

“No more than 1 in every 100 patent earns enough to pay back development cost and patent fees. About 1 in 500 makes any money above its out-of-pocket costs.” – Peter F. Drucker in Innovation and Entrepreneurship If this is true then why do so many people file patent application? There are about 200,000 patents granted in US every year. (You can see this report from U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for more detail.)

Consumer Cloud Is Killing Enterprise Cloud

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 05:08:00 EST

Richard Stallman's recent characertization of the impending Google Chrome OS as "careless computing" brings the careless use of the term "cloud computing" into sharp relief. Stallman says that the term "is devoid of substantive meaning," and thereby prone to uses that are less than un-evil. I agree with his sentiment but would argue that the opposite is true: there is too much substantive meaning in the term "cloud computing." It is an umbrella term that covers everything from free email and Facebook to software applications delivered from the sky to the very serious business of enterprise-grade resource consolidation and provisioning. A Scrutable Term Cloud computing is the first non-inscrutable IT term I can remember. It doesn't conjure up the sheer geekiness of SOA, Ajax, object-oriented programming, the Java/Javascript confusion, the PHP/Perl/Python triplets, RAID, SATA, LANs, or even the minor shoptalk inherent in terms like USB or Flash drive. "The Internet is the Cloud, and Cloud Computing comes from the Internet" is all you have to say. Your average 6-year-old or Senator can understand it. You might even be able to teach it to goldfish or Dogs Watching TV. Therein lies the problem. It's mildly annoying when the term is appropriated by every technology company on the planet to mean precisely what that company has been doing for years. For example, I was talking to a software CEO the other night whose company really does offer Cloud Computing, and asked him about his recent appearance at a Cloud event in Asia. "I was really annoyed by many of my fellow presenters, who just use the term 'Cloud Computing' to describe whatever it is they do," he said. Well, we should be used to that now, whether we're being sold the old Lotus Notes as new cloud computing, or a big local data center as "cloud in a box," or dumbed-down, decades old desktop apps as Office365. The Enterprise Cloud I appreciate a good joke as much as anyone, and it's enjoyable to watch the mad marketing scramble for the cloud stratosphere. In the end, the pitches mean nothing if customers don't want it. Use of the term "Cloud" might get your foot back in the door, but the deal won't close until you jump through the same hoops you've been jumping through for years. But all this jollity refers to enterprise cloud computing: IT guys buying stuff, and deciding how much of it (if any) they want to virtualize, how much (if any) they want to locate off-premises, and whether the perceived benefit of minimal upfront cost trumps their concerns over long-term costs and security. Here Comes Trouble The real trouble starts when the term Cloud Computing refers to consumer computing. The Cloud takes a different, malignant new shape here. Riding the analogy, it's as if all those beautiful puffy cumulus clouds in the shapes of faces and lambs and rabbits suddenly turned into a large, threatening, anvil-headed thunderstorm. Weather people use the term cluster to describe a group of these storms; it seems appropriate to much of Cloud Computing discussion today. What's the big problem, and why is this distinction between enterprise cloud and consumer cloud so important? In a word, "privacy." Privacy is not a concern with enterprise cloud computing per se. Security and data integrity are, to be sure, and privacy of company information is the highest priority, more important than any performance consideration. Yet these concerns revolve around whether or not a cloud computing solution--whether hosted onsite or offsite--will be leakproof and hackproof. There is no question of whether a third-party host will try to invade the company's data privacy. On the other hand, privacy is the alpha and omega of consumer-cloud concerns. We've known for years that our web surfing has been tracked (and who knows to what degree actively monitored). We know that anything we send via Yahoo mail, gmail, etc. can and will be read by the Feds if they think--or want others to think--that we're up to no good. Here Comes More Trouble Meanwhile, half a billion people have guilelessly put their life stories onto Facebook, often allowing anyone to peer in. Does no one realize there are sexual predators, Feds, and other creeps who like nothing better than to snoop around? Is no one aware that a Michael Phelps bong-hit incident could easily lie in their future (for the small percentage of people who are inclined to such activities)? Many influential voices have already raised hackles about the Cloud. John C. Dvorak, for example, called users of cloud applications "suckers" back in 2008, then promised not to complain about the Cloud anymore. His most recent complaint was published just this November, in a column in which he noted, rightfully, that a very bad thing about the consumer cloud is that cloud companies can disappear--and with them, all the data they've been safekeeping. He used Drop.io as the example. He could have been writing about blog hosters that went kaput, thereby tolling the bell for brigades of earnest writers. Maybe someday he'll be writing about the demise of Facebook, or YouTube, or Twitter (oh wait, the Library of Congress is cataloging that one, thank Buddha). Meanwhile, shopping online has grown, as far as I can tell, to about $200 billion annually in the US alone. This number is roughly the size of the entire economy of Malaysia, approaching that of Portugal. And this is Cloud Computing, folks. Concerns a decade ago about giving up our credit-card numbers online have been replaced by a faith that the banks and stores--whatever their faults--are not unduly invading our privacy. The fact that each of us leaves a digital footprint as obvious as size-13 bootprints in soft mud outside an unlocked window doesn't trouble those "who have done nothing wrong." And Here's the Real Trouble But here's where two things converge: less reliable companies and a more intrusive government. Facebook and Google don't pretend to be interested in your privacy. They're hardly alone, as evidenced by increasing numbers of websites who encourage you to sign in via Facebook--thereby sharing your information with them. Meanwhile, Google continues to map every block of the world; I hope it doesn't catch me peeing on a wall outside of a bar in, say, Dublin or Indianapolis in broad daylight some day, as that would be bad for my career. I consider this abject privacy invasion to be in violation of the Fourth Amendment; maybe some lawyer will take me up on this some day, as I'm too busy and too dim to go to law school. The more intrusive government aspect doesn't need much elaboration. Let's just say that the US government feels free to touch your junk, whether real or virtual, at any time of its choosing. The Patriot Act meant that my local librarian couldn't remind me of which books I read. I consider this to be a violation not only of the Fourth Amendment but every principle upon which the US was founded. Sadly, I expect more of the same from the US government and others, as they strive to "protect our freedoms," just as I expect more of the same from companies interested only in "improving the customer experience." This "Free" Thing Bugs Me I think a large part of the problem lies within the idea that most things on the Internet should be free. This mindset seems to be killing newspapers. It also makes so many people quite willing to trade in their privacy for free stuff. But nobody thinks enterprise cloud computing should be free. Less expensive, yes. Free, no. Nobody is worried about Cloud providers snooping on company data, although I'm guessing there will be emerging concerns about the government's ability to do so. There are many advocates (including me) who do believe the enterprise cloud computing has the potential to revitalize the world's large, moribund economies, and catalyze growth in developing nations. I do hope all future, thoughtful discussions make the distinction between Enterprise Cloud and Consumer Cloud. The difference is as big as the difference between that fluffy white kitten in the sky and that nasty storm that just tore the roof off of your house.

ADCs Accelerate Web 2.0 Applications . . .

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 11:36:00 EST

Web 2.0 applications bring powerful user interfaces with new capabilities and higher functionality to the Web, while new browser-side application intelligence delivers a richer user experience. However, along with the new capabilities, Web 2.0 applications create new issues that result in challenges to both datacenter and network infrastructure, as these new application deployments require much greater communication between client browsers and servers. Traditional web applications use browsers simply as rendering engines where all the application logic (e.g., user information, page format, etc.) is located on the servers. For the most part, the browser displays the formatted HTML pages that are sent by the server, where most of the processing is accomplished. Web 2.0 applications, however, distribute the logic between the server and browser. The browser becomes more than a rendering engine and is capable of processing application logic on the client side without requiring the exchange of data with the server. The benefits of this capability include more features enabled, greater functionality and a more compelling user interface with interactive capabilities far beyond what traditional web applications can provide.

Discoverer of JSON Recommends Suspension of HTML5

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 19:00:00 EDT

"There is much that is attractive about HTML5," says Douglas Crockford, known to millions of developers as the discoverer of JSON. "But ultimately," Crockford continues, "the thing that made the browser into a credible application delivery system was JavaScript, the ultimate workaround tool." The problem is that there is what he calls "a painful gap" in the specification of the interface between JavaScript and the browser. The result? XSS and other maladies. The responsible course of action, Crockford contends, is to correct that defect first before pushing ahead with HTML5.

Top 50 Bloggers on Cloud Computing

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 05:15:00 EDT

Ever since I first published here my tentative list of Top Players in the Cloud Computing Ecosystem - now expanded to a list of 250 and growing daily thanks to community feedback via my Twitter account (@jg21) and a very kind mention by ReadWriteWeb - there have been suggestions that another prism through which to view cloud computing might be that of people rather than companies.

Six Things VCs Look For in An Investment

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 07:30:00 EDT

As a serial entrepreneur, I learned a lot of lessons from things that didn’t work. These lessons later on shaped my ideas on what would be needed to build a successful startup company. When I became a VC, I realized that these same lessons could be applied to helping evaluate the many businesses that I was getting to see. Whilst the following criteria are by no means a guarantee of success, or the only criteria that you should think about, I do believe they can be very helpful. So in no particular order, here is a list of six questions that I learned to ask to validate my own startup ideas, that now shape what I look for in an investment. I hope this list will help you validate your idea:

Third-Generation Outsourcing Is Here!

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 01:15:00 EDT

Third Generation outsourcing is here! First Generation was "your mess for less"; Second Generation is strategic or selective sourcing, including hosting. Third Generation Outsourcing, as a result of the emergence of Cloud Computing, stands to materially revolutionize and challenge traditional outsourcing models like no previous models have. The Cloud also delivers an opportunity for the wider adoption of existing enterprise applications in a SaaS model. In his general session at Cloud Expo East, Marty Gauvin,Founder, President & CEO of Virtual Ark, challenged your traditional views of outsourcing, cloud security, SaaS and adoption of public cloud services by Fortune 1000 companies globally.

MokaFive – Desktop To Go

Sun, 30 May 2010 05:00:00 EDT

MokaFive is slumming. Like Citrix, VMware and countless other vendors, they call themselves a “desktop virtualization” vendor, but they ain’t. Since 1959 the computing world has generally used the word virtual as a rough synonym for simulated as in “virtual disk in RAM,” or “virtual memory on disk,” or “virtual machine” in VMware, for that matter. Consistent with this usage is the latest virtual thingie, the virtual desktop, but among the solutions sporting this label, MokaFive is the thing that’s not like the others.

Web 2.0 and Social Networking

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:45:00 EDT

Web 2.0 and Social Networking – what do those two technologies have in common? When looking at them independently, and from a purely technical point of view, you might think they don’t have a lot in common. However, merge the concepts of two of the hottest technical advances to come around in a while and you have the power to change the world. Not all at once, as change happens over time, but they do provide a framework and the opportunities for major change, which is a first step and much of what we discuss here. My hope is that you can use this excerpt as a reference that provides some concrete guidelines for creating and then implementing a strategy for Web 2.0 and Social Networking integration within your group or organization. Much of the focus in the Web 2.0 and Social Networking space has been toward customer interaction; that is, how to draw in or collaborate better with customers through blogs, forums, or Facebook and MySpace pages; how to increase brand or product awareness or drive sales with viral marketing campaigns; or how to increase customer satisfaction using AJAX so that pages are updated almost automatically. We’ll look at these ideas and more. However, we also turn our focus inward to the enterprise to see how we can use new strategies and technologies to increase productivity, collaboration, knowledge management, and creativity of our employees and partners.

Social Networks That Boost Your Business

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 09:15:00 EDT

Most people are familiar with the term “Web 2.0,” which refers to a second generation of web development and design that focuses on fostering social networking via the web. Innovative companies are beginning to embrace Web 2.0 as a way to enhance communication, information sharing, and collaboration, thereby allowing them to work smarter rather than harder. The business use of Web 2.0 represents a new trend called “Business 2.0.” Aside from being the name of a defunct magazine, Business 2.0 is about using the new web-based social networking applications (many of which were originally created for personal use) in a way that fosters teamwork, customer touches, and internal and external collaboration in a low-cost seamless way.

Web 2.0 and the Return of the Relationship

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 06:00:00 EDT

Wikis. Blogs. Podcasts. Social networking sites. File sharing. User-generated content. These are just some of the hallmarks of the much-talked-about (but little understood) "Web 2.0." As with any concept that gets a lot of buzz and attention, Web 2.0 is a catchphrase that marketers, luminaries, and business strategists seem compelled to drop into almost any discussion. The conventional wisdom is that if your business hasn't fully embraced Web 2.0 (whatever that entails), then it is falling woefully behind and missing out on lucrative opportunities. In response, many companies, including firms from across the spectrum of the financial services industry, have raced to set up corporate blogs, invite user-generated content, set up profiles on MySpace, open storefronts in "virtual world" Second Life, and take other steps to connect with their markets using Web 2.0 tools.

Startup Killer: The Cost of Customer Acquisition

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:30:00 EST

In the many thousands of articles advising entrepreneurs on what they have to focus on to build successful startups, much has been written about three key factors: team, product and market, with particular focus on the importance of product/market fit. Failure to get product/market fit right is very likely the number 1 cause of startup failure. However in all these articles, I have not seen any discussion about what I believe is the second biggest cause of startup failure: the cost of acquiring customers turns out to be higher than expected, and exceeds the ability to monetize those customers.

Collaborative Business Workspaces

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:30:00 EST

In the recent past, there were multiple collaboration and social networking platform offerings from large and successful ISVs such as Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), Google Wave, and the SalesForce Chatter collaboration cloud. The common value-messaging across these offerings was on enabling firewall collaboration, improving employee productivity, increasing business efficiency, promoting innovation through collaboration, and enabling people-to-people connect as well. Enterprises are increasingly adopting collaboration for new products and services innovation. Similarly, many others are integrating line-of-business (LOB) and other enterprise applications with an organization’s communication and collaboration infrastructure to improve the effectiveness of the applications and thus improve employee productivity. The new generation of collaboration platforms helps realize the vision of creating collaborative business workspaces by tying together a variety of LOB/enterprise applications toward a seamless front end and collaboration enablement for an innovative environment.

The Future of ISPs and the Internet

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:45:00 EST

This is the third part in an interview series with Martin Levy, Director of IPv6 Strategy at Hurricane Electric. In this segment Martin discusses the future of Hurricane Electric, IPv6, bandwidth, and global Internet development.

What Does 2010 Hold for Desktop Virtualization?

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST

At the end of last year I made some predictions for how I think desktop virtualization will develop in 2010. People who have listened to Brian Madden TV's prediction show will have heard references to some of them and I think the time is right to share the whole list with our broader readership. I am interested in your thoughts too, feel free to comment whether you agree or disagree.

FedEx Outs Green Secrets Behind Purple Promise

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:30:00 EST

In an exclusive interview for the executive business channel MeettheBoss.tv, Tom Schmitt lets slip the secret to FedEx’s growth over the decade lead by a unique company culture built around the “Purple Promise” that has continued to motivate FedEx’s 290,000 staff through the recession.

Six Enterprise Megatrends to Watch in 2010

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 06:45:00 EST

Most enterprise technologists should see a continued payoff of the hard work in planning, architecture, documentation, development and configuration work that has been occurring over the last several years. Enterprise technologists were building Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) long before SOA was over-hyped. And most enterprise technologists I know were investigating constructs of scalable, elastic Cloud [...] Related posts:

New CIO Playbook: Positioning IT as Strategic to the Business

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 18:00:00 EST

According to a Smart Enterprise Magazine CIO report, three-quarters of today's CIOs help their companies develop new products or services. Gartner Group's 2008 Worldwide Survey of CIOs, 85 percent of CIOs are now looking toward "IT to make the difference in their enterprise strategy." This move away from "keeping the lights on" to a focus on business strategy and external customer interaction is completely changing the day to day activities of today's CIO. The result of IT's executive leadership becoming a "part of" vs. a "supporter of" the business is forcing a shift of culture and mindset across the IT organization. If CIOs do not approach this change with a sound plan, inertia may set in due to passive/aggressive behavior and create operational risk.

Chrome Netbook OS; Tablet PCs; LBS; Open Source

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 23:15:00 EST

2010 will undoubtedly be a year of technology innovation. In 2009, Twitter revolutionized the way we get news, it brought us closer to those who were a part of the news, almost making traditional media irrelevant. I don’t know who (or what) will be the Twitter of 2010, but below are a few predictions.

As Times Square Ball Drops, EarthCam's There Live

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 14:30:00 EST

EarthCam (www.earthcam.com), the world's favorite webcam network and industry leader in webcam technology, webcast its 14th annual New Year's Eve Times Square interactive celebration live from New York City and locations around the world. EarthCam brought the world's largest party in Times Square directly to visitors live in real time via its interactive New Year's website and without commercial interruption. The evening's events were also accessible through mobile devices, including the iPhone.

What's the Plan for 2010?

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 11:15:00 EST

As you head into to 2010, no doubt you'll be thinking about business goals. Perhaps you already have a mental to-do list: blogging and Tweeting more, networking more, starting a Facebook group or uploading video content. Once New Year's has worn off, you just want to jump in and get started.

They're great intentions, but you'll never achieve them without a plan. Start your year off on the right foot with an editorial calendar that breaks your blogging and social media agenda down into manageable tasks. The calendar should plot out at least a month, and up to six months of content.

Here are five reasons for having an editorial calendar:

1. To stay on track with your topic, audience and purpose

Plotting out an editorial calendar forces you to think ahead about what's relevant, timely and marketable. Coming up with posts spontaneously on a daily or weekly basis means that there's no long-term strategy in place, and you're likely to veer away from your goals.

2. Help maximize content and effort

Taking the time to plan means that you're thinking about how to expend your energy and resources wisely. You're less likely to squander a great idea in one post if you've thought about it ahead. Get more out of less effort.

3. Target networking and social media efforts

Lots of great blog posts go unread because they're not promoted. If you know that at the end of the month you'll be writing about a particular subject, you'll have the lead time you need to promote the relevant post among the people who will be interested.

4. Improve your relationship with your audience

If a blog offers an educational series of how-tos, or an insightful breakdown of a particular process, it looks and feels authoritative. Your audience will respect that. They can tell the difference between a blog that wants to serve its audience, and one that is there for the sake of being there.

5. You can get ahead

Once your first calendar is planned out, it's a great idea to set aside time to get ahead on it. Then you have the breathing space you need to spend more time on other valuable tasks, like social networking, tweaking your blog design, or developing an idea for an eBook.

Right now, the year is a blank slate - get it started on the right foot.

View Cloud Power Panel on SYS-CON.TV Live From Times Square

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

View the live panel discussion taped on December 8, 2009 at SYS-CON.TV's 4th-floor studio overlooking Times Square in New York City a very special "Power Panel" in which Cloud Computing Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan and three top industry guests from EMC, Intel and Unisys will be looking “under the hood” of the fastest-growing new trend in all of Enterprise IT – Cloud Computing.

How to Architect For Web 2.0

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 01:30:00 EST

Web 2.0 may not have a clear-cut definition but irrespective of which way you look at it (there are 3 different ways of looking at web 2.0), it is about the behavior of complex system, it is about collective intelligence and it is about emergence. The fundamental principles governing such systems are that the whole is much more than the sum of its parts – the behavior of the system cannot be derived or understood by analyzing individual elements.

How to Architect For Web 2.0

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 05:00:00 EST

A Cloudy Future for Networks and Data Centers in 2010

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 15:30:00 EST

The message from the VC community is clear – "don't waste our seed money on network and server equipment." The message from the US Government CIO was clear – the US Government will consolidate data centers and start moving towards cloud computing. The message from the software and hardware vendors is clear – there is an enormous investment in cloud computing technologies and services.

Staying On Track Amid Constant Change

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:00:00 EST

Change, then change again: it’s a story familiar to developer managers everywhere. Projects are getting bigger and more complex. Developers are striving to reduce time-to-market, and squeeze releases out ever faster to keep pace with the market’s demands for new functionality. What’s more, customers aren’t prepared to wait until Q2 next year for a major release, to get the next batch of features built into the solution. They’d like them now, thanks very much – while reserving the right to change the feature set at any time. In these accelerated circumstances, speed of development is not just about the coding; there’s an ever-growing emphasis on how you manage your teams and the overall development process.

The Next-Generation of Business Intelligence

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:00:00 EST

Most people think of traditional business intelligence (BI) as a collection of business-critical information from inside the enterprise. However, consumer comments, independent reviews, and market reports online are crucial pieces of information coming from the outside that infinitely affect any organization.

Lessons from Being Listed in Wikipedia

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST

A Nov. 30 article in the Business Journal covered some of our experiences with being a company listed on Wikipedia, and with that listing being challenged. I wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the lessons we learned and provide some simple advice for those of you who would like your organizations listed on Wikipedia.

MySpace User To Go to Davos as ‘Citizen Journalist’

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:30:00 EST

MySpace today announced its second annual “MySpace Citizen Journalist” program in partnership with The Wall Street Journal and the World Economic Forum, giving one MySpace user the opportunity to become a special correspondent at the world’s most prestigious conference, the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. The “MySpace Citizen Journalist” winner, chosen by a panel of experts, will join the Davos press corps and leverage the MySpace platform to report on conference news and interview world leaders about issues relevant to the global MySpace community. This year MySpace will expand the contestant pool and accept entries from users in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Reasons Why People File For Bankruptcy

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:30:00 EST

There are reasons why people file for bankruptcy as they feel that it is their ultimate option to get rid of a lot of things! A lot of Americans are caught in the hands of debts and do resolve it by coming out by filing bankruptcy. Below mentioned are some of the common reasons why people file for bankruptcy.

Google Responds to the Bing Challenge

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:30:00 EST

"At Google, we run anywhere from 50 to 200 experiments at any given time on Google sites all over the world," notes a Google spokesman in a recent statement on The Google Official Blog. "Right now, we are running a small experiment of a new Google homepage design that shows links when a user mouses over the screen. This is just a test and a way for us see whether our users will celebrate an even simpler search interface."

Introducing Financial Social Media Marketing

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:00:00 EST

Separating the facts from the hype of social media’s promise has never been more important. Is social media new and different — or a repackaging of traditional communications techniques? Transformational distribution consultant, D. Bruce Johnston has termed the impact of financial social media as “nothing less than the reinvention of how investment products will be packaged and distributed.” Still, many investors have moved to the investment sidelines and are waiting for market conditions to improve. Yet, with the average money market fund yielding just over 1%, they may well wonder whether staying on the sidelines will help them meet their longer term investment objectives. It is in the shortfall between where the would-be investor's expertise ends and the financial advisor's begins that we begin to see a merger of new social media's gigantic capacity for one-to-one conversations -- and the kind of conversation that could take place around the kitchen table 50 years ago, as well as today. Whether an investor is planning for retirement, paying for college tuition or some other long-term objective, money still has to work hard enough for to help pay for their long-term goals.

Three Ways To Completely Screw Up Your Business

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:15:00 EST

In this article, we will examine three of the most common and deadly mistakes companies make - mistakes that can be easily rectified. If you recognize any of these mistakes in your business, you can and should take immediate corrective action.

The Emergence of the Universal Appliance

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:30:00 EST

In 1956, Malcolm McLean invented a shipping system that revolutionized cargo shipping forever, namely the container. The shipping container provides a standard, universal packing solution that can be used for transporting whatever you need to ship. Containers can be transported on trucks, trains or on ships, because they are of standard size. Containers are an example of a universal solution - one that revolutionized the shipping industry. Can the emergence of the standard PC server platform as a universal computing platform herald the proliferation of even more innovative dedicated network appliances in IP networks?

The Cloud Computing Kettle Heats Right Up

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:00:00 EST

The past month has seen an unprecedented concentration of Cloud-related articles, events, tweets, and - above all - product launches, partnership announcements and M&A moves. So is Cloud Computing, after three years, finally coming to the boil? Here, by way of allowing you to judge for yourself, SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Journal brings you a timeline of the trajectory of the Cloud so far.