Alignment, staffing and culture are often more critical than software and apps
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Few folks, especially those involved in a global business, want to be seen as a xenophobe. To avoid that perception, I suspect at least some people hesitate to attribute communication problems with o... More >
As I wrote back in May, remote IT monitoring and management makes a lot of sense for SMBs, since it offers them access to the types of services that would likely be provided by a full-time IT staff... More >
Want a sure-fire way to get business users to ignore your software ? Try this: Carry on as before and forget about all of those newfangled Web 2.0 interfaces. They're a fad and/or a threat to corpor... More >
Back in December, I wrote about Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue's decision to consolidate 11 agencies that account for the bulk of the state's technology spending to create a Georgia Technology Authority t... More >
When I think of vendor relationship management, I usually think of a corporate customer angling for more price breaks or other concessions from its suppliers. But a recent article in the Financial... More >
One of life's oldest and truest truisms is that there are exceptions to every rule. As I wrote back at the beginning of the year, while shorter outsourcing contracts with multiple suppliers ha... More >
When I last wrote about SMBs and smartphones in June, an Access Markets International (AMI) Partners survey had found that 31 percent of U.S. SMBs considered smartphones "integral" to their busines... More >
With all of the talk about how important technology is to running a business today, you might assume business people have developed a healthy respect, if not downright fondness, for their IT departme... More >
We often hear how employers will need to offer more flexible work schedules to attract cream-of-the-crop workers. While that may be true for high-skill, salaried positions, some companies are adop... More >
So, what's the buzz about Beehive, the latest iteration of Oracle's Collaboration Suite? (Groan. Just wanted to get the dreadfully obvious play on the product name out of the way first thing.) ... More >
Back in June I wrote about the effect soaring oil prices were having on the global supply chain, noting that for many North American companies it was becoming a lot less cost effective to have good... More >
Back in May, I wrote about Dell's growing focus on services as a way to win more SMB business. Mentioned in that post were two ways for Dell to expand its service offerings: recruiting channel par... More >
While financial fallout from the U.S. credit crisis has many companies worried about losing business and/or making budget cuts , deep-pocketed tech giants could be shopping for startups . Thanks ... More >
Companies appear to be spending a fair amount of money on CRM. So why aren't customer-satisfaction scores improving? A number of speakers at Gartner's recent Customer Relationship Management... More >
Though the slowing economy is causing some companies to scale back their IT hiring plans , some others may be willing to make exceptions for folks losing their jobs in the latest round of financia... More >
So, business process management is the top priority for companies identified as the most innovative by InformationWeek , as IT Business Edge blogger Dennis Byron noted earlier this week. Ap... More >
Even though they seem apprehensive about it, many companies seem fairly sure that social networking will play a key role in their business moving forward. More than 60 percent of respondents to a r... More >
Last month I wrote about speculation, fueled by a report from consulting company Zinnov, that the next epicenter of innovation just might be located in India . According to Zinnov, there are a quart... More >
Back in June I wrote about a new software-as-a-service offering that seemed to be a perfect fit for SMBs: an e-mail archiving product called Mail Archive. Well, at least it would be if more ... More >
Just last week I wrote about the effects of a slowing U.S. economy on India's outsourcing business, noting that the credit crunch and resulting fallout at American financial services companies was a... More >
Though enterprises profess to dislike silos of any kind, they sure seem to have trouble eliminating them. Sometimes the disease is worse than the cure, with efforts to eliminate silos simply resultin... More >
As recently as last spring, some pundits insisted that more technology startups would begin making initial public offerings (IPOs) of stock, widely perceived as a sign of financial stability. ... More >
Lenovo, which in June introduced a ThinkPad laptop aimed at the red-hot SMB market, is rolling out three tower and two x86 servers for companies with 500 employees or less. According to Z... More >
While nearly every industry has increased its use of third-party service providers over the past few years, some have been more reluctant than others to utilize offshore companies. Government agencie... More >
There's a storm of criticism in the blogosphere about TechCrunch 's selection of Yammer , which Michael Arrington refers to as "Twitter with a business model," as the best startup in the TechCrunch... More >
Misery loves company. You may be tired of reading about companies cutting their IT budgets . Well, believe me, I am tired of writing about it. But I just read an excellent article in The McKinsey Q... More >
Just last month I wrote about companies' apparent reticence toward Web 2.0 tools . Now there's a new survey from Avanade, an integration firm specializing in Microsoft technologies, that pro... More >
With all of the emphasis on IT's role in process improvement and other business initiatives, and the continuing focus on finding well-rounded CIOs with business as well as technical knowledge, ju... More >
There appears to be good news and bad news for Indian services companies in Forrester Research's new spending report , which I just wrote about yesterday. Demand for outsourced services seems... More >
Wow, am I ever starting to feel like the bearer of bad IT spending news. Hot on the heels of my post from last week about a CIO.com survey showing a growing number of tech executives planning to m... More >
OK, with just about two months until the U.S. presidential election, it's time for stories looking at poll results to kick into high gear. For instance, now we all know that white women like Republi... More >
Instinctively, I know that good data generally leads to good decisions and bad data often leads to bad decisions, whether in our business or our professional lives. (Jeez, if I'd only known he/she wa... More >
Yes, the economy stinks. The U.S. unemployment rate hit 6.1 percent last month, its highest level in five years, reports The New York Times . It's not exactly comforting when one presidential cand... More >
Like many other folks, I've always been quite taken with Six Degrees of Separation, the idea that you are no more than six personal connections removed from any other person in the world. I ha... More >
As we near the final quarter of 2008 and folks consider spending plans for next year, it looks as if many tech budgets are shrinking . Several recent surveys by Janco Associates, Goldman Sachs &... More >
Innovation often comes down to the ability to see known information in new and different ways. I've written a couple of recent posts on the "new and different" aspect, which might involve tapp... More >
Political conventions are mostly about rhetoric and saying what people want to hear, as all of us watching coverage of the U.S. Democratic and Republican national conventions have been reminded over ... More >
Outsourcing strategies that emphasize process improvement and other business benefits are generally more successful than those focused solely on saving money. If there is a recurring theme to ... More >
I addressed one of the most common bugaboos about software-as-a-service -- concerns over its integration capabilities -- in yesterday's post, citing users who say integration isn't a big issue beca... More >
Thus far, YouTube has been more of a hassle than anything else for Google, with no clear plans for generating revenue in sight, an increasingly troublesome legal battle with Viacom, and an Italia... More >
It's no surprise that attrition is a problem for India's outsourcing industry. I've been writing about it for more than two years now. Analysts closely follow hiring patterns at the country's outso... More >
Earlier this year, I wrote about one company's efforts to use software-as-a-service for all of its business applications . There's a similar take on SaaS in a recent CIO.com article, which relate... More >
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