Alignment, staffing and culture are often more critical than software and apps
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When I wrote about the idea of "good enough" technology earlier this month, it was in the context of buying enterprise software and hardware. The idea is to buy technology that might lack some feat... More >
When I read the earliest excited reports on Google Wave, my first reaction was "sounds like IM on steroids." My opinion hasn't changed much since then. Google may call real-time collaboration within ... More >
A few months ago I opined that collaboration was shaping up as the cloud's killer application , thanks to the cloud's ability to make it easy for anyone with a Web browser to view, comment on and mo... More >
A lot of stories on globalization are of the glowingly positive, "The World Is Flat" variety, implying that Western companies can cut prices, speed product cycles and gain access to specialized skill... More >
When I wrote about the importance of innovation during economic downturns earlier this month, a major point was that investing in research and development puts your company in a better position whe... More >
Last night over dinner, my husband told me he had de-friended a colleague on Facebook after the guy posted racial slurs my husband found offensive. The guy never made these kinds of remarks at the of... More >
We know bad things like spam and malware are starting to show up on social channels like Facebook and Twitter. But many of us have warm-and-fuzzy feelings toward these channels, especially when the... More >
Some time ago I realized it wasn't fair to expect my 8-year-old son to behave himself unless I clarified my expectations of what constitutes good behavior. So now instead of simply leaving him with v... More >
With IT positions prominently featured on CNNMoney's list of 50 best jobs in America and IT job listings on the rise at sites like Dice.com, folks with IT skills are on the road to Easy Street, rig... More >
Unlike many of the contributors here at IT Business Edge, it's difficult to sum up my coverage area in just one or two words. Whereas Art Cole writes about infrastructure, Loraine Lawson writes about... More >
I've got a fairly large wardrobe, yet I wear the same things over and over. It's not because I'm that crazy about my black sweaters or even that they go with everything. No, it's just they are usuall... More >
Back in 2007 I wrote about a group called the X Foundation and its contest for entrepreneurs to create new technologies to improve space travel, an approach The New York Times called "something like ... More >
Earlier this week when I wrote a post titled Windows 7: Beginning of the End of the Traditional OS?, I kept imagining it being read by Dan LaFontaine . Just like the movie trailers voiced by LaFonta... More >
Search engine optimization (SEO) reminds me of all that footage I watched on " Wild Kingdom " as a kid. Just when the hungry lion thinks it's about to catch the gazelle, the damned thing pulls away.... More >
Using a pop-culture reference that dates me as the dinosaur I am, I once compared Microsoft's SharePoint to Shimmer Floor Wax , a "product" that was featured in a "Saturday Night Live" skit with (or... More >
Last month I wrote about remarks from Surjit Chana, VP of marketing for IBM's General Business division, that "India is poised to lead the second wave of IT adoption" and his belief that Indian compa... More >
With all of the great new features planned for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 announced yesterday at the SharePoint user conference in Las Vegas, the legions of SharePoint users are bound to be pretty e... More >
Earlier this year I wrote about how the recession was making us workaholics , with many people afraid to take vacations for fear of losing their jobs. Turns out the recession is also making ... More >
A few weeks ago I referred to Gartner's Magic Quadrant when I wrote about how social channels like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are affecting the business of companies selling IT research . I cit... More >
Some organizations seem to look at outsourcing like gambling. The more you wager, the more you can win. While this is technically true, so is the inverse. And let's face it, more folks end up trying ... More >
Forrester Research and other analysts are predicting the forthcoming release of Windows 7 will be a win for Microsoft , because of a fortuitous combination of factors. Signs of an economic recovery ... More >
Dell's just-announced partnership with Salesforce.com , in which Dell will provide integration services for Salesforce software with or without Dell hardware, may provide a glimpse of the answer to a... More >
A few months ago, I cited a New York Times article in which Google Chief Economist Hal Varian said statistician would be a "sexy" job in the next decade. According to the article, those with doct... More >
I admit it; I need to give Second Life a second chance. In the past I've been dismissive of virtual environments like Second Life, largely because I found efforts to blend the real and virtual world... More >
One thing we journalists know, sometimes a colorful quote makes all the difference. I've linked repeatedly to a post in which I shared Boston Consulting Group's advice that companies shouldn'... More >
I think we all know my opinion of traditional ERP systems . They're big, expensive and hard to implement. As I wrote last month, in the enterprise software family, ERP is like the cousin who, when s... More >
I don't attend business conferences as much as I used to, so I don't know if an open bar is still a conference fixture. I always figured drinking was popular at these events because it created opport... More >
People are suspicious -- and often rightfully so -- of companies trying to sell them stuff. They don't like companies using technology to monitor their online behavior in an effort to perfect their... More >
One of enterprise technology's rules of thumb is to buy with your future needs in mind. Buy more capacity, more functionality than you need today to accommodate business growth. Nearly every vendor p... More >
When I interview folks, I try to ask the questions I think my readers would pose if they were on the phone with the interviewee. I'm sure I miss the boat a fair amount of the time, leaving readers wo... More >
Earlier this year when I wrote about President Obama's intention to change the way the federal government taxes overseas profits earned by multinationals with offshore operations, I shared the sent... More >
For a while now we've been reading articles offering advice on how to get a better deal out of existing technology vendors , with the idea that the down economy should make it easier to get more fav... More >
One of the primary takeaways from the first Tribalization of Business Survey, conducted last year by Deloitte, was the reluctance of some companies to assign full-time resources to online communitie... More >
In August I revisited a point I first made back in 2007, wondering how consulting companies selling pricey IT research would be impacted by the growing number of free advice alternatives , from info... More >
Most discussions of the CIO role focus on the need for CIOs to become more involved in broader business strategy , delegating the nitty-gritty technical details to others within their organizations.... More >
The good news keeps coming for those working in IT. As IT Business Edge's Suan Hall wrote recently after interviewing folks from Robert Half Technology, Dice.com and JobThread, IT job listings are o... More >
A friend of mine recently told me she'd just received the best performance review she's ever had. It was a shame, she said, since she wouldn't receive a correspondingly positive raise. Her employer, ... More >
Failure has gotten a bad rap. After all, the path to success is inevitably paved with failure. Yet some organizations let fear of failure keep them from taking the kinds of chances that can yield big... More >
After a year and a half of dismal economic news, the need for a little optimism is palpable. I wonder if that need is inspiring predictions like this one from Forbes : "2010 could be a very good yea... More >
When I interview folks about technology implementations, one of my go-to questions is whether their biggest challenges involved technical problems or cultural issues. Guess what? It's always culture.... More >
Most of the coverage about the Federal Trade Commission’s inclusion of social media in revisions to its Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, announced yesterda... More >
Back in July I wrote about the need for immigration reform, citing a recent study by Duke University's Vivek Wadhwa, which found that an increasing number of people who come to America to get their P... More >
A friend of mine, a freelance food writer, e-mailed me a blog post by a former Conde Nast employee, Paul Smalera, discussing the publisher's decision to ax Gourmet magazine and a couple of lesser-k... More >
The effort is only about an hour-and-a-half old, but @jowyang's (Jeremiah Owyang's) request for folks on Twitter to submit what they think are the best blog disclosures and to tag them #blogdisclosur... More >
When I interviewed Aaron Fulkerson, co-founder and CEO of software provider MindTouch, none of his comments made it into the final draft of my story on corporate blogging since it ran long and his re... More >
My last gig involved covering financial services technology. One story stuck with me. A large bank spent several years trying to integrate the technical systems of a bank it acquired into its own to ... More >
It's a given that CFOs like numbers. So why don't more IT managers include plenty of good, hard numbers in their presentations to the CFO? That was the premise of a post I wrote earlier this year, wh... More >
It’s been a little more than three months since I wrote a story about the Federal Trade Commission’s inclusion of social media in its Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in A... More >
Because of the focus of my blog, I probably write more than anyone else at IT Business Edge about the need to get IT and business on the same page. But it’s a topic almost everyone here manages to to... More >
I get together with a group of pals for dinner once a month. Despite our best intentions to stick with the scheduled date, time and restaurant, life usually intervenes in the month between when an ou... More >
IBM isn’t afraid to take on all comers in the enterprise collaboration space. Compared to most business applications, collaboration is a nascent market, and it’s one which IBM apparently thinks it’s ... More >
The news that someone was trying to sell a Google Wave invite on eBay took me back to one of my favorite commercials from my youth, the one in which the kid asks the wise owl how many licks it takes... More >
Twitter and other social media are great for fostering closer customer relationships , but not if you don't back up all of those chummy conversations with solid good service. When I interviewed Lion... More >
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