Strategies and Trends for Information Technology Leaders
It’s prediction time again. Looking back on last year’s prediction column, I had one of my best years (as far as predictions go anyway) yet. Last year I forecast a continuingly troubled economy, slow growth for IT spending and a mostly jobless recovery. According to Gartner, enterprise IT spending grew by only 2.9 percent in…
The war is over and, in case you missed it, IT lost. The once ferocious attempts to guard the corporate perimeters against unapproved devices and applications is sputtering to an end because, frankly, all but myopic IT diehards recognize this is battle that’s already over. “Workers are adopting the tools they believe will help them…
In a bit of twist, Google topped its own search ranking lists this week with the release of Google Instant, which is essentially predictive text that guesses the user’s intent and offers search bar auto fill options and short-tail “instant” results. But, the reviews are mixed. Some hailed it as useful, particularly for mobile where…
Gartner analysts predict that Android will become the world’s second most popular smartphone platform by 2012, topping all platforms but Symbian. The research firm estimates that more than 31.8 million Android phones and 126 million Android-based portable products will ship in 2013. While I’m always a skeptic when it comes to analyst prognostications (you don’t…
Credit the iPad with this: it has triggered a huge hunger for tablets inside corporate America and, guess what, you cannot ignore this, not now. With Apple selling 3.3 million iPads in just its most recent quarter, suddenly tablet mania has hit the nation. “IT has lost control,” said Patrick Sweeney, vice president of product…
In what might be viewed as a victory for Microsoft and a loss for Google, the Kentucky Department of Education has signed up 700,000 students, faculty, and staff for free e-mail, instant messaging, and online storage running on the software giant’s cloud services. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) officials in a statement called the agreement “the largest…
Two House lawmakers are calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google’s accidental collection of sensitive Wi-Fi data, echoing the calls of several European regulators in a mounting controversy for the search giant. Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas), co-chairs of the House Privacy Caucus, asked FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz in a…
Continuing their ambitious survey work peering into the future of the Internet, researchers from the Pew Internet Project and Elon University canvassed nearly 900 digital soothsayers, who overwhelmingly expressed the hopeful belief that in 10 years new forms of online collaboration will substantially reduce inefficiencies in government, business, and other organizations. Seventy-two percent (72%) of…
That provocative question splashed across the cover of the Atlantic Monthly last summer, headlining a story penned by controversial technology analyst and pundit Nicholas Carr, who argued that the climate of instant information and supreme distraction that permeates the Web has chipped away at the more focused, intellectual pursuits like reading a book. Fast forward…
Cloud computing is the most significant development for IT since the invention of the PC. It’s impact on IT will be similar to the paradigm shift Apple’s iTunes caused in the music industry, namely selling music by the song instead by the album. (In IT’s vernacular: the ever-elusive consumption of services by-the-drink or utility computing…