Strategies and Trends for Information Technology Leaders
Technology executives forecast continued hiring activity in the third quarter of 2011, according to the just-released Robert Half Technology IT Hiring Index and Skills Report . In the latest quarterly survey, 7 percent of CIOs said they plan to expand their IT departments, and 3 percent expect cutbacks, for a net 4 percent projected increase…
IBM has merged its two non-services divisions — hardware and software — into a single business unit under one manager, a move that points to IBM’s intention to offer fully integrated systems. That could have important implications for IT executives weighing whether to adopt an IBM-dominated infrastructure over competitors like Oracle, the database and enterprise…
The Cloud Design Service, released this week, follows HP’s (NYSE: HPQ) Cloud Discovery Workshop and Cloud Roadmap Service. Whereas Discovery Workshop was more educational, designed to help people learn about Cloud computing, and Roadmap Service was a planning service to help plan a future deployment, Design Service actually gets into the nitty gritty of implementation….
Organizations are under pressure to reduce their environmental impacts. One metric being scrutinized is the amount of Green House Gasses (GHGs) being released into the atmosphere. At first blush this would not seem relevant to data centers, but when you stop and look at their explosive growth, this focus becomes understandable. In 2006, an EPA…
An IT services-based economy offers consumers many alternatives and keeps prices low due to competition. In general, individual consumers benefit greatly from services-based economies. Consequently, SOA (services orientated architecture) and Cloud computing have been identified as IT innovations that will foster new markets and give rise to an IT services-based economy. But, when it comes…
Cloud services will be what the electrical grid was a century ago: the basis for a whole new set of services, markets and possibilities that can change the way we live and operate, but also threaten the dominant computing hierarchy, said Nicholas Carr, controversial author of Does IT Matter?, in his closing keynote speech at…
With the recent economic downturn, many IT organizations are increasingly aware of the need to partner with their customers and ensure they are delivering the right services at the right price. Service catalogs are a powerful tool for ensuring that the goals of your organization and its customers are aligned, while also providing greater visibility…
There are lots people looking at outsourcing these days as a potential cost cutter. Let me say right up front that, more often than not, outsourcing won’t save you a significant amount of money. More likely, what you will get is more value for the dollars spent. The decision to outsource some or all of…
Outside of the West, IT spending will be in single digits; not nearly as anemic as in the US, UK, and Europe. The continued erosion of the global economy, including the prospect of negative GDP growth in many major countries, has led IDC to update its forecast for worldwide IT spending in 2009. The IDC…
There are many terms circulating across the industry for managing customer experience. Some of the more technical focus on more established metrics such as quality of service (QoS), and for VoIP, mean opinion score or MOS. However, there are also a growing number of metrics targeted at accurately capturing the real experience of IT’s consumers…