CIO's and Business Strategy

Michael Idinopulos discusses in this post in the Transparent Office that CIOs are still fighting for a seat at the strategy table when it comes to improving the way their company does business. IT is strategically important but most line managers fail to see that IT for more than just back-office support functions.

Enterprise 2.0 has changed all of this. Managers outside of the IT industry are figuring out that blogs, social networks, micromessaging, and other forms of online collaboration are changing the way that people interact with one another within a company. As an IT manager, companies will be looking at you to teach and explain the benefits that these social media outlets can have in an organization. That is why it is every so important to have IT managers on board discussing strategy with teams early on.

New IT Leadership LinkedIn Group

We've just launched a brand new LinkedIn group called IT Leadership that is designed for current or emerging IT Managers (up-and-coming IT leaders with CIO potential) who are looking to augment their technical skills with managerial and leadership competencies in order to work more collaboratively with business stakeholders and ultimately increase the influence on strategic initiatives across the enterprise. The group will look at these issues from the individual’s POV and discuss ways to hone personal leadership, communication and problem solving skills and also from the departmental level focusing on strategies to increase the strategic role of IT on business initiatives.

Join the IT Leadership Group

Microsoft Expressions to become a stand alone product

According to eWeek, Microsoft will be dropping Microsoft Media from it's media suite, Expressions Studio. It will instead become a stand-alone product that will be launched on July 10 in the San Fransisco area. Read the whole article here.

Meetings Drive Business

This is why companies need to continue to invest in business meetings. Not only will those who attend gain new and fresh perspectives from other attendees, but they’ll hear from top companies who have lived by the same philosophy. Investment in yourself and innovation are the key to your business. What have you done recently to invest in your business?

Will you be attending one of IIR’s IT events this year? What do you want to gain from the experience?

Meetings Drive Business

To catch enterprises eye, Google must make some changes

According to an article at eWeek, they believe that Google must find a way to change GMail and where it hosts the information before the enterprises will recognize it as a business tool.

Your Web browser must stretch itself to serve as an application host; your link to the Internet becomes more important than ever; and your continued use of the cloud application in question is tied tightly to the operational competence of your provider.



Read the full article here.

Ray Hood, CEO Qumu

Ran across a great interview with Ray Hood, CEO of Qumu from the good folks at FierceOnlineVideo. They caught up Hood to discuss the company's progress so far this year, its plans for the future, and what trends and highlights he sees in the online video industry.

Below are two excerpts from the conversation that particularly relates to our work with Enterprise. We welcome you to visit the entire article here.

FierceOV: Are there specific verticals where you are seeing greater uptake of enterprise video?

Hood: No specific vertical comes to mind as adopting much more quickly than others, but the size of the company is a factor. The larger enterprises are leading the way on adoption of streaming video, and we'll see that continue as we roll out products that allow for scheduling streaming video direct from calendars. The companies we've seen with the clearest benefits from our products have more than 5,000 employees and are geo-distributed.

FierceOV: What do you think the next "big thing" in enterprise video might be?

Hood: I think the convergence of technologies and ease of use with video will continue. For instance, an executive wants to have an event, he has three technologies at his disposal, what is the best choice: Qumu, Polycom or LiveMeeting? I think we need a clear and smooth transition to automatic selection of the best choice, given the present circumstances and what the exec wants to achieve with the meeting.

On the streaming side, I think the acceptance and adoption of H.264 as the standard will reduce latency in streaming events, and eventually, you'll be able to call on someone at a remote location to address a group in a multi-cast.

Microsoft, HP Tie the Knot on Unified Comm

Sean Michael Kerner of InternetNews.com reports that Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard have officially joined forces for UC communicationons. "The move aims to better capitalize on burgeoning demand for UC solutions. Forrester Research has said the market for enterprise unified communications could grow as high as $14.5 billion by 2015, and that businesses will give about 60 percent of their workforce access to UC functions to improve their productivity." Kerner also reports that, "of course, interest in linking applications, devices and employees together through unified communications has also encouraged new efforts from other major industry luminaries, ranging from Cisco to Oracle."

Will the "marriage" work and offer more functionality to each companies software and development issues?

Microsoft, HP Tie the Knot on Unified Comm

Motorola brings new network options to enterprises

According to eWeek, Motorola has developed a new LAN solution which will offer more to enterprises looking to enhance their networks. Its advantages are cost, power, and performance.

Kevin Keefe, vice president of marketing for Motorola's Access Network Solutions recently stated:
"Enterprise users require a different level of network sophistication today than they did even a few years ago. Not only do they expect secure and reliable IP voice and data, but they demand improved network economics and greatly simplified solutions."

Read the full article here.

Enterprise 2.0 Maturity and Adoption: It's About Work

According to Gil Yehuda of Social Computing Journal, Enterprise 2.0 is at a very challenging stage of development. It's no longer a fad. It's not going away. But it's not a fundamental part of mainstream businesses, yet.


Do you think it will be a part of mainstream business within the year, within two years?



Yehuda goes into detail what can and should be done to enable enterprise 2.0 to head more into the natural order of business computing, we encourage you to read the article in its entirety here.



What are your thoughts on Yehuda's findings and predictions?

Wolfram Alpha gets supercomputer boost

According to CNet.com, concerns with the public launch of Wolfram Alpha later this month is withstanding the crushing load the Internet can impose. But Wolfram Research revealed Tuesday it's building the service on the world's 66th-fastest supercomputer. The machine, built out of Dell hardware by a company called R Systems, can sustain performance of 39.6 trillion mathematical operations per second, according to the November 2008 list of the top 500 supercomputers. That muscle will come in handy for Alpha, which I think of as a combination of a graphing calculator, search engine, and reference library that not only supplies some answers to factual, data-intensive questions but also does math in the process.

What will this mean for public performance issues? Will it make a change in your work?