Dell may enter SmartPhone market

In a recent release at eWeek, they anticipate Dell to release a new SmartPhone they've been working on. They saw their computer shipping business fall 16% in the last quarter, and hope to bring a new customer into their portfolio with these products. For more on the story, read this article at eWeek.

Will Cloud Computing Be the Biggest 2009 Trend?

Paul Krill seems to think that Cloud Computing will be the trend for 2009--and he's got the backup to prove it. Judging from his article in InfoWorld.com, he and others are standing behind this inexpensive process. What do you think? We've covered Cloud Computing before, but with the release of this article, its worth discussing again. Share your thoughts with us here.

Idea Sharing in an Enterprise Near You

Browsing through my reader today, I came across this post in the Content Economy in which Oscar Berg highlights Bob Buckman’s ideas for an ultimate idea-sharing system. After all, the enterprise is still missing this element. Here’s the list, enjoy!

1. One transfer step in the transmission of ideas between individuals, to avoid distortion.
2. All employees have access
3. All employees can contribute content
4. Available anywhere, 24/7
5. Search function that indexes every word
6. Users contribute in their native language. Translation provided where appropriate.
7. Content updates automatically

Do you trust cloud computing?

Read Write Web recently took a look at how cloud computing is being accepted by the public. As a major buzz word of 2008, there are many people who are not convinced of the power of cloud computing. They're looking at it as one way to back up data, not a cloud that will keep data safe in one spot.

Some said the cloud was trustworthy enough for non-critical data, but not for secure and private communications, such as those used in the enterprise. And still others noted that trusting cloud services was risky, especially given the recent shutdowns of the once-hot services like I Want Sandy, Pownce, Google Notebook, and Jaiku.

Do you use cloud computing on a regular basis? What are your thoughts? Do you keep multiple backups other than your data in the clouds?

Enterprise IT and the Mobile Data Struggle

Enterprise IT departments are being pressured to integrate more new mobile technologies, but the disparate formats and systems in which the data are stored cause problems. Check out this great podcast by Dana Gardner at TechNewsWorld.com. He discusses how IT departments can increase their use of mobile data.

Listen to the podcast (37:20 minutes).

AOL beefs up email software

According to a recent article at eWeek, AOL announces that it will now have one click access to other email providers including GMail and Yahoo.

Ted Cahall, president of AOL products and technologies, had this to say about the new technology:
"Web Mail is an integral part of the AOL experience and at the heart of our product offerings. With this new release, we can showcase the important role AOL products continue to play in the company. Enhancing products that already attract a large, engaged audience is a key goal for our organization."

IBM and SAP Patner on Alloy

According to this article in eWeek, IBM and SAP will soon be releasing Alloy, which is an enterprise collaboration application. The application will allow its users to access SAP Business Suite reports and analytics from IBM’s Lotus Notes 8.5 e-mail client.

This might be just a taste of things to come from these two giants. Kevin Cavanaugh, vice president of messaging and collaboration at IBM Lotus, mentions:

"Metals get stronger when they're mixed to create alloys. Alloy is a better solution, not only because of our two-way cooperation but because of the work of our design partners."

This application is coming to life in March, will you be the first to use it?

Silverlight to broadcast inauguration

According to CNet, the Presidential Inaugural Committee has selected Microsoft's Silverlight as one of the programs that will stream the President-Elect Barack Obama's inauguration tomorrow. The PIC has already made arrangements with YouTube, Flickr and Twitter. Live and on-demand video can be found here at the PIC Website.

Government Interest in Social Software

I recently came across Michael Idinopulo’s latest post on Transparent Office in which he mentions that there is a lot of buzz and interest in social media in government. One of the first attempts at launching a community within government was Intellipedia, a community based forum that was used for sharing information across different intelligence agencies.

It’s come a long way since Intellipedia, government officials are now using blogs, social networks, and wikis to collaborate within agencies. I’m interested to see if the Obama administration will make social software go mainstream in government.

Google Apps Premium to be sold by technology providers

Recently announced, and detailed at eWeek, Google will allow technology providers to sell their Google Apps Premium edition starting in March. They hope to gain more enterprise application users by doing this. Resellers must pay Google $40 for every user they serve, but other than that, the marketing, promotion, and price of application is in the hands of the reseller. Google is also only allowing 50 users per business to use its standard edition of Google Apps.

Security Patch Issued for Blackberry

RIM (Research in Motion) has released a short term patch to fix critical flaws in Blackberry.

From CNet.com,

Multiple security vulnerabilities exist in the PDF distiller of some released versions of the BlackBerry Attachment Service. These vulnerabilities could enable a malicious individual to send an email message containing a specially crafted PDF file, which when opened for viewing on a Blackberry smartphone, could cause memory corruption and possibly lead to arbitrary code execution on the computer that hosts the BlackBerry Attachment service.

Beware and make sure that you don't download PDF files from untrusted sources on the Blackberry--in fact, wait until you get near a computer to do so. As CNet describes, this security fix will do little to help President-Elect in his quest to keep his Blackberry.

Do you think that this security fix will help? What permanent measures can be implemented to keep the Blackberry safe?

iPod Touch Gaining Enterprise Credibility

When the iPhone first came out, there was a sudden rush of executives that were trying to justify the use of this phone in the enterprise. Now, according to this post on the Burton Group Blog the iPod Touch might be an even bigger story than the iPhone. The iPod Touch already supports the Safari web browser and enterprise capabilities like support for virtual private networks (L2TP/IPSEC, Cisco IPSec, and PPTP). These latest numbers from the AdMob report show how traffic from the iPod Touch is just exploding!

• Traffic from iPod Touch in the US and UK was “2.7 and 3.2 times higher” the week after Christmas than the week before.
• “The iPod Touch is now the #2 device in the AdMob network with a 4.7% share.” The #1 device is the iPhone with a 10.8% share.

These numbers show us that the Touch might someday surpass the iPhone itself. For enterprise purposes, I want to see how well the Touch will compete with Blackberry’s release of its touch screen model, the Storm.

Where's your budget for your enterprise networks?

I found this podcast at eWEEK, they talk with 3com about how to address cost of ownership solutions within the enterprise space. Some great information, take a few minutes to listen to it.

In this eWEEK podcast hosted by Mike Vizard, 3Com President and Chief Operating Officer Ron Sege talks about how to reconcile increasing application dependency on network bandwidth with the need to contain costs in these challenging times.

Dynamic Capacity Management with Cloud Computing at Terremark

According to caas.tmcnet.com, Dynamic Capacity Management offers a flexible “burst mode” for Enterprise Cloud-based computing environments. This helps clients access more computational power. This feature required during processing and memory resources offers real-time access to more computing capacity. How familar are you with Dynamic Capacity Management and will you hope to be utilizing it within your systems? Let us know your thoughts here or on LinkedIn.

Mindjet Connect Gives Enterprise 2.0 a Boost

A good indicator that the web 2.0 phenomenon has gone mainstream is when you see enterprise articles being published in BusinessWeek. This article written by Steve Hamm reviews Mindjet’s online version of Mind Connect, which is desktop product that allows users to collaborative create diagrams, share ideas, and map out processes. With 1.5 million users up to date including companies like HP, Boeing, and BearingPoint, the application seems to be catching on to the enterprise rather quickly.

This is exactly what the business realm needs to give web 2.0 a good name. I expect a lot of companies to start using this application in 2009.

Cisco invests in Xobni

According to the New York Times, Xobni has received a $7 million of funding from Cisco. This is Cisco's latest venture in to Web 2.0 tools, following Jabber, Postpath, and WebEx.

Collaboration is a key focus of this investment, both between companies and the software that Cisco has been investing in.

“Cisco and Xobni actually share a very similar vision of using collaboration,” said Sandhya Venkatachalam, director of corporate development at Cisco. They both “center the experience around the people one wants to communicate with.”

Read more here.

Changes Ahead for Dell's Enterprise Unit

Dell has gone through a lot of talent changes as of late as the company grapples with declining sales and pressure to align their services with those of competitors. Still, Dell is trying to do some interesting things with its enterprise unit, according to WSJ.com the enterprise unit will be run by Steve Schuckenbrock, a former Electronic Data Systems Inc. executive who joined Dell in 2007 to start a new business-services operation.

Innovation through cost-cutting techniques, that's their aim. Isn't it everyone's?