CIOs Believe that BPM is a Key Priority in Many Firms

This post on CIO.com discusses that even despite the economic situation, investing in BPM tools is still a main priority and focus for many firms. A report called "Driving Value with Process Improvement" written by Forrester Research indicates that CIOs must embrace BPM technology early in the life-cycle. Are you seeing the same trend across your firms? Is IT really investing more in BPM technology?

IT Leadership Forum Speaker Profile: Daniel W. Rasmus, Director of Business Insights, Microsoft

Daniel W. Rasmus
Director of Business Insights
Microsoft

Daniel Rasmus is the Director of Business Insights at Microsoft Corporation.

Dan has 20 years of experience in the IT industry. Prior to joining Microsoft, Dan was the Vice President of Knowledge Management and Collaboration research at the Giga Information Group, a subsidiary of Forrester Research. Prior to Giga, Dan was manager of workgroup computing at Hughes Space and Communications, where he managed their knowledge manage programs among other roles.

Dan has held technical and management positions at Dataproducts, ITT Cannon, Cipher Dataproducts, Western Digital and Hughes Aircraft. He has managed large projects, including engineering collaboration systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations and the development of expert systems for manufacturing applications.

Dan is the author of nearly 200 trade journal articles and three books. His most recent book, Listening to the Future, was published by Wiley in 2008.

Dan attended the University of California, Santa Cruz, and received a certificate in intelligent systems engineering from the University of California, Irvine.

Don’t miss Daniel's session Preparing for the Business Environment of the Future at the IT Leadership Forum this November held in Phoenix, AZ.

A Snapshot of IT Budgets in 2009

This article in CIO discusses how recent research taken by Forrester shows us that companies are reducing their IT budgets by not only laying off staff, but by also cutting back on benefits and employee salaries. The research firm took their information from more than 1,250 SMB IT decision-makers between the months of February to May 2009.

According to the report "IT staff salaries and benefits continue to be the largest part of the IT operating budget. Hiring freezes and layoffs top the list of actions that firms expect to take this year as a result of current economic conditions."

How are IT departments expected to innovate when there are so many cutbacks on resources?

Sponsored conversations on yoru blog -- a good idea?

In a recent article written at Read Write Web, Marshall Kirkpatrick disagrees with a recent Forrester report that says it's a good thing to engage in conversations on blogs that are sponsored. He states that it isn't that much different from advertising, and that the new industry should not be overrun with this type of advertising yet. For more of his opinions, read the blog post here.

What do you think? Do you write a blog? Will you write about a topic on your blog if a company sponsors it?

Enterprise 2.0 Tool Success

In a continuation of yesterdays post, this article from ZDNet provided an informative graph from the Forrester research report regarding the future of Enterprise 2.0. The graph depicts the success level of various forms of Enterprise 2.0, as well as how long each form will take to have an impact. As the graph shows Social Networks, and Wikis have the highest success level, especially between between the survival and growth phase. For more analysis check out the post at ZDNet.

Enterprise 2.0 Tools Will See Price Drop

Forrester analyst G. Oliver Young, in a new study, has indicated that the cost for business web 2.0 tools will decrease over the next five years. Price drops will be seen across the board for "blogs, wikis, social networking tools, and enterprise RSS." The sole exception is mashups, which Young predicts the cost will double. As quoted from the study, and reported in this article, the reason for the trend is that:

"Traditional software vendors have moved aggressively in the direction of web 2.0 software; however, few are offering standalone products. Instead, most, like Microsoft and SAP, are rolling web 2.0 features into existing software packages; in many cases, they are providing the technology at no extra cost...many will make use of them and offset another purchase in the process."

The Enterprise: Serious Games?

You might ask what does video games and employee training have to do with each other, and then most likely you would find absolutely no answer for it. I came across this post on ZDNet from Larry Dignan which discusses how Forrester Research seems to believe that ‘serious gaming’ will likely come to an enterprise near us very soon. Here’s the full report from Forrester Research. So what’s the business value derived from video games in businesses?

Forrester notes that serious gaming is being used by emergency responders training through scenarios of terrorist attacks, university staff for its business process management game, and Cisco, Hilton Inn, and Johnson & Johnson to teach things like math, customer service skills, and drug development. Interesting enough, this is what Forrester mentions regarding proving ROI:

How do you prove their business worth and ROI? This is the hardest of the five questions facing serious games. For some games, such as advergames, it’s easy to see the link to ROI: For example, Burger King’s three Xbox 360 titles developed by Blitz Games Studios ranked among the top-selling Xbox games over the winter holidays in 2006 and were credited with the company’s 41% profit increase in its second quarter. However, such a 1 to 1 relationship between a game and a desired outcome is often hard to tease out in something as nebulous as diversity training. And for those deploying games, divining whether their target audience internalized the lesson instead of just becoming good at playing the game is paramount.

What’s your take on enterprise gaming? Is there really any business value to this practice?

Databases moving into the clouds

According to a new report at Forrester, detailed here at EWeek, cloud databases should be paid attention to and be placed in the enterprise database management system strategies. Some companies have already started to do this, such as Microsoft with SQL Server Data Services, and Enterprise DB, the trend is moving a quick pace. It is believed that with improvements made to this software such as improved data security as well as improved performance, along with increased availability, more companies will turn to databases in the clouds in the future.

Tips for Improving Collaboration Within the Enterprise

Peter Burris, a principle analyst for Forrester research reveals some useful tips in this article regarding Web 2.0 technologies in the workplace to foster collaboration. As he points out many businesses understand the need for these technologies in the new enterprise 2.0 workplace, but sill have little understanding of how to execute. Below are five tips that he recommends:

1. Trust matters: The key to collaborative applications is to keep providing information regarding the status of participants.
2. Encourage simple methods: Technology implementation is never automatic, but successfully applications of collaboration technologies inevitably start with a well-articulated set of simple objectives
3. Let change bubble up: The most successful principles for collaboration system design, implementation and operation have emerged from highly decentralized systems.
4. Intercept and guide: “Radical maintenance”, which involves overhauling a system without disrupting it, is a critical competence for any Web 2.0 technology specialist – and must be mastered by IT professionals.
5. Leave your systems open: An open approach affords greater flexibility in use and agility in implementation

Do you have any tips that could be added to this list?