What today's top IT decision makers want to know more about

CIO Magazine recently released the results of their Top 10 IT Technologies being researched by top technology decision makers poll - #1 on the list: Cloud Computing.

Has your organization taken the first steps to adopting this new technology? NOW is the time to take action. Join us this November at the Cloud Computing & Virtualization Summit and find out if the Cloud is right for your business and what you need to do to implement this new technology.

Get the knowledge and insights you need to make the decision to transition to the Cloud from leading experts from Intel, TransUnion, IBM, Amazon Web Services and more. Hear first hand how your peers were able to prove the value of the Cloud to their entire enterprise, complete the transition, and measure results.

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IT Leadership Forum Speaker Profile: Jerry Luftman, Professor, Stevens Institute of Technology

Jerry Luftman
Professor
Stevens Institute of Technology, School of Management

Dr. Luftman is a Distinguished Professor at Stevens Institute of Technology, School of Management and the Associate Dean of Stevens’ Information Systems programs. In this capacity, Luftman manages and conducts projects, research, and executive programs about business-IT alignment. Among his many clients are IBM, U.S. government federal agencies, CitiGroup, Merck, AT&T, Lucent, and Prudential. He is the founder of Stevens graduate IS programs, which is recognized as one of the largest in the world. Prior to his work at Stevens, Dr. Luftman worked at IBM as a program manager at the Advanced Business Institute, where he played a significant role in defining and introducing IBM’s Management Consulting Group. He has had success as a CIO, Management Consultant, and academic.

His framework for assessing strategic alignment maturity is fundamental in helping clients achieve the management, technology and business process changes required to achieve improved IT-business integration. He has served on the SIM Executive Board for over ten years and was the NJ Chapter President. Dr. Luftman has authored or co-authored over a dozen books.

Don't miss Jerry's opening session Leadership Through IT at the IT Leadership Forum this November 2-4 in Phoenix, AZ!

Are CIOs Turning to MSPs for Competitive Advantage?

This latest post on CIO discusses how IBM's Daniel Rabbitt believes that "with the right provider, a medium-sized business can enjoy the same service levels as a Fortune 500 company, without the costs of building and maintaining an in-house solution."

According to research from Nemertes Research's 2009 Spring Benchmark 60 percent of participants are planning on increasing their managed services in 2009 and beyond. Some of the reasoning behind this is falling budgets, lack of specialized expertise, shrinking staff, and a bigger demand to support more complex applications.

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?

IBM is Bringing Business Networking Closer with Bluehouse

This post on ComputerWorld discusses how IBM has released Bluehouse, which merges social networking features with business collaboration tools. At first, Bluehouse will be free during the initial beta period, after testing has ends the SaaS product will be subject to subscription pricing, which has not been determined yet.

Like Facebook, Bluehouse will combined many collaboration tools such as instant messaging, document sharing, profiles, and tools to build business networking opportunities. One thing that will be different from Facebook is that Bluehouse has management features to help ensure privacy, and this is a feature that businesses have been looking for. Sean Poulley, vice president of IBM's online collaboration services seems to think that the current economic situation will encourage consumers to adopt SaaS with its subscription model. What are your thoughts?

Smart phone is now main focus at Nokia

Nokia recently decided to drop its work with enterprise email and work with partners such as Microsoft, Cisco, and IBM to focus on collaboration between smart phones and enterprise platforms. The plan was mapped out at EWeek.

Niklas Savander, Nokia's executive vice president for services and software, had this to say abou the new focus:

"Together with them, we will use our expertise in devices, as well as the combined channel footprint and customer base, to deliver a range of unbeatable end-to-end offerings for business."

Enterprise Email is Interesting Again

Early this morning I came across this post from the Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog in which Bill Pray lists 5 reasons why the email market and enterprise messaging is getting interesting again. Here’s a summary of the reasons:

1. Choice – Microsoft and IBM had long dominated this market, but Google, Zimbra, Yahoo!, Cisco, Oracle, and Novell are all playing catch-up to these industry giants. Greater choice will foster more innovation and lower prices.
2. SaaS – Google, Yahoo!, and Cisco are all software as a service offerings for email, and that keeps them interesting. Microsoft and IBM should soon be unveiling something similar to compete with these three companies.
3. Social Software – Social media and software is making email more interesting by providing new ways to collaborate within bigger platforms and networks.
4. Mashups – There are several solutions out there that serves as email aggregators: Zenbe, Orgoo, and Fuser are just a small list of solutions that offer this feature.
5. Legal Decisions – Courts are still deciding and defining the legal status of email used within the enterprise between users. Courts will continue to add complexity to email usage.

New Collaboration Software for Blackberry

And just when you thought that Blackberry could handle no more web 2.0 apps, there it goes breaking barriers again. This latest article in InformationWeek details this latest announcement, and how WebSphere and Lotus Connections have long wanting to bring business applications to enterprise users on blackberry; it was just a matter of time.

Portals are available through IBM Websphere software, which enables users to build websites. Calendar applications offered through IBM and Domino enable users to effectively collaborate through their smart phones.

William Campbell, the manager for computing services at Standard Life mentions:

"Lotus Software on BlackBerry is critical to our business as it allows Standard Life to enable better collaboration across the world at any time. We have taken the BlackBerry way beyond e-mail, adding a high level of rich functionality resulting in what our employees call 'the laptop in your pocket.'"

These applications are expected to be released later this week. Is this the way of the future for enterprise users?

Google’s Cloud: Is the Enterprise Truly Ready?

Google is often seen as a fierce competitor to IBM and Microsoft since it has seen a surge in numbers of adoption of Google Apps, but its enterprise cloud structure isn’t quite where it should be yet. Searching the blogosphere, I came across this article from eWeek, in which Dave Rosenberg, CEO of MuleSource, shares that he is rather unimpressed with Google’s cloud, commenting that just because something is hosted it doesn’t make it a truly shared infrastructure.

The difference here between Google and other software is that Google’s services are delivered through a web browser, whereas other companies offer traditional software and servers that must be installed by the client. Dave Rosenberg mentions:

"We're seeing a lot of people who are using our software or other software between external systems, but the idea that we're all moving to the cloud is still probably five years away."

Dave believes that there are certain reasons why the enterprise is slow to move into the “cloud”.

1. SAAS providers like Salesforce.com keep customers locked into their own technology, thus defeating the purpose of SOA.
2. The Google Apps engine is written in only one language, Python. If there was more language support, adoption from the enterprise would come much sooner.

Rosenberg’s solution is that one of the 3 big vendors IBM, Sun or Hewlett-Packard must build huge datacenters to kick-start the future of cloud infrastructure in the enterprise. Do you think that step will truly help mold the use of the “cloud” in the enterprise?

Mashups will create huge market

According to this article at Read Write Web, mashups will be a $700 million business by 2013.

According to Forrester, this is the definition of a mashup: "custom applications that combine multiple, disparate data sources into something new and unique."

One of the reasons that mashups will become a vital part of the future is that simple platforms such as Yahoo Pipes and other programs have allowed mashups to be created by consumers who have little or no knowledge when it comes to programming them.

Forrester also makes the assumption that mashups will hit their high point between the years of 2009-2010, and eventually fold in to IT departments by 2013. At this point, the major software manufacturers (examples: IBM and Microsoft) should have assumed most of their productions elements.

Organizations must increase their Web 2.0 awareness and capabilities now to prepare for the storm of innovation to come."

Enterprise Second Life

It’s about time IBM announced it would develop Second Life capabilities in a corporate setting. This article in Information Age goes into detail about their new enterprise-ready launch. IBM will release several beta versions before deciding to offer this solution to the enterprise.

IBM must realize that Second Life within organizations are used for different purposes, specifically as a collaboration tool between teams and for teleconferencing. Other distinct attributes that IBM must not overlook are security settings, since this solution will come into contact with IT.

The mere fact that IBM is hosting this service shows us that we are constantly aiming to seek new ways to share information within organizations. When will Microsoft release a similar enterprise solution? How long will it take the corporate world to adopt this technology?

New Service for Social Networking and the Business

According to Information Technology News, IBM has announced a new service for organizations that will help them utilize social networking and web 2.0 in their businesses. The Enterprise Adaptability services will provide guidelines on how to judge the return on investment for social media, social media analysis, and a few other tools to help judge the effects of Enterprise 2.0. Lotus Software and FileNet as well as IBM Global Business Services' Human Capital Management is what is used to power this service.

Mashups in the Air!

Finally, an application that will allow employees to populate a webpage with services that they feel are useful to the context to their jobs has arrived! The latest article on InformationWeek highlights the release of IBM’s Lotus Mashup Builder, which allows users to build their own mashups on a webpage and share it with the rest of the organization.

IBM has always been an innovator in introducing Web 2.0 tools in the Enterprise, but I think this application takes home the trophy. Employees can embed useful applications like a Google search bar, a Wikipedia page, or any other useful tool. The next step in this process is getting IT folks to understand the business value of mashups in order to include these webpages within a corporate profile. But that is another conversation in itself…

What else is great about this Mashup Builder is that it can track vital information such as who is building/sharing the mashups, the services that are being used, and a lot more. This will definitely show tech laggards that Web 2.0 is here to stay.

IBM seems to be the leader in the mashup biz for now, but I’m sure other giants will soon follow. I have a good feeling about this one…

IBM in 2008

The outdated face-to-face meetings with employees will soon be a thing of the past. IBM is rarely seen as an innovator, unlike Google, but the spotlight has definitely put turned around with its plan to roll out Web 2.0 technologies in the upcoming year. The latest article in eWeek shines a light all of these technologies, including IBM Metaverse, which is there virtual reality software.

Mike Ackerbauer, innovation manager for collaboration development at IBM shares his enthusiasm with the future IBM’s future release:

"We'll go beyond showing the flat two-dimensional presentation. Right now the business value is that I can do a presentation in the Metaverse and see all of my team together."

IBM is going beyond Second Life in their attempts to give “business meetings” a new feel. Along with their virtual reality technology IBM also plans to release new mashup services that include employee profiles from their internal Blue Pages directory, graphs that show real time locations of employees, and a relationship chart that shows who works with who and for whom.

In terms of taking Enterprise 2.0 to the next level in 2008, IBM seems to be on the right path. What updates on Web 2.0 applications can we look forward to from your company in the new year?