(Rate This Article)
Loading ...Bill Gates: A hell of a nice guy but no IT visionary
By Dan McLean
As he fades into the sunset of IT retirement Bill Gates definitely deserves to be remembered as a man of great philanthropy, rather than the IT visionary that many seem to give him credit for.
As an IT journalist for 15 years, I can’t recall one occasion where I thought Bill Gates said anything truly inspiring about IT. Definitely nothing that most of us who followed the industry didn’t already know. Certainly nothing that was exceedingly insightful – something I would have expected to hear from IT’s most famous founding father. The fact is that Bill was mostly pretty dull and seemingly uninspired when discussing IT. He certainly wasn’t dynamic and hardly the overtly passionate tech nerd that he’d often been portrayed as being. Yet Bill is an IT superstar, albeit duller than a butter knife. Over the years, Bill could pack them in like nobody’s business at keynotes, conventions and many other events happening around the globe. During most of his tech diatribes, however, Bill never really had much to say. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on January 22nd, 2008 by Arun Nithyanandam and filed under Best Practices | 2 Comments »
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! | Technorati
(Rate This Article) Loading ...Can Microsoft speak reliably in the unified communications space?
Would you buy a unified communications solution from Microsoft Corp.?
If the product is anything like the operating system software the company sells, then most definitely not. Unified communications (UC) isn’t something to invest in without some rock-solid guarantees of performance and reliability. There’s no, “we’ll work out the kinks as we go,” with this sort of application. It’s not Windows. It has to work - all the time. There’s nothing more important to a business than its ability to communicate. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on January 22nd, 2008 by Arun Nithyanandam and filed under Best Practices | No Comments »
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! | Technorati
(Rate This Article) Loading ...Private Avaya needs to make some public noise
Upon hearing recently that networking company Avaya Communication is becoming a private company, the thought did occur that perhaps there would finally be an infusion of aggressive competitiveness in what has become a dull, dull company.
Public ownership, among other things, can do that to an organization. Big old companies operate too cautiously, move too slowly towards change, and all too readily accept a decline in status without putting up much of a fight. It’s why, in my opinion, the network communications equipment industry in general has become a wasteland outside of Cisco Systems. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Cisco keeps fighting and has parlayed disaster in the networking equipment business at the turn of the century into \unparalleled dominance. Seems most of the competition - if you want to call them that - weren’t nearly as determined. Most continue to stumble and fumble (think Nortel, 3Com and Enterasys) or they are content to lay low and scurry for the few scraps of business that Cisco doesn’t own or care about. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on January 22nd, 2008 by Arun Nithyanandam and filed under Best Practices | 1 Comment »
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! | Technorati
(8 votes, average: 7.75 out of 10) Loading ...The Anatomy of a Pre-Analysis Cookbook – Part 1: Overview
Arun Nithyanandam -
When you kick start a project, you’ll begin with the discover phase—sometimes also known as the requirements phase. This initial step frequently involves an exhaustive stakeholder analysis. In our experience, this first phase often determines whether the project will be a success or a nightmare. If a project launches without a proper stakeholder analysis, the system’s requirements will not align with the actual needs of the business users.
Asking Relevant Questions
The stakeholder analysis can be a tricky phase of the project. If you ask relevant questions, you will get the answers you need. More importantly, you will over the stakeholders, and identify the relevant requirements.
However, if you don’t ask relevant questions, you will come across as someone who doesn’t understand the stakeholders and their needs. People will perceive you as unsure of yourself. You may even come across as inexperienced. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on January 10th, 2008 by Arun Nithyanandam and filed under Best Practices | No Comments »
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! | Technorati
