(4 votes, average: 6 out of 10)
Loading ...Redmond on a roll
By Joaquim P. Menezes
When Microsoft announced its fiscal first quarter results on Friday even the trade press was caught up in the headiness of the moment.
“The cash river keeps on flowing” proclaimed one headline. “Microsoft Results Turn Heads” exclaimed another. “Microsoft’s first quarter: A blowout” asserted a third. “Microsoft had Google-like results” declared a fourth.
The narrative in most of these reports was basically the same…that Microsoft should be given credit for its mind-blowing results that has left Wall Street watchers stunned.
A 27 per cent surge in revenues, 32 per cent boost in operating income, record breaking sales of the Halo 3 video games…
“Gobsmacked,” is how one commentator characterized his reaction.
Redmond execs, understandably, are on a roll.
When they articulated their plans this summer to make forays into at Web search, online advertising, Web-based software and video games, many industry observers were skeptical and wondered if the world’s largest software was perhaps spreading itself too thin.
Microsoft’s fiscal first-quarter results, I guess, provide a resounding response.
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(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 10) Loading ...Another BlackBerry distraction
News yesterday that Facebook has signed a deal to put its platform on RIM’s BlackBerries should cause at least a twitch of concern for anyone managing a staff that uses the devices.
The Internet and personal e-mail already pose large enough distractions for workers. Their productivity promises to take another hit with the inclusion of a social networking platform that might very well be the only thing more addictive than the “CrackBerry” itself.
And it’s not as if only teens are the ones glued to Facebook; the firm’s co-founder and vice-president of engineering, Dustin Moskovitz, said that members over 35 are the fastest growing segment of adopters. That means working people — professionals with BlackBerries in their briefcases and purses.
Once again, managers, in conjunction with IT departments, will have to ensure an appropriate usage policy is in place to deal with the latest potential productivity drain. It’s the only way to effectively achieve what they want to in deploying the devices in the first place.
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(3 votes, average: 9 out of 10) Loading ...Microsoft needs a hotter smart phone to manage
It’s an image of the past that might have been: an enterprise employee buys a new PC, brings it to work and asks the IT manager to set it up for them. Not for their home use, for the office. They got to pick out the machine, but they expect the IT manager to worry about its image, the applications and the all the security. Of course it sounds like nonsense. But that’s exactly how smart phones are entering the enterprise today.
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(1 votes, average: 10 out of 10) Loading ...If you want a Popfly, IT managers have to throw the ball
Anyone who refers to their key audience as coneheads deserves to wear the dunce cap.
When he launched Microsoft’s Popfly mashup tool at a Web 2.0 event this week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer used “conehead” to describe the traditional programmer. He didn’t bother coming up with a word for the people at whom Popfly is actually being aimed.
That’s because, for all the make-your-own-app kits that enterprise companies are creating, no one really has a common profile for this kind of customer. It’s someone Web-savvy enough to understand widgets but not experienced at database integration.
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(2 votes, average: 9.5 out of 10) Loading ...Software at your service
By Joaquim P. Menezes -
I’d like to offer a few thoughts on the explosive growth of the software as a service (SaaS) business, but let me segue to that by first sharing an experience from the CIO Assembly event held this summer at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.
A thought-provoking panel discussion on the final day of that conference titled: ‘Proactive CIOs and Knock-Out Technologies’ featured panelists from vastly different backgrounds – Eldon Amoroso, CIO of the London Police Department, Andrew Dillane, CIO of CNC Global and Hao Tien, CIO of Toyota Canada.
Each shared how their organizations were using IT to improve the way they do business and serve customers better. It was an eye-opening presentation.
When it came to the Q&A session, though, an audience member, while congratulating the speakers for the insights they offered, noted that there wasn’t anything new or “knock out” about the technologies they were implementing.
A few moments of embarrassed silence ensued, and then one of the panelists suggested that possibly the title of the discusison should possibly have been “knock out applications of technology.”
Today, he said, what gives an organization a leg up on the competition isn’t its rollout of a “hot” technology (there are relatively few of them out there) but the way the company applies that technology, and maps that application to its key business processes.
Essentially, that’s what industry experts are telling us today.
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(2 votes, average: 10 out of 10) Loading ...It doesn’t have to BEA this way
When a company the size of Oracle buys a company the size of BEA, it’s natural to wonder what will happen to the product line of the company being acquired. In this case, however, there’s less reason for speculation, because Oracle’s recent history tells us everything an IT manager needs to know about how – assuming its US6.7 billion bid goes through – this will all play out.
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(4 votes, average: 6 out of 10) Loading ...Why Oracle is finally going after BEA
If you’re a technology firm and you’re acquired by another company, you must have been doing something right. In BEA’s case, an offer to be acquired by Oracle suggests the company might have been doing things a little too right.
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(4 votes, average: 7.75 out of 10) Loading ...Don’t look to Linus Torvalds for leadership
Linus Torvalds seems to be trying very hard to make the latest Linux kernel update as boring as possible.
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(7 votes, average: 5.86 out of 10) Loading ...Vendor management in Ontario’s new gee-wiz hospital
By Joaquim P. Menezes -
I recently recieved an invite for a media tour of the new - and much publicized - Brampton Civic Hospital in Brampton, Ont. – in particular the hospital’s William Osler Health Care Centre (WOHC).
“Tour Canada’s most advanced ultra-modern hospital two weeks before it opens to the public,” the invitation stated. “Find out how information technology is transforming the future of hospital care.”
Making allowances for the PR overkill, the invite still piqued my interest.
I’m quite curious about this new facility that’s set to be inaugurated in a couple of weeks.
When completed, the 608-bed facility will be largest hospital site in Ontario (some reports say it represents the largest health care infrastructure project of its kind in Canada).
A very broad range of IT systems providers will be delivering various pieces of the hospital’s IT infrastructure.
Very early this year, Siements was awarded a huge contract to deliver a bunch of technologies to the hospital – including MRI, CT, Angio, Nuclear Medicine, Cathlab, Women’s Health, Urology, Radiography, RIS and PACS systems.
Likewise, WOHC purchased the complete Picis CareSuite software suite. Picis software will be used to automate all of WOHC’s high-acuity areas, including its emergency departments, operating rooms and intensive care units.
These are just two examples – the list goes on and on.
For an initiative of this magnitude, vendor management is likely to be one of the biggest challenges confronting the hospital’s IT department and those overseeing the rollout of all these technologies at the facility.
A couple of years ago, I remember a conversation I had with Linda Weaver, chief technology officer at Smart Systems for Health Agency (SSHA), Ontario about the massive vendor-management issues she confronted and had to resolve.
SSHA was formed to provide a common IT infrastructure and services to Ontario’s many disparate healthcare providers – a mandate that required the Agency to harness technologies from a broad range of vendors.
“We thought that if we made a strong definition of what the vendors were to do, they would all play nice,” Weaver said.
It didn’t take long for her to realize this was a very naïve view of the world.
“Rather than being collaborative, it started out as quite combative,” Weaver recalled. “When you get six or seven big vendors in the room they all want to outplay everybody else. We literally spent all of our time refereeing, because the systems had to be fully integrated in order to work.”
Weaver had worked on large projects before, though nothing of this size. She soon resolved that SSHA would have to take a tough line with its major vendors.
“We got the whole suite of them in a room and we were very direct with them about what it was we were trying to achieve and what our expectations of them were,” she explained.
“We told them that no vendor was going to be the lead player on this objective. There would be many lead players at any given time, and the work must be done collaboratively. Everyone had to agree to play together and to disclose information on interfaces and other things to each other. We essentially told them, if you don’t want to play, tell us now because we will find somebody else.”
I believe there’s a valuable lesson there on the tricky art of vendor management.
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(3 votes, average: 8.67 out of 10) Loading ...Google boxes the rest of us in
It doesn’t take a genius to realize that you could build an addition onto your data centre by stuffing some equipment in a separate container. It just takes a genius to secure the intellectual property for it.
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