(1 votes, average: 10 out of 10)
Loading ...Enterprise IT data just needs a good blurb
When Nicholas Carr’s latest book The Big Switch arrived at work today, I felt like I already knew what it was about. I’ve read the early interviews, I’ve heard some of the sound bites. It’s about utility computing, and why he thinks it’s great. Just for fun, though, I did what book buyers (and potential book buyers) always do, which is double-check the inside cover.
There, in less than about 200 words, is the elevator pitch version of Carr’s thesis. “This time, it’s computing that’s turning into a utility,” it reads. “The shift is already remaking the computer industry, bringing in new competitors like Google and Salesforce.com to the fore, and threatening stalwarts like Microsoft and Dell.” By the end of the blurb, you could reasonably pretend to have read the entire book.
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(1 votes, average: 10 out of 10) Loading ...Kaizen and the art of IT management
I thought I had finally been able to put the nightmare behind me. But then, the other night at a work function, someone brought it back: the concept of “Kaizen.”
It’s a simple enough sounding term, and it even has positive connotations, being the Japanese for “improvement.” For me, however, it evokes chills. At my previous employer – one of Canada’s largest magazine publishers and printing firms – Kaizen was embraced with the same religious fervor as Jack Welch’s books and the 50 Best Managed Companies List. We were all taken to a half-day event at a nearby hotel where our president announced the decision to adopt the Kaizen approach and how it would transform our business. Imagine that: a business transformation process that makes no mention of IT.
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(1 votes, average: 10 out of 10) Loading ...The creative class that runs your data centres
There’s nothing like watching two nearly-naked, muscle-bound bald men coiling around each other’s bodies to get you thinking about how innovative Toronto is.
That was the spectacle greeting the business elite of Canada’s largest city last night at the Toronto Board of Trade’s 120th annual gala dinner. They were Cirque Du Soleil performers, and they did their thing while the rest of us ate a fancy dinner in the bowels of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. One balanced his entire body with one hand on the other’s head. Then one wrapped his legs around the other’s neck. Then there was a lot of bending and, well, as a guy sitting next to me said, “I realize it’s not politically correct to say this, but I find this a little . . . eeesh.”
You could say that about the entire event.
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(3 votes, average: 10 out of 10) Loading ...There’s more to Gossip Girl than the gadgets
She says she’ll never tell us who she really is, but there’s no question that the narrator of TV’s Gossip Girl is a sophisticated Web 2.0 user.
One of the benefits of the ongoing writer’s strike is that people like me get to catch up on reruns of all the shows we’ve missed, and for reasons I won’t bother to explain I found myself glued to several episodes of Gossip Girl’s first season. Much has already been made about the fact that the program, which resolves around the lives of a group of wealthy Upper East Side teenagers, is told through the voice of a blogger whose identity is not revealed. Observers have also noted the plethora of cell phones, laptops and other IT gadgetry that is showcased in scene after scene. What may have been overlooked is the profile of the people carrying those gadgets. Perhaps unintentionally, the producers of Gossip Girl may be giving IT managers an early glimpse of what their user base will look like in a few years.
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(1 votes, average: 10 out of 10) Loading ...Behind the next bubble
The term “bubble” has become such a four-letter word in the IT industry that it’s almost a shame to bring it up again, but unless we want history to repeat itself, we have to.
This month’s issue of Harper’s magazine features an essay by Eric Janszen, founder of and president of financial consultancy iTulip Inc. called “The next bubble,” which looks not only at how devastating the over-inflation of assets can be to an economy, but how cyclical it has become.
“That the Internet and housing hyperinflations transpired within a period of 10 years, each creating trillions of dollars in fake wealth, is, I believe, only the beginning,” Janszen writes. “There will and must be many more such booms, for without them the economy of the United States can no longer function. The bubble cycle has replaced the business cycle.” And although Janszen doesn’t spell it out, IT managers may find themselves among the accomplices.
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(4 votes, average: 9 out of 10) Loading ...He’s just not that virtually into you
Once people start using avatars to hook up romantically, it won’t be long before businesses start flirting more seriously with virtual worlds, too.
A Toronto firm called OmniDate is developing technology which will allow users of online dating sites to meet on the Web through virtual versions of themselves, or avatars. In its marketing spiel, the company suggests the hype about Second Life doesn’t address the difficulty of actually installing and running it on an individual machine. It would also save on the time and money associated with actually getting together with someone in an actual coffee shop. At its core, OmniDate is simply offering a more textured way to build and manage a relationship via the Internet. And business people just love new ways to manage relationships more efficiently.
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(1 votes, average: 10 out of 10) Loading ...A lifeline for Lotus
January is a good time to hold a user conference, because there’s not a lot of competition for anyone’s attention. At any other time of year you might not even notice how Lotus is wilting.
IBM’s Lotusphere event this week showcased two major alliances that could boost the fortunes of Big Blue’s collaboration products division, though probably not by much. The first was its joint development with SAP of “Atlantic,” which will tie in the ERP firm’s Business Suite with Lotus Notes. The second was an announcement from Research In Motion that Lotus Connections social networking software will be offered as a free download on the BlackBerry. If you look at it from a convergence perspective, SAP is supplying content and RIM is supplying a distribution channel. Neither partnership is likely to capture a lot of new Lotus customers.
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(1 votes, average: 10 out of 10) Loading ...I call IT as I see it
When we went through a redesign of ComputerWorld Canada last year we decided to call our feature section IT Business. This was in part because a Web site I launched some years ago, ITBusiness.ca, had never had its own print component, and in part because I thought IT Business was a good way to describe what the in-depth stories we write are really about.
The other day, however, my publisher suggested we make a change to ICT Business, because she’d heard someone from an industry association use information and communications technologies to sum up what professionals in corporate enterprises actually use. I resisted the idea without going into too much detail, and being the kind of manager she is, she demonstrated her faith in me by supporting my decision. But maybe it’s worth going into a little more detail now.
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(1 votes, average: 10 out of 10) Loading ...IT, MBAs and ideals
If an MBA doesn’t give IT managers the respect they need from senior executives, they may need to do a lot of soul-searching. And that’s exactly what Rakesh Khurana hopes they’ll do.
Khurana is a professor with Harvard Business School who is currently promoting the book From Higher Aims to Hired Hands, an indictment of the kind of education managers typically receive and how ill-prepared they are to really transform organizations. I haven’t read more than the introduction, but the premise calls into question a lot of the rhetoric IT managers have been hearing about thinking more like their line-of-business counterparts.
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(3 votes, average: 9.33 out of 10) Loading ...Apple IS in the enterprise — if you know where to look
Just once I’d like to see Steve Jobs unveil a hot new product at MacWorld and watch the audience boo.
I actually did hear some boos at MacWorld once, but that was in 1997, when Bill Gates announced a US$150 million cash infusion from Microsoft to help Apple. Ever since that time, from the introduction of the first iMac to this week’s MacBook Air, the popular reaction to Apple’s product launches has become predictable even if the products themselves are not. First, like fashionistas at a runway show, everyone gasps in astonishment. They may not use words like “fabulous,” but they come pretty close. Then follows some nit-picking over what was left out and some dithering over pricing and availability. Then, when you run out of everything else to say, a few people wonder about how well the Apple product might fit in the enterprise.
