April, 2011

The dirty little secret of data center construction

Much of the data center construction around the globe is being conducted by purveyors of popular websites like Facebook and Google. These heroes of the Information Age are...

Measure your company’s social technology maturity

For something as new and as nebulous as the application of social media to the enterprise, measuring a company's social technology maturity -- and what IT can do about it -- seems like a dicey business. But that is what Forrester Research analyst Nigel Fenwick has intrepidly set out to do with a

NASA takes off with an open government and cloud infrastructure plan

Don't be surprised if NASA's Nebula cloud becomes the model -- and maybe the mother -- of cloud infrastructure in the U.S. NASA is embarking on an ambitious plan to overhaul its existing data center infrastructure to standardize on open...

What does it mean that Wal-Mart is buying social media company Kosmix?

When I read the news that Wal-Mart is buying a small software company specializing in social networking, thoughts swirled. How they swirled! Kosmix upsets the Wal-Mart cosmos. All that stuff about

Cloud service providers urge lawmakers to postpone legislation

Only a science fiction writer might have imagined that consumer technologies like smartphones -- coupled with a cloud computing service like Facebook -- would be dissidents' weapons of choice in toppling regimes, as we have seen these last few months in the Middle East.

Facebook, the...

In the cloud, even custom apps will be a commodity

I'll make this short because God knows you've read enough about cloud computing and its software variation, SaaS. This concerns the cloud and custom apps, in particular the proprietary apps and IT systems...

Multi-tenancy leads to risky development on cloud platforms

Why buy when you can rent?

It's the new credo among savvy spenders everywhere -- IT shops included. More and more companies are renting space on a cloud (Infrastructure as a Service) or paying for what they use of applications hosted on one (Software as a Service). In either situation,...

Are CIO leadership skills moot if the business has you pigeonholed?

Are you lacking in CIO leadership skills, or do you lack CIO leadership qualities because the business has boxed you in, pigeonholed you as the IT guy? The question came up at a private dinner for CIOs, where I was the proverbial insect on the wall. Not in so many words, but it was out there,...

Cloudsourcing and lean methodology tap customer input

Whether your IT organization is thinking about becoming lean or using cloudsourcing techniques, it all boils down to customer input. After all, they're the...