Paralysis from Business Information Overload

Our brains are made up of special cells called nerve cells. A nerve cell has a bulb-like cell body attached to a long nerve fiber, which is like a wire, and it actually carries very tiny electrical signals. These signals are the information that tell us what we feel, what we think, what we see, what we touch. They also tell our bodies how to move and how to function. All this information is carried by nerve fibers to and from our brains. There is so much activity going on as we process, think, reflect and analyze information. Everything we see, smell, hear, taste and feel is collected and processed to navigate us through our lives. Our world is a virtual database that feeds our brain and is analyzed by our very own intelligence.

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Top Trends in Cloud Innovation

The number of users is the most trusted currency in the cloud. You know that if people pay for a service, then it’s providing something of value. And it gives you an opportunity to understand how people are using the software, see trends, gather benchmark information and turn this into advice and best practices in cloud solutions. This is something we’ve already done with our cloud solutions, and we have created innovative service offerings around best-practice co-innovated with customers and partners, such as social selling, collaborative onboarding, and learning.

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Turning a Product or Service into a Solution: the Value Add of a Reseller

There is quite a bit of chatter on the web and among IT resellers about how opportunities to serve business customers are diminishing, yet business adoption of cloud computing, managed services, and mobile technologies is growing tremendously. It seems that use of technology is increasing, but the opportunity for “traditional” IT resellers and channel partners to make money by selling IT-related products and services is diminishing. This is not new, and is simply a finer form of the problem that has been revealing itself for years. In order to provide value, suppliers must provide businesses with solutions to business problems rather than just trying to sell them products and services with a hefty profit margin.

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The Productivity Paradox: Accounting for Returns on IT Investments

There has always been somewhat of a struggle between the IT department and “management”, much of the difficulty existing with the need to demonstrate clear returns on investments for IT purchases. Unfortunately, expenditures in information technology are often the result of short-term views of long-standing problems, applying “solutions” that do not fully address the requirement or which do not deliver the productivity or performance gains expected, particularly in a dynamic and rapidly changing business environment. The assumption is that a wise investment in information technology will result with improved profitability and performance. [But} demonstrating this on paper is not always easily accomplished.

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Security and Users: Change is the Only Constant

Managing user accounts and access to business IT assets is challenging, particularly as cloud and social computing models introduce new wrinkles in security and identity management. Information has become “mobile” along with the users accessing it, yet management of user behavior is even more complicated that trying to manage a digital resource.

If you look at the history of security breaches, you’ll find that many of them started with a user making a mistake – like losing a laptop or clicking on a phishing email, downloading bad software, or forgetting to report an employee termination to the IT dept – something which inadvertently created a vulnerability that could be exploited. It’s tough to stop breaches because there are so many possible ways for them to happen.

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How To Use Technology To Overcome Today’s Top CFO Challenges

In a data-driven organization, the person with the most reliable data and the clearest view of the facts is likely to have a positive impact on desired outcomes. Strategic decisions require more than just being persuasive; credibility is established with sound data and analysis. This means that the CFO is often in the best position to exert meaningful influence on strategic decisions.

But if the CFO cannot access timely and accurate financial reports and is juggling too many competing priorities, the ability to impact outcomes and contribute to strategic decisions can be too easily compromised.

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We Were Once That Kid: Curious and Analytical

Although you’re now a grown up adult, you probably remember what your life was like when you were a child. I am referring to elementary school ages. We all can look back on what we were like then –somewhat naïve children. Imagine if you could go back in time and speak to yourself when you were that kid. What would you say to yourself? What advice would you give yourself knowing what you know now?

More specifically, what counsel or warnings would offer that would better prepare yourself to leverage analytics, big data and quantitative methods to help organizations improve their performance? More importantly, what would you say to yourself that would lead to a more fulfilling career and job prospects than you have now?

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The Great Process Debate: Business vs. IT

So we’ve all probably heard the questions, either from direct or indirect customers, either straightforwardly or in a round-about way. Who’s making us do this? How is this benefiting my team? Is BPM even applicable to this project? Is BPM an IT or a Business methodology?

If you’re not a direct practitioner of BPM within an organization, then it is often hard to understand the value of the methodology. I’ve even been a part of projects within which the team members felt that BPM was being imposed upon them, almost as an administrative task or check-the-box, stifling their progress and affecting their timelines.
Who’s making us do this? The BPM bullet had to have been shot from one side or the other…IT or the Business; because of course this couldn’t benefit both, and their priorities are rarely aligned.

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IT Security and Engaging Users to Reduce Vulnerability

There is a lot of discussion going on about security in the cloud. With numerous advancements in technologies of various sorts intended to secure our information and identities on the Web, how is it that security continues to be a growing problem? The answer is in the Big Data the Web collects (read about the Internet of Things – IoT), the large silos of data now handily available in the cloud, and users who continue to provide access for all sorts of bad guys and malicious attackers simply due to not understanding that they – the users – remain as the biggest vulnerability of all. It is educating this user and finding a way to get them to recognize their potential as a critical element in enhancing system security and reducing vulnerability that has become the larger challenge.

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