Business Technology And Information Systems Analysis

Cloud Adoption

We are currently working with one of the large consulting firms on the topic of cloud adoption strategies. Unlike the technology suppliers, the consulting firms can afford to take a more objective view of the whole thing, and some interesting findings are coming out of this work. Perhaps the most important idea is the notion [...]

Glovia – No Nonsense ERP

I’ve known Glovia for quite some time and it stands out as one of the best suppliers of ERP solutions in the market. I should add that the focus is primarily on manufacturing, but the company does supply its solutions to other industries too. What really drew my attention to them was the fact that [...]

IT Black Swans

I won’t insult your intelligence with an elaborate discussion of how important information systems are and how your organisation is as good as dead if there is a wholesale failure – you know that. Contingency planning should be a part of every CIO’s agenda. The focus tends to be on hardware and the creation of [...]

Cloud Computing minus the Hype

Cloud computing isn’t really a big deal. Instead of deploying computing resources within your organisation you use resources that are hosted somewhere on the internet. By resources I mean processor power, storage, systems software and applications. You decide what is local and what is remote (in the cloud).

Chatter from Salesforce

Salesforce has recently launched its Chatter collaboration and social networking platform. This is an extraordinarily powerful platform for messaging throughout the organisation and unlike many other collaboration platforms it integrates out-of-the-box with core business functions – Customer Relationship Management, Enterprise Resource Planning (Oracle and SAP) and other applications via an API. Obvious functionality such as [...]

Alchemy – getting information from data

Presenting someone with gigabytes of tabulated data is not a kind thing to do. While we think that converting data to information is a deductive process taking place inside our heads, the reality is somewhat different. When the same gigabytes are presented using visual, and specifically graphical representations we tend to see (literally) much more [...]

Waiting for Social Disillusionment

All manias are characterised by irrational exuberance followed by a very bad hangover – and social media is no exception. We are currently in the irrational exuberance phase and I suspect that disillusionment is just around the corner – maybe a year to two years away. Millions of people are spending a good deal of [...]

Cisco Quad

Rating: Very exciting, market leading, integrated collaboration and social networking technology. Advisory: This is a high end enterprise solution to collaboration and social networking needs. Features such as rules-based policy management, fully integrated video and document management integration put this offering ahead of the market. Even voice mail can be accessed from the Quad environment. [...]

Clearvale – free ESN

Organisations can build an Enterprise Social Network for free using Clearvale from Broadvision. It’s very easy to do and for those unfamiliar with ESN it will very quickly demonstrate what is possible. For medium sized organisations or departments within a larger organisation Clearvale may provide a perfectly adequate social networking environment. It is implemented through [...]

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Lifestream

Twitter

Commentary

The social bubble is starting to inflate quite nicely. Everything in IT will soon be prefixed with ‘social’, and legions of ‘social’ start-ups will enter the market. There is no telling how big this bubble will get and when it will burst. All we can say is that the deflation will be sudden and dramatic.

The phoenix that will rise from the ashes of the burst bubble will be networks deployed by large corporations to interface with customers, with other corporations and with employees. Just as the end of the dot com era saw the rise of serious exploitation of the Internet by large organisations, so the same will happen after the social bubble has burst.

Expect to see some whacky behaviour and even more whacky predictions about the paradigm shifting nature of the social explosion. During the dot com bubble there were serious suggestions that people would stop shopping in real shops and that we would order our dishes over the Internet before we went to a restaurant. Social computing will reach an extreme; at which point people will yearn for the water cooler and just having a straightforward chat.

Martin Butler Research

Business Technology Analysis

IT Fashions – Good for the CEO