Category: Comments & opinions

The recent news of layoffs from computing giants provides proof, once again, of an old economic saw. It is not actually big businesses that create jobs, it’s the small and new ones. Our problem is that we’ve a political class (yes, all of it) that doesn’t really quite get this. They would like there to be lots of jobs, of course, but they think that the way to get them is to suck up to – to give privileges to – large extant employers instead of the people who actually…

Read More

What in HELL does ‘hit go’ mean?! Something for the Weekend, Sir? “Sorry to bother you. Are you busy?” Instinctively, I look at my watch. Here we go. Bet you he’s going to ask me to fix something trivial. “Don’t worry, Bill,” I reply. “What’s up?” “The computer web isn’t working.” Ah bless, the guy’s long past retirement age but still hangs in there. In fact, he’s a bit of an entrepreneurial demon. It’s just that he can’t conceptualise computers and can’t handle the terminology. “You mean there’s a problem…

Read More

Splurges $25k to get a seat at the open-source cloud project’s marketing table SAP is preparing to work with arch-rival Oracle on developing open-source software that will benefit both companies’ products. This perplexing state of affairs was announced by SAP on Tuesday when it said it had become a “Corporate Sponsor” of the OpenStack Foundation to the tune of $25,000 a year. Oracle is also a sponsor, as are tens of other companies including Ubuntu, HP, IBM, Cisco, Yahoo!, and more. OpenStack is a project founded by NASA and Rackspace in 2010…

Read More

Microsoft have promised universal apps for Windows Phone, PC and Xbox with the release of Windows 9 Microsoft is planning to introduce the concept of universal apps for multiple devices with Windows 9, with software for the operating system set to work across Windows Phone, PC and Xbox devices. This will mean that a single version of an app will work across all devices, possibly making Windows more inviting to developers who have previously steered clear of working with Microsoft over iOS and Android. The move puts Microsoft ahead of even Apple…

Read More

Customer relationship management (CRM) sounds great on paper. The technology can enable a company to build and improve customer relationships, provide better customer service, boost sales, and automate business analytics using a single, centralized solution. Not every organization that rolls out a CRM system, however, sees rewards. For some businesses, the investment does nothing to streamline processes or maximize revenue but rather results in a waste of time and money. The problems stem not from CRM itself but from poor implementation. According to a 2013 study from Merkle Group, 63…

Read More

Why can’t CIOs and CMOs just get along? Based on my experience, there is one primary reason why their relationship is adversarial: the CIO and CMO can’t agree on who is responsible for what, so they are perpetually trampling on each other’s toes. Our 2014 Digital IQ study identified a strong CIO-CMO partnership as one of the five critical behaviors to maximizing the value from digital technology investments. The majority (70%) of top performers in our study, those companies in the top quartile for revenue growth, profitability, and innovation, had strong relationships…

Read More

Microsoft COO Kevin Turner told an audience at the 2014 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference that economy Windows 8 laptops and tablets are on the way.  It’s no secret that the de facto dominance of the traditional PC — and by extension, that of the Microsoft Windows operating system — has been declining in recent years. Microsoft and its partners got caught sleeping as new tech trends chipped away at their relevance and market share. However, Microsoft COO Kevin Turner revealed at the 2014 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference that Microsoft is…

Read More

Online retailer Amazon has petitioned the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)for an exemption from current aviation rules in order to fly its unmanned drones in American airspace. It is part of Amazon’s plan to deliver items to customers 30 minutes after they hit the “buy” button, a program its CEO Jeff Bezos first revealed to CBS News on “60 Minutes” last December. The aerial delivery service, called Amazon Prime Air, would dispatch a small GPS-equipped robotic helicopter — also known as an unmanned aircraft system, or UAS — to pick up an ordered item…

Read More

Networks of the future may usher in bandwidth-intensive apps that can boost innovation, entrepreneurship and quality of life. What impact do you think fiber networks will have on innovation in the future? As the UK and the Balkans emerge from their wettest winter in over a century, debate is raging over how to respond to such patterns of extreme weather. But what if there was a way to predict floods and send detailed warnings directly to the people in harm’s way? A team of experts in the United States is…

Read More

Today I met an old friend and asked him why is he not active on Facebook and he said he has deleted his account. That got me thinking – off late I have stopped going much on Facebook, and so have lot of my friends…. very infrequent updates and sharing… Is there an underlying trend? I decided to stretch the truth and Google “Facebook is dead”. Some of the most interesting returns of the search query: BusinessInsider – 1 Apr 2014 – The Rich Kids Of Instagram Declare Facebook Is Dead Forbes…

Read More