Category: Comments & opinions

Full-blown digital transformation is a relatively new phenomenon. There’s not a lot of well-documented evidence of how companies rewire their internal and external operations to generate revenue in the digital age. Yet, some companies have an uncanny ability to dominate on the digital front. They introduce innovative technologies that change the game and deliver delightful customer experiences that create unbreakable bonds with customers. How do these talked-about top performers consistently outrun the competition? And, how does your company compare to the best of the best? If I could answer the…

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As Software as a Service (SaaS) ERP becomes more popular dozens of versions are now being offered by vendors. This wide choice is a good thing because, even more than conventional ERP systems, SaaS ERP has to be chosen very carefully to meet the needs of your company. SaaS systems are faster to implement than on-site ERP systems. That is one of their major advantages. But that advantage comes at the cost of greatly limited choices. SaaS isn’t as flexible as an on-premises system because many of the choices for…

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Germany creates a link between privacy enforcement and antitrust. The German federal competition authority has opened an investigation into Facebook FB 0.12% , over what it suspects is “an abusive imposition of unfair conditions on users.” The Bundeskartellamt said Wednesday that Facebook’s terms and conditions, in which users agree to have their data collected for the purposes of ad-targeting, were difficult for those users to understand. “There is considerable doubt as to the admissibility of this procedure, in particular under applicable national data protection law,” the office said. “If there…

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Lightstorm Entertainment strives to push the boundaries of the film industry; with every movie we’ve done, from Titanic toTerminator 2: Judgment Day to Avatar. It’s interesting creatively for us to do things that stray from the norm, and that culture is reflected in the way we refer to our business. To me, there’s no such thing as a “film industry” anymore. Nobody works on film anymore; we certainly don’t. We are, unquestionably, 100 percent digital. Movies like Avatar – which grossed more than $2.7 billion worldwide – simply would not…

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Are you willing to make a decision that will lose your company $16 million a year, damage brand and corporate reputations, and risk the loss of customer confidence? I am pretty sure that most enterprise’s response to that question would be the same – “absolutely not”. However, these are the consequences that unplanned IT downtime can have on any enterprise.   As a marketer and executive, I know first-hand the financial commitment all companies dedicate to building their brands. In today’s economic environment, where users demand 24/7 access to information and…

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Historians of the technology industry observed a pattern that was predictable with regard to new computing platforms. In the early days of a computing segment, like mainframes, minis and desktops, there was a great deal of platform fragmentation. These early computing systems often ran proprietary software and operating systems with little interoperability. Eventually, a standard emerged — Windows. Even though Macs stuck around, their market share stayed well below 3 percent for much of the build-out of the PC era. Here is a visual to show how platforms started fragmented…

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If you’ve been dragging your feet on migrating your company’s email to a cloud service, here’s why it’s time to reconsider. Earlier this month, Gartner reported that cloud email adoption is picking up significant steam in the enterprise. Additionally, the research firm said that those who haven’t yet looked into migrating their internal email to a cloud provider “should question assumptions that public cloud email is not appropriate in their region, size, or industry.” In other words, the benefits of a cloud-operated email system likely outweigh the drawbacks. Gartner reports that 13%…

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CEO says Windows 10 demand isn’t high enough to help HP Inc HP Inc has blamed Windows 10 for a 12 per cent drop in its latest financial revenues to $12.2 billion (£8.76 billion) year-over-year. Dion Weisler, CEO of HP Inc since HP split into two divisions (the other being Hewlett-Packard Enterprise) last year, claimed a lack of demand for Windows 10 products has hit HP’s hardware business. “I still believe [Windows 10 is] a tremendous operating system,” Weisler told investors on conference call this week, transcribed by Seeking Alpha.…

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Application performance management and road trips have a lot more in common than you think. When you’re getting ready for a long drive, you gas up your car, check your tire pressure and plan the most scenic or the most time-efficient route. But there are many things you can’t possibly know or take into account—a sudden accident blocking an off-ramp or a traffic light outage that backs up traffic for miles. User Experience Transformation The same experience can hold true for developers and DevOps teams. You create and test an…

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One of my favorite things to do is to talk to Cisco customers, partners and industry analysts about common trends they are seeing in their business and the overall market. We look at trends similarly to why we conduct analytics, not only to see what is happening now but to also help predict what will happen next. This ability to “see around the corner” helps us be more agile as we adjust data and analytics strategies, and therefore our business. As we head into 2016, today I’d like to share a few…

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