Companies are no longer afraid of the cloud. Big talk about security and performance issues has dwindled to small voices as enterprises and SMBs alike adopt cloud services to empower their global impact. Big cloud benefits, however — agility, scalability and on-demand access — are the result of a thoughtful, well-planned move from on-site servers to off-site resources. Here are four key tips for a soft cloud landing: Look Inward Before you go anywhere, stop and take a hard look at existing network infrastructure. While cloud services come with the…

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Just because we can invent something that works with a smartphone app doesn’t mean we should. Too many consumer devices are a solution in search of a problem. Every day, a new and incredible consumer technology pops into our lives. But somewhere at the intersection of cool and amazing lies a simple yet powerful truth: Most of today’s gadgets, gizmos and devices are either frivolous or incredibly overpriced. They are destined to go … absolutely nowhere. Nowhere is the evidence more apparent than at the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES), where hype, hyperbole and…

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Only 6% of companies have appointed a Chief Digital Officer to chart a course for digital transformation, according to PwC’s 2015 Chief Digital Officer Study. The problem isn’t the lack of CDOs, but the scarcity of digital leadership. Overhauling an organization for the digital age is a daunting task. This leader must oversee the transition of operations, sales and marketing, systems, and production — along with the internal corporate culture and in some cases the company’s products and services. Some corporations have a CIO or maybe a CMO who is taking charge…

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Microsoft is betting on reinventing itself as a cloud company, and the financial results it released Thursday show that its push is paying off despite an overall decline in revenue. Azure revenue rose 127 percent from a year earlier, and sales of Azure Premium Services like Machine Learning were three times higher during the last quarter of 2015 than in the same period of 2014. (Not counting the effects of currency exchange rates.) The company also bragged that more than one-third of the Fortune 500 is using its Enterprise Mobility…

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Skepticism remains high among chief technology officers that moving their entire enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to the cloud will be of any real benefit, much less reduce complexity. Although this skepticism remains constant, some companies are finding that noncritical components of their ERP systems benefit significantly from moving to the cloud simply because of reduced costs, but in reality, reducing the complexity of managing an ERP system takes more than simply changing the location of the software used to power the ERP system. Historically, ERP systems have remained on…

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