Inside the Briefcase
We are living in the age of the empowered customer. Most likely you’ve heard this before but an inordinate number of these discussions have focused on how these “new age” consumers are impacting retailers. While true, this narrow view fails to recognize the larger impact these consumers are having in other industries such as, you guessed it, insurance.
with Anatoly Belaychuk, ComindwareVolatility of today’s business landscape is unprecedented: it is harder than ever to stay on top and win a lasting competitive advantage. Due to the Digital Disruption, it is now virtually impossible to develop a business model, cast it into the concrete of an ERP system and leverage highly optimized processes for years. Read More >>>
Effective communication is crucial to a successful business relationship. But did you know this same principle should apply to IT professionals and the relationship with their networks? If you take the time, armed with the right tools, to proactively listen to your network, you would be surprised to find that many times the warning signs of underlying problems have been there all along. Your network can be quite the effective communicator when trying to tell you how well the entire service infrastructure is performing – from the applications and service enablers to the servers and database.
Here’s the problem—your organization needs to change. Even the most successful companies realize that “what got you here won’t get you where you want to be.” The challenge for most organizations today is one of transformation. They need new tools, new language, and new frameworks. And it all needs to happen fast.
DevOps (Development + Operations) is defined by Wikipedia as a software method that emphasizes communication, collaboration, integration, automation, and measurement of cooperation between software developers and other IT professionals. In spirit, it is a new movement that seeks to integrate all parts of the software development cycle with actual operations, so they run as a team rather than dis-jointed or individual silos that don’t communicate well with each other.
with Dror Nadler, CellroxAs mobile payments barrel forward like a freight train, the potential consequences of cyber breaches grow in severity. 30 percent of U.S. shoppers already use mobile wallets, and 62 percent of shoppers who don’t use a mobile wallet expect to adopt one in the next year, according to a 2015 report from Interactions marketing group. Read More >>>
June 1st marked the start of hurricane season and tropical storms are top of mind for companies in prime locations. Taking preventative measures that businesses can take to protect important data including accounting paperwork, employee documents and sensitive customer information, should be a priority.
User experience is top of mind these days as companies both large and small are looking to provide the best user experience – regardless of where the user is located or what type of device is being used. At the same time, many organizations are still managing their IT infrastructure silo by silo. They are finding that having a goal of providing outstanding user experience is difficult to deliver when each component in the IT infrastructure is managed as a discrete silo.
Johann Wrede, SAPA recent Customer Experience Index report from Forrester shows companies that outperform competitors in customer experience are more likely to turn customers into repeat customers, and repeat customers into loyal and engaged brand ambassadors. Simply stated? “Customer service is king” is no longer just a marketing tagline, but a mantra that governs how organizations will continue to survive. Read More >>>
Does your organization face competitive or regulatory imperatives that require higher quality big data analysis in ever shorter amounts of time, even as data volumes explode?
Flash will transform your business with better data driven decisions in real-time – Flash is fundamentally changing the data center design, reducing the footprint, power usage and increasing efficiency.
Miguel Valdes Faura, BonitasoftThe truth is that most old-line BPM technologies prevented developers from having the freedom and flexibility they needed to build highly personalized applications. They took a “no code” approach and touted it as a feature while expecting developers to “make do” with stale, generic user interfaces and rigid forms. Read More >>>
In today’s business technology-driven environment, it’s not a matter of “if,” but “when” business will encounter a breach or breakdown in the system. While this is especially true in areas like Tornado Alley, these concerns don’t just apply to tornado season. Natural disasters and extreme weather can unexpectedly hit throughout the year, so it is critical for organizations to approach business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) as a proactive vs. reactive discipline.
So far this year, three large health insurers have disclosed data breaches that affected millions of customers. Social Security numbers, addresses, birthdays, even information about medical conditions, have been stolen for sale to the highest black market bidder. And while the cyber criminals are making money hand over fist, breached companies are losing it.
Aygun Suleymanova, Progress SoftwareWhether a developer is building mobile apps for a small- to medium-sized organization or a multinational enterprise, the apps themselves have to be enterprise-ready. Read More >>>
Daniel Joseph Barry, NapatechIn this interview, Dan Joe Barry, VP Positioning and Chief Evangelist for Napatech, speaks with IT Briefcase about the emerging technology of software acceleration platforms and tools.Read More >>>
Is your organization planning to launch new products and services based on client insight using big data analytics? Are you challenged with the ever-growing volume of unstructured data coming at you? If so, attend this webinar and learn how to move from a world where decisions aren’t made by the highest ranked person in the room, but instead by the most accurate data about your business.
Many companies today struggle to get to grips with their “shadow IT.” Shadow IT refers to applications, devices, and services used within a company but not approved by IT. Sometimes the term is a pejorative, presupposing added risk and cost. It may also be considered a source of future innovation. Most Americans just got an object lesson in shadow IT in the controversy regarding the email server used by the former Secretary of State.
with Sam Ganga, DMIIn this interview, Sam Ganga at DMI speaks with IT Briefcase on the three fastest-growing trends for addressing ecommerce through the mobile web and provide the pros and cons of each. Read More >>>
with Brian Morin, Condusiv TechnologiesOne of the biggest silent killers of SAN performance has nothing to do with the SAN itself, but the number of small, fractured random I/O that overwhelms bandwidth from the SAN as a result a fragmented logical disk. Read More >>>
Data loss is one of the most serious concerns for both individuals and businesses. People who create, modify or enter any type of data into computer systems are aware of the effects of data loss on their work. Depending on the type of data loss that occurred, data recovery may be possible using various types of applications. There are many causes of data loss.
In 2013, Scandinavian research group SINTEF announced that 90 percent of all data ever created was generated during the two previous years. That time frame continues shrink as the rate of data creation increases exponentially. Mobile devices, computers, gaming systems and even your car all produce terabytes and terabytes of data. Under these conditions, every business needs to think seriously about their cloud options.
by Miguel Valdes Faura, BonitasoftThe common thinking has been that developing and implementing a process-based application will be as complicated and disruptive as a custom development. It doesn’t have to be. Here are five steps to ensure success. Read More >>>
Gone are the days where CIOs are only responsible for managing IT and service request fulfillment. As demands have evolved throughout the enterprise, CIOs are being asked to fill two additional roles: Chief Solutions Officer and Chief Alignment Officer. IT leaders are now increasingly relied on to develop and execute quick fixes for company-wide issues, while connecting the enterprise technologically and culturally. With so much to juggle, many are turning to automation technology to ensure no objective gets dropped.
by Chris Unruh, Grant Thornton LLPDuring the past several years, cloud-based business applications and solutions have emerged as the next frontier for the IT function. The cloud has the potential to transform the way companies operate and enable businesses to access world-class software with little upfront cost. Read More >>>
by Weston Morris, UnisysIT organizations today often face a quandary. They need to introduce new technology and develop new services to take on the emerging business challenges confronting their clients. At the same time, they need to maintain, without disruption, the technologies and services that have enabled them to capitalize on existing opportunities. Read More >>>
by David Hald, SMS PASSCODESecurity is part and parcel of an IT admin’s job duties, but it is just one of a long litany of must-do’s that crowd each day. They put the basics in place, including antivirus software, passwords and firewalls, and then turn their attention to the latest priority or malfunction. Read More >>>
You’re out on a bike ride and start to notice you’re losing momentum. You’re pedaling the same, but with each rotation, you aren’t getting as far as you need to keep pace. You see a hill up ahead: what do you do? Any biker knows that you have to shift gears to power through hills. Today’s IT teams are facing a hill – no, a mountain – of work as business demands for custom applications rise. As the backlog of development projects builds, some are learning that it’s time to shift gears.
As business units and IT organizations move to the use of public cloud services, crucial application details often go missing. Some groups might not be particularly concerned by this. After all, as long as your application still performs well, why track the specific hardware used to support it? In the age of service level agreements and shared, multitenant architectures, does it really matter anymore if you know the physical server, storage system or network supporting your application as long as application performance meets users’ service level needs?
Information technology professionals are finding doors wide open to exciting careers that pay very well and may take them anywhere in the world. If you are a certified IT pro with skills using computers and software to manage information, your expertise will be in high demand in careers including…
