Applications

A thorough technology trends analysis, identifying upcoming initiatives in the development of technology and assessing their value and relevance, is an important phase when preparing the IT Goal State of an IT Strategic Plan.

Over the next 7 years the typical commodity IT infrastructure1 will be ‘reinvented’ from today’s network of independent servers and storage into a unified computing resource that looks and behaves remarkably like the old mainframe. This new infrastructure will blend the best attributes from each architecture to create a highly agile, robust and cost effective environment that is based on com...

In 2008, corporate databases reached unprecedented sizes. Yet despite the abundance and diversity of data, many organisations remain challenged by Business Intelligence (BI) initiatives. They buy on vendor promise, but many have difficulty fulfilling it. Against this backdrop, and in a confusing post-acquisition market, BI vendors continue to release increasingly sophisticated and capable...

Building a business case for Unified Communications is currently more of an art than a science. Traditional Return on Investment (ROI) models are now inapplicable unless arbitrary values are placed on intangible benefits. However, the difficulty of building a business case for UC does not mean that there is none – just that we need to view (and measure) UC’s benefits in accordance with the sta...

With a growing emphasis on company accountability organisations need to consider the implementation of the appropriate document management systems to facilitate the capture and retrieval of both electronic and hard copy documentation. Also the growth and power of the Internet has presented opportunities for collaboration across communities of interest which are geographically dispersed.

One of the more common mistakes that organisations make in implementing Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is assuming that introducing the concept of services into the architecture and conforming to SOA-related technical industry standards amounts to a sufficient condition for the development of a maintainable software architecture. Getting software design right additionally requires a so...

While wikis are certainly an important new approach to information management, they should not be considered as a replacement for enterprise content management systems (CMS). Instead, wikis should be considered an adjunct to content management, providing added flexibility and collaboration where needed. Understanding the differences between CMS and wikis is vital.

e-Learning technology has evolved substantially over the past two decades, but it is only in the past three years that inroads have been made into matching educational pedagogy (the study of educational practices and the processes of learning) with e-learning. Advances in collaborative solutions coupled with a better understanding of how people learn, have given organisations the opportunity to i...

We live in the age of personalised and mass customisable products, and this has significant implications for the software systems that enable such products or services. If configurability is added to software as an afterthought, the results are not pretty. In contrast, products or services that are personalised and configured based on intelligent interpretation of user feedback constitute a...

BI technology platforms have been available in various guises for over two decades. Indeed, certain BI terms, such as ‘drill down’ have become embedded into business parlance. The technology itself is mature and capable and many organisations have harnessed it to their advantage. However, some of our recent dealings with both IT and business executives reveal an underlying dissatisfa...