OpinionWire

Microsoft has extended its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) with the launch of a cloud offering for the US government. Microsoft BPOS Federal offers increased security and privacy for the public sector and is reportedly the first of its kind. Microsoft was late to get started with cloud computing but ... read more..

With the recent announcement that it is ending its long-standing partnership arrangement with HP, Cisco is flexing its substantial muscle and has highlighted that a product play is still a critical component of its longer-term strategy. Essentially, Cisco does not want to provide HP with roadmap information on competing innovative ... read more..

Oracles Java and middleware strategy following the Sun acquisition produced few surprises. Its strategic Java platform remains WebLogic, while GlassFish remains the Java EE reference implementation for small, departmental projects. Nonetheless, Suns software portfolio includes several gems that will bolster Oracle's software footprint. Ovum believes that little will change for ... read more..

As the age of austerity descends upon the UK public sector, attention is turning to shared services as a means of generating efficiency savings. Many organisations in the sector are considering joining forces to deliver services in order to reduce costs and benefit from economies of scale. Major change could ... read more..

Informatica continues to round out its data integration portfolio after acquiring master data management (MDM) specialist Siperian. The move preceded a strong set of financials for Informatica a 25% increase in software licence revenues in 4Q09 helped to push 2009 revenues up 10% and past the $500 million mark. ... read more..

IBM told delegates attending last weeks annual Lotusphere conference of its plans to regain control of the enterprise collaboration market. The IBM Collaboration Agenda consists of consultative workshops, best practice and industry experts a clear indication that IBMs extensive range of collaboration offerings is becoming too complex for the ... read more..

Aruba recently announced the release of AirWave 7, an upgrade to its network management solution. We are particularly pleased to see that the enhancements include visibility of both fixed and wireless networks in a single user interface, and device management functionality. These capabilities are vital if enterprises are to proactively ... read more..

Capgemini has announced a new Application Lifecycle Services (ALS) line. The newness of this line may not be obvious to clients and prospects; it resembles the old. The messaging around the line needs refining. That said, we believe Capgeminis go-to-market strategy for the line is sound and is adaptable to ... read more..

Last month the governors of London Metropolitan University (LMU) quit over a funding fiasco that saw the university ordered to pay back 36.5 million ($59 million) to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) in overpayments. The resignations came after an independent report by Deloitte highlighted several significant failings ... read more..

The recent release by Microsoft of the Windows 7 OS, and middleware servers Windows Server 2008 R2, Exchange Server 2010, and (soon to go GA) Azure, indicate how critical the cloud is as an underlying strategy for Microsoft. These releases mark only the second time for the company that a ... read more..

As 2009 draws to a close, one cannot help think that it has been a year of what should have been for the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) discipline of IT financial management (and in many respects for its ITIL v3 Service Strategy sibling Service Portfolio Management). This is not only ... read more..

Oracles acquisition of Sun Microsystems for US$7.4 billion has met a stumbling block in the shape of the EU Competition Commission, which has concerns over, of all things, the fate of the MySQL open source database. This is something that doesnt appear to have worried the US DoJ, which approved ... read more..

HP has made a new product announcement for its Data Protector backup and recovery software. Data Protector Notebook Extension provides protection for PC clients such as desktop PCs and laptops to enable organisations to protect data stored outside of the data centre, something not typically included in normal backup procedures. ... read more..

Requirements Management (RM) is one of the key disciplines in software engineering and Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for achieving project success: ensuring that the requirements are captured, understood, and managed. The adoption of Agile processes and methodologies has now reached the mainstream and Agile requirements are created and managed in ... read more..

Interest in desktop virtualisation has seen a steady increase over the past 12 months; according to reports there are now over 500 million business desktops worldwide, and not only that but that desktop virtualisation now accounts for approximately 0.5-1% of the market. This growth was further demonstrated by VMware at ... read more..

Unlicensed software continues to be a significant problem across the globe, amply demonstrated by the recent news of four UK-based companies paying out an overall settlement exceeding UK50,000 to reflect unlicensed use of various software products and to purchase appropriate licences for use going forwards. Costly Lack of Software Licences ... read more..

Microsoft now has one million users of its Dynamics CRM application. Getting the first million was no walkover, but a whole new proposition is needed to get to the next customer milestone, and that proposition is based upon moving beyond CRM and embracing the concept of xRM - Relationship Management ... read more..

That cloud computing is disrupting traditional areas of IT can be taken as a given; the question for the Business Intelligence (BI) market is 'what opportunities and benefits does it offer?' The BI services that can be cloud based can essentially be grouped into three categories: raw infrastructure (server in ... read more..

One of the consequences of all the changes in the enterprise application sector (new architectures and platforms, new lifecycle and upgrade strategies, and new delivery and pricing models) is that the traditional on-premise, licensed application model is being challenged and there is a clear realisation that there are viable alternatives. ... read more..

On 27 July . . . there was a joint announcement by three standards groups - OASIS, OMG, and The Open Group - of a new white paper: 'Navigating the SOA Open Standards Landscape Around Architecture', which can be downloaded freely from the Web sites of each of these organisations. ... read more..

The hacking of Twitter's Google Apps account was an embarrassment waiting to happen; perhaps not to Twitter and perhaps not to Google, but certainly to the Cloud in general. The unfortunate fact that the security breach was caused by poor security implementation from the user rather than by any apparent ... read more..

The UK Government has created the Greening Government ICT Strategy, developed by the UK Government Green ICT Delivery Unit of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) Council. In a report produced by Global Action Plan and commissioned by Cisco, the research identified that 60% of public sector IT managers were unaware ... read more..

Last week provided a rare opportunity to hear the collected thoughts on operational security from some of the county's leading Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs). The Eskenzi CISO roundtable in London on 2 July was the vehicle for a frank exchange of views between security vendors, industry analysts, and CISOs ... read more..

At a recent Vodafone UK enterprise briefing for industry analysts, the company outlined and demonstrated its Vodafone One service. The solution enables organisations to exploit existing infrastructure by deploying a Vodafone supplied IP-PBX on the customer's premises, which is integrated with the Vodafone mobile network and the customer's existing fixed ... read more..

Social software tends to be associated more with social networking, through sites such as Facebook, rather than as a valuable business tool that can provide a cost-effective way for employees to communicate and collaborate. Most Web Content Management (WCM) solutions include the ability to create wikis and blogs and apply ... read more..

Corporate, Social, and Environmental Responsibility (CSER) has become, or is becoming, a significant issue for most medium- to large-sized organisations. The business drivers for 'acting more responsibly' are increasing every day - energy prices are rising, regulatory pressures are multiplying, stakeholders are demanding that enterprises are more socially aware, and ... read more..

Microsoft's Steve Guggenheimer (VP of Microsoft's OEM Division) announced that Windows 7 will be Released To Manufacturing (RTM) in the second half of July this year, and that General Availability (GA) is planned for 22 October 2009. An Operating System Isnt Just for Christmas ... read more..

Two recent announcements from IBM have marked the company's expansion of its vision on cloud computing. Having previously majored on the provision of managed cloud computing environments, the new announcements focus on large organisations that wish to deploy and own their own private clouds in order to optimise the allocation ... read more..

The re-birth of technologies requires more than just a marketing slogan, and while x86 virtualisation and Cloud Computing have grabbed the attention of the IT industry, the long-time workhorse - the mainframe - has seen its popularity begin to increase. CA has coined the phrase 'Mainframe 2.0', and uses May ... read more..

Open Source Software (OSS) has been a topic of much debate lately, and in these cash-strapped times organisations are looking to OSS to provide a cost-effective alternative to the more traditional route of software and support purchases from Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). It is suggested that nearly two-thirds of organisations ... read more..