Future of the Desktop

From IT Pro Windows Blue is the codename for Microsoft's first major upgrade to the Windows 8 desktop operating system. The launch of Blue will mark a change in strategy for Microsoft. Instead of releasing new editions of Windows after lengthy development cycles, going forward Redmond is expected to refresh its OS ... read more..

From Techworld Hewlett-Packard is barely holding on to the top spot in the laptop and desktop market, but hopes a renewed vigour regarding product design will help reverse the fortunes of its PC business. The company is standardising the design and features in its laptops and tablets to help customers identify its ... read more..

From InformationWeek NCAA basketball players aren't the only ones who've been sprinting for the last week; Microsoft gossips have been running the fast break too. Between a copy of Windows Blue, the much-rumoured Windows 8 update, leaking to the internet and Redmond finally acknowledging that the project exists, Microsoft-related speculation has ... read more..

From CIO London's Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust has taken the radical decision to deploy Microsoft's Windows 8 on USB sticks after deciding against the expense of buying replacement laptops. The UK's largest NHS trust trialled Windows to Go last summer during the London 2012 Olympics, allowing several hundred staff to work ... read more..

Delphix Virtual Database Provides Benefits for Agile DevelopmentDelphix, a venture founded in 2008 by ex-EMC employees, launched its virtualised database to market in 2010. The Delphix Agile Data Platform is designed to appeal to the agile development community whose pace of working is faster than traditional development processes. Agile developers ... read more..

Big Data Creates Demand for Analytics SkillsThe emergence of big data promises to create IT jobs, with business intelligence (BI) and analytics expertise the key drivers. As big data increasingly becomes part of corporate IT strategies and infrastructure, organisations will be on the lookout for specialist analytics skills to unlock ... read more..

mobilising desktop applications The abundance of smartphones on the market, and our need for greater convenience and flexibility at work means that, for many organisations, enabling enterprise mobility is now firmly at the top of their agenda. David Akka, UK MD at Magic Software, looks beyond the user interface and ... read more..

The Mint Hotel, Manchester, 6 July 2011Pressures remain on IT budgets and will do so for the foreseeable future it is time for organisations to think more strategically about the role and impact of technology to deliver true business transformation with improvements to the bottom line the current steady ... read more..

7 July 2011 Download the presentations Introduction (141KB PDF) Ian Jones, NCC Managing data in the era of the cloud (5.4MB PDF) Gareth Fraser-King, Head of Global Technical Enablement Symantec and Cloud ... read more..

Management StrategyBigger, smaller or non-existent? How will the IT department look in 2020? At the launch of this year's CI0 50, the UK's top IT chiefs considered whether the IT department will be a very different beast in a decade's time, or even existFollow this link ... read more..

NCC's Quarterly Members Conference, 28 June 2011 The Trades Union Congress, London Download the presentations Cloud Strategy (4.2MB PDF) Steven Heeney, IBM Cloud Computing Strategist, IBM UK VDI - Technology roadmap (6.2MB PDF) ... read more..

desktop virtualisation Desktop virtualisation (VDI) is a key enabler helping smart businesses move forward and become future-proof. Fergus Murphy, head of client marketing, Dell Large Enterprise, EMEA, discusses considerations for desktop virtualisation and how it could be a solution that saves the CIO in this era of mobility. The static ... read more..

future of the desktop New desktop approaches, such as virtual desktops, present exciting options for improved service delivery but require a change in mindset to really work. Paul Burke, director of products at Centrix Software, provides a thought-provoking insight Is desktop virtualisation the answer? While the shift from a physical to a web-centric ... read more..

VDI - case study For Keystone, securing the continuity of our business and key applications is essential. Having survived the 2005 Buncefield oil depot fire (our headquarters were next door), we wanted to enhance our disaster recovery strategy and so looked at how our ICT infrastructure could improve business continuity, ... read more..

tomorrows technology today I was at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas this January and I am pretty sure I saw the first inklings of what the hardware that will define business computing five or so years from now will look like. This may seem strange to the ... read more..

NCC Guidelines Volume 1 Number 1, June 2011 ... read more..

Mint Hotel, Manchester, 30th March 2011 The question was. has vendor hype devalued the promise of unified communications and caused confusion with the move to cloud computing? The conference had a good mix of delegates across the sectoral divide approx 35% public sector and 65% across all verticals of ... read more..

BI Technology and Industry Trends The demands on business responsiveness and operational speed and flexibility for enterprises competing in today's economically challenging environment makes BI a necessity, rather than a luxury. At a time when survival depends on visibility into operations and making the right decisions, it's clear why BI ... read more..

CMS is the hot topic for 2011Ovum participated in Danish-headquartered J Boye's inaugural European CMS Expert Group in London in February 2011. This non-competitive community of practice intends to draw together the lessons and best practices around content management systems (CMSs), particularly their deployment, to enable organizations to get the ... read more..

virtual desktop infrastructure If you were a fly on the wall at any IT departments strategy planning meeting for 2011, chances are that virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) will be on the agenda. While the financial arguments rage (quite correctly) about the costs and benefits, it is the good old foot ... read more..

cloud computing All businesses who are thinking about embracing the cloud as their core IT service delivery route quite rightly should fully understand the risks as well as the well-documented rewards The main concerns centre around service reliability, accessibility and security of data stored in the cloud. Here, Mark Seemann, ... read more..

Break up the IT organization at your peril Recent surveys by Accenture and McKinsey have highlighted changing patterns in enterprise IT management models, as well as a growing gap between organizations that are developing strategically differentiated IT capabilities and those that treat IT merely as a support service. Whatever the ... read more..

IT innovation Over the past year, William Hill has revolutionised its online sports book by automating the pricing of sports markets, allowing it to release more markets on more games than any of its traditional competitors. If you go on to the William Hill website and look at prices for ... read more..

From Silicon According to Tim Ferguson from Silicon, the office has only changed superficially over the last 30 years. Yes we have PCs instead of typewriters, email instead of the printed memo and a lack of ashtrays, but the way employees interact and spend their working day hasnt changed so ... read more..

The latest NCC Members Advisory Board (MAB) in July tackled the thorny issue of the future of the IT department. With cloud computing viewed by many as a viable approach to reducing operational costs whilst maintaining service levels, will the IT department still be needed? The event was chaired by ... read more..

virtual desktop infrastructureVDI is being adopted by companies, both large and small, to improve the experience of the user. Mark Bradley, consultant at GlassHouse Technologies (UK), explores the issues that need to be considered before embarking on the VDI journey.VDI is like any technology when implemented badly it will ... read more..

Members can download the full PDF of Guideline 337 Over 20 years with IT at the heart of business, organisations have consolidated around large, fixed facilities where functions and business processes could be co-located. This model, predicated on the efficiency of centralised controls is now being rendered obsolete by ... read more..

There is no doubt that technology will provide a major boost for businesses across the country as they begin to emerge from the recession during 2010. Research shows that firms that have harnessed the power of technology have coped much better with the downturn. In the year ahead, as ... read more..

virtualisationDesktop virtualisation has been the hottest topic dominating technology headlines this year. Analyst firm, Gartner, says the worldwide hosted virtual desktop (HVD) market will accelerate through 2013 to reach 49 million units, up from more than 500,000 units in 2009. Worldwide HVD revenue will grow from about $1.3 billion to ... read more..

tomorrows technology todayGary Cornell in his latest column explores the pros and cons of this increasingly popular strategic approach.Theres a computer somewhere with resources you need. How do you do it remotely? Personally, and for many years now, I have depended on Microsofts remote desktop. This is a technology that ... read more..