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Making Profits Using API Economy

Giancarlo Succi | May 22, 2013 No Responses

May 222013

How much have you paid for your last home phone? Probably 10 euros, dollars, or whatever is your currency. It is likely that 20 years ago you would have paid a higher amount, even without taking into account the inflation. Still, imagine a world where you are the only phone owner, what would be the value of such phone? Probably zero, or even negative, since it would be a useless device that occupies space in your home. Here we appreciate two concurrent and conflicting phenomena that are at the root also of API Economy. The first is the so-called Network Effect: the phone has a value that depends on the number of users of the …

A Sixth Sense: Can Augmented Reality Make Things Better?

Joseph Feller | May 21, 2013 No Responses

May 212013

There is no doubt that the layering of interactive information over the physical world in real time — aka augmented reality (AR) — has a considerable “wow factor.” Nonetheless, IT decision makers need to take a cold hard look at augmented reality before jumping on this particular bandwagon. There are two key questions that need to be answered. First, can AR applications create real value for your customers, employees, and other stakeholders? Second, can your company overcome the significant challenges facing the relatively young AR community? Over the past few years, the toy manufacturer Lego rolled out interactive augmented reality (AR) kiosks (a monitor and camera) in a number of retail outlets. (You can view one of …

Marketects: Delivering Good Enterprise Architecture

Roger Evernden | Apr 9, 2013 2 Responses

Apr 092013

Marketects: Delivering Good Enterprise Architecture

Good architects also need to be good “marketects”: they must be able to sell and promote their cause as well as publicize their achievements, outcomes, and results. But how do they do this? What tips and guidelines from the world of marketing can architects adopt to their advantage? First of all, what do we mean by “marketecture”? With a cynical hat on, some might argue that marketecture is about selling something that you don’t really need. In a Dilbert cartoon from 2009, the Director of Marketecture says that “it is better to seem good than to be good. A misleading benchmark test can accomplish in minutes what years of good engineering can never do.” In …

IT Dashboards: Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem?

Robert Charette | Mar 26, 2013 4 Responses

Mar 262013

In November 2012, the US Air Force finally decided to cancel its Expeditionary Combat Support System (ECSS) modernization project after spending US $1 billion on it. ECSS was intended to replace more than 240 outdated Air Force logistics computer systems, some over 40 years old, with a single, integrated system. The Air Force deemed the effort critical to the successful modernization of its antiquated and operationally costly logistics infrastructure. However, in April 2012 the Air Force’s comptroller told the US Senate Armed Services Committee, “We’re now approaching seven years since funds were first expended on this system…. I’m personally appalled at the limited capabilities that project has produced relative to that amount of investment.” The Air …

What’s Big Data Got to Do with Privacy?

Rebecca Herold | Mar 12, 2013 No Responses

Mar 122013

Early in 2012 my 12-year-old son ran down to my office after getting home from school and said, “Hey, Mommy, did you know that Walmart can tell when you’re pregnant? And so can Target! Even before anyone else knows! They got a girl in trouble when they sent her dad coupons for baby stuff and congratulated her!” I replied, “That’s pretty incredible, isn’t it?” My son said, “Gee, that’s really creepy. I think you should look into that for your privacy business!” As companies are able to discover things like that about people now more than ever before through analyzing what is called “Big Data,” I’m glad my son recognized this as a privacy concern. …

What Does the Future Work Organization Look Like?

David Coleman | Feb 26, 2013 9 Responses

Feb 262013

What Does the Future Work Organization Look Like?

I don’t think anyone would refute me if I said that we are living in a rapidly changing environment, that stability and security are nice fantasies, and that moving from industrial work to knowledge work has changed the structure of business organizations. Figure 1 shows that communication, collaboration, social technologies, the cloud, and mobility are the factors impinging on business today. Figure 1 — Changing the nature of busines organizations. Add to this the ability of some companies to utilize crowds for microtasks and various new technologies, not only for increased productivity and collaboration, but with the additional ability to change the physical nature of the workplace. If you also incorporate the effects of Gen …

Call for Papers: The Emerging Cloud Ecosystem: Innovative New Services and Business Models

Christine Generali | Dec 19, 2012 No Responses

Dec 192012

Cloud computing, as an IT service delivery model, is advancing at a staggering pace. It is being adopted by a spectrum of stakeholders — individual users, businesses, educational institutions, governments, and community organizations — and is causing a paradigm shift which has huge transformational potential. To successfully and fully embrace the promise of clouds, adopters must of course use one or more of the three foundation cloud services — infrastructure, platform and software/applications. But they must also address factors including security, privacy, user access management, compliance requirements, business continuity and more. Furthermore, they may have to use services from more than one provider, aggregate those services, and also integrate them with their legacy applications/systems. They …

Taking an Adaptive Approach to Improving Business Performance

Andrew Spanyi and Mike Rosen | Nov 5, 2012 1 Response

Nov 052012

Global competition, increasing customer power, and quantum advances in technology have combined to demand a new and more adaptive approach to managing the business. In spite of significant advances in methods to improve business performance, such as TQM, Six Sigma, Lean, BPR, ERP, CRM, SaaS, and the cloud, many organizations continue to struggle in executing improvements to business performance. In many cases, the culprit is a traditional functional view of the business, where organizations develop plans, budgets, and even reward systems mainly in a functional or departmental context, paying little attention to the “critical few” measures of performance that matter to customers and failing to gain clarity on the type of cross-departmental collaboration needed to …

Video in the Enterprise: Does Bandwidth Trump the Benefits?

Curt Hall | Oct 23, 2012 2 Responses

Oct 232012

One of the most important disruptive technologies that businesses can employ today is video. Video can benefit several business activities, including training, corporate communications, collaboration and knowledge sharing, and CRM. In addition, video is not something you are going to have to browbeat your employees to use. In fact, many employees — thanks to the popularity of YouTube and similar consumer video-sharing sites, in conjunction with their rabid obsession with smartphones and tablets — feel quite at home both watching and making videos. And a lot are also quite familiar with turning to consumer video-sharing sites to seek out videos showing them how to do something — whether it’s how to play “Paint It Black” …

Cloud Computing Standards: Talk About Interoperability…

Mitchell Ummel | Oct 9, 2012 No Responses

Oct 092012

The analogy between the evolution of the electric energy industry and cloud computing is oftentimes used, and for good reason. It’s likely the most applicable predictor of where this industry is heading over the next 10-20 years. Although slight regional variances exist, it’s generally the case that I, as a consumer of electric power, can plug in my appliance anywhere in the world and expect it to work efficiently, safely, and reliably. Standards for voltage regulation, plug/outlet design, and circuit protection are mature and widely embraced, and the electric appliance industry can compete, and innovate, on a level playing field for the benefit of consumers worldwide. The clock radio in my office is one of …

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General

Making Profits Using API Economy

A Sixth Sense: Can Augmented Reality Make Things Better?

Marketects: Delivering Good Enterprise Architecture

IT Dashboards: Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem?

What’s Big Data Got to Do with Privacy?

What Does the Future Work Organization Look Like?

Taking an Adaptive Approach to Improving Business Performance

Video in the Enterprise: Does Bandwidth Trump the Benefits?

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