Brian Madden provides some useful insights into the affect of Microsoft’s intention to acquire Softricity. I for one believe this is a really big deal as it will bring virtualization technologies into the mainstream. One of the things that has held virtualization back is the fact that every enterprise has...
I work in desktop out-sourcing, and am feeling increasingly uneasy as I see the rise of web 2.0 companies. The capabilities are increasingly compelling and new concepts like the live clipboard are starting to show how the integration benefits provided by the traditional desktop can be extended to the web. ...
I have Office 2007 running now on my Tablet and Laptop, both running XP, but my desktop machine (2003 server) is not something I would risk putting Office 2007 on yet, mainly because I collaborate with too many people who are on previous versions of Office. At least that was...
Consumerization is a term that was coined by Doug Neal of CSC to describe the fact that enterprise IT is being disrupted by the combination of tech savvy employees who make high levels of personal investment in IT and have access to a whole raft of web 2.0 applications via...
The way you deliver applications to your clients is the fundamental issue of debate in this article. Web client, Server Based Computing, Smart Clients, Thin Client computing, Consolidated Client Architectures are all terms that are used and misused in this context. This article attempts to just cover the key concepts, talk to...
I get very encouraged when I hear IT people worrying about the way people actually work, and even more so when they realise that the IT industry has not taken this issue seriously enough. IT people too often think in terms of features and not in terms of real-world business...
Monad is the next generation of the Windows Shell, I was expecting it to ship in Windows Vista but there seems some doubt about that now. However it is expected to ship as part of Exchange 12. The Exchange team have taken Monad the engine and more importantly the “concept...
and IBM’s vision for its equivalent Office System using OpenOffice.org as the client. I am also interested in tracking integration between Microsoft Office and Domino/Workplace. Stu is my guru in this area. I am off to Redmond next week for 3 days on the Office System v12 and meeting some of the Product Managers on Friday so it will be interesting to compare.
I recently listened to a lecture by Thomas Malone on the “New world of work”, I enjoyed the lecture although the material in it was not too surprising. That said the implications on IT are considerable as the old concept of a single infrastructure for all of an enterprises employees starts to collapse as those employees become a fragmented mix of oursourced, contractors, suppliers, small isolated teams in internal markets etc. Tom describes 4 models for the future of the distributed workplace:
To get a good overview …
This article describes numerous uses for RSS that go beyond the ubiquitous blog. It’s an interesting read, especially because it confines itself to implemented uses, rather than the hundreds of uses we can envision. On a related note I noticed this quote in an article by CRN:
Microsoft partisans imagine a day when business users get realtime pings on their Office desktop software whenever their ERP systems detect inventories below a certain level. Beneath the covers, that simple-looking alert will rely on a confluence of technologies, including Office desktop applications, Microsoft’s planned “Maestro” realtime reporting server and a back-end SharePoint Portal/Excel Server combination.
Decidedly “RSS like” capability although probably not using RSS as the format. The same article goes on to describe some of the conditional alerting that would be enabled by Excel Server:
“You’d set up an Excel model on the desktop, export it to the server, bind it to a [database] or, via Maestro, to an application source,” he said. “The model runs constantly on the server, feeding updated dashboard data via new Office 12 tools or a [business intelligence] tool. Or [it can] send you an e-mail or an instant-messaging or a VoIP call.” Microsoft, …