Published by admin on 20 Aug 2008
By ZDNet‘s Larry Dignan — There’s a brewing backlash among software customers as big vendors raise their support and maintenance prices. Dennis Howlett has captured an emerging backlash among SAP customers over an enhanced support and its costs. Oracle is doing the same drill. And Mary Jo Foley detailed a “proactive” support offering that will likely cost more–not that Microsoft would [...]
Published by admin on 17 Aug 2008
Source: IT Business Edge
By Ann All on August 7, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Who hasn’t been persuaded to try something new with the “everybody’s doing it” line? Most folks have fallen for some variation of this at least once in their lives, and some people succumb to it repeatedly. It’s often employed to lure us to test something we may not be quite ready to handle (i.e. smoking, sex, water skiing). While some of us are put off permanently when these initial experiences disappoint, others later grow quite fond of some of these things.
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Published by admin on 15 Aug 2008
James Taylor
smartenoughsystems.com
Ann All had a post on Agile development brings IT, business together that had the great phrase “application development 2.0″. In the article she mentioned some very worthy objectives for this 2.0 version of application development. Here they are, paraphrased slightly.
* Encourage close collaboration between developers and end users
* Involve users in quality assurance processes
* Don’t use traditional programming languages
* Stress simplicity
* Emphasize frequent releases
* Users, not developers, should determine new features
I will come back to the bit about “Use dynamic scripting languages like Ruby, Python and Perl” in a moment. Back to the list.
I am struck by the inherent contradiction between this list and traditional development technologies – code, to be blunt. How can we expect close collaboration between developers and end users if the developers are using a language (Java, C#, Perl) that the end users cannot read? How can users do quality assurance on code they can’t read? Perhaps users can be the drivers for new features, but wouldn’t it be better if they could actually so something about the features they want? How frequent can releases be if the code must go through the usual QA/test/deploy sequence?
Published by admin on 15 Aug 2008
When it comes to IT employment, money isn’t everything. That is, if you believe a recent survey by staffing company Computer People.
According to an IT Pro item about the survey, nine out of 10 IT professionals said they wanted a job that was interesting and challenged them. Three-quarters of respondents also said they liked being [...]
Published by admin on 15 Aug 2008
Where will the next Silicon Valley be located? North Carolina’s Research Triangle? Massachusetts’ Route 128 corridor?
It may be Bangalore or another area of India. India is growing an impressive pool of engineers involved with R&D, says a new report by consulting company Zinnov. It puts the number at 250,000, second only to Silicon Valley, according [...]
Published by admin on 14 Aug 2008
Last month, I wrote about Gartner analyst Linda Cohen’s contention that companies employ IT outsourcing to help prepare themselves for mergers. Makes sense to me, as getting an outside party to take over some of your IT operations should free companies to concentrate on broader business strategies and may help identify areas for post-merger cost [...]
Published by admin on 10 Aug 2008
I’m so tired… tired of waiting… tired of waiting for you… Oh… sorry… I’m just sitting here singing to myself as I wait on hold for the reservation agent to pick up. I might as well do something productive… like write a post about waiting.
I know, we all have to wait. Every day we wait for the next available agent; we wait in traffic; we wait at the airport; we wait for meetings; we wait at the bank, the hospital, the checkout lane, the lunch counter, the post office, the doctor, etc… etc… etc… It’s not unreasonable to estimate that the average person spends between 30 to 60 minutes of every day waiting. If that estimate is true for you, over the course of your life, you will spend more than 2 full years waiting. As one of the earliest FedEx ads said, “Waiting is frustrating, demoralizing, agonizing, aggravating, annoying, time consuming, and incredibly expensive.”
Published by admin on 09 Aug 2008
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Source: Ventana Research | Priority: Aligning IT & Business Goals | Topic: Sales and Marketing |
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Published by admin on 09 Aug 2008
Last month I wrote about the financial services industry’s use of leading-edge technologies in its contact centers, resulting in better-than-average customer satisfaction levels. Without the right people and processes to back it up, however, technology isn’t a cure-all in the contact center.
Published by admin on 09 Aug 2008
Source: IT Business Edge
Buying technology in many ways isn’t so different from buying other goods and services. We consumers tend to be lured — at least initially — by low price. But we generally won’t stick with something unless it meets — or hopefully exceeds — our expectations.
After some trial-and-error, we often find that the option that is neither the least nor the most expensive tends to be the one that does the trick. Those who shop with only price in mind most likely end up disappointed.