My Podcast
I was recently interviewed by Peter High of Metis Strategy. We covered several topics that are front and center for me. I enjoyed my conversation with Peter a lot. Here is a link to the podcast. We discussed:

• Cloud Computing
  
• Collaboration (Enterprise 2.0) in a decentralized organization
• Leveraging the digital media environment
• Skills IT professionals need for the future
  
• The future of mobile technologies’ impact on media

I checked out a few other interesting podcasts on the Metis website.

Bubbly
Voice Twitter is becoming big in India and in other countries!

They a monthly fee for users to follow their favorite celebrity.

Here is an article on Mobile Beat.

The Power of Data Analytics
Interesting article on how TaKaDu is leveraging data analytics and data correlation of existing data from water utilities to help identify water leaks.

Link to an article on GreenBeat describing what the company does.

Enterprise 2.0 Conference
The conference agenda is really interesting. I will be on a panel on June 14th - here is the link. It is IBM-centric but I expect a broader discussion on leveraging on-demand collaboration solutions within the Enterprise.

Recorded Future
Interesting article on allthingsd regarding a cool search technology that lays out future events on a Time-line. Cool idea.

Have setup a few alerts. Let us see how it works.

Just realized that I have not posted for over a month and a half ... need to try and post more frequently!

Match-making at the Call Center
Infoword reports that IBM and Assurant Solutions will match Call Center reps with callers using real time analytics. Very clever, especially, if it is well executed!

SAAS is now mainstream
I was first introduced to SAAS (then ASP) when I joined Brassring (now Kenexa) in 2000. We were convinced that it was how Enterprise Software will be delivered in the future. Salesforce.com was leading the way. However, most ASPs grew much slower than anybody anticipated. Profitability was elusive and hard to attain.

I believe and Infoworld just validated that SAAS finally arrived in 2009. There is robust growth and one can find multiple feature rich products in most every functional area. My team integrated many new SAAS products with our PeopleSoft ERP last year. A small business starting does not need a single piece of on-premise application software.

Cool version of Wired Mag on the iPad
I think that the iPad will be big for magazines:
http://blogs.adobe.com/digitalpublishing/2010/02/adobe_wired.html

I really like the interactive Ads. I think they move the user engagement and experience forward.

Cloud Computing

Here is how I defined Cloud Computing in a survey I was filling earlier today:

IT Applications or Infrastructure delivered as a utility from a shared environment. The key attribute of Cloud Computing is that it provides and option to easily and rapidly (not essentially in real-time) provision and de-provision resources based on demand. Cloud Computing completely abstracts IT Infrastructure and application management from a user.

Comments?

(My wife took this picture of the street in the front of our house during the mega-storm last week)

CIO focus in 2010 - Light-weight Services
I agree with the results of the Gartner study reviewed in this Infoworld article. Small, very focused projects are getting prioritized. Our 2010 roadmap is filled with smaller projects.

According to the Gartner survey, the top 10 technology priorities for 2010 are (our top 5 are in bold):

1. virtualization
2. cloud computing
3. "Web 2.0" collaborative technologies
4. networking and VoIP
5. analytics and business intelligence
6. mobile
7. data and document storage and management
8. services and service-oriented architecture
9. security technologies
10. IT management

They do not explicitly mention it, but we have seen an uptick in the adoption of SAAS products that can be deployed quickly. We are more focused on SAAS over SOA.