Information System

Should small business owners be jumping into the realm of cloud computing? More than likely your small business can benefit from one or more of the cloud services. Cloud computing provides the resources and flexibility small business owners need to build a business and compete in a highly competitive market. Still, jumping in without thinking strategically about the steps your business will take could lead to wasted resources, so read on for the basics you need to know.

Google has already rolled out its fiber-optic technology for residents in specific areas of Kansas City – on both sides of the state line. High-speed Internet and TV services have come to many of the city’s “fiberhoods” – a neighborhood which has pre-registered for Google’s network in order to get its service.

The fiber has been installed in twelve areas of Kansas City, Kansas and in two areas of Kansas City, Missouri. The installation is in progress in many more areas of the Kansas City metropolitan.

Early this morning, I was one of two guests on the eZ Publish Show. The purpose of the episode was to discuss the future of content management system. I was joined by host Ivo Lukač of Netgen, and fellow guest Apoorv Durga from Real Story Group.

"The last thing you want your IT department to be is a joke because you waited too long to make changes. The easiest thing in the world to do is to play it safe, but it's probably not the best strategy for your professional development or the bottom line of your organization. You have to push new technologies that are going to propel your company forward or you risk being the IT equivalent of a company that waited too long to move to the next generation of technology."

- Ron Miller, "What your IT department could learn from Sony's disruption", CITEworld, May 17, 2013.

All this talk about CXM being DOA has got me thinking about the age old question when it comes to CMS – or software in general for that matter.  Should you try to build the world into your software, or focus on specific capabilities and integrate for the rest?

"All of this means that it might be time to rethink what we need from content management in a mobile context, and if it's the same as what we needed in a client-server one. The challenge is figuring out what your needs truly are in this brave new world, and what they are going to be a year from now. Are you one of the companies that truly requires command and control, or is your priority content access on any device at any time?"

- Ron Miller, Author and Editor, "Mobile disruption blows up content management", FierceContentManagement, October 15, 2012

A few days ago, I received an early copy of a press release announcing the launch of Digital Clarity Group (DCG). DCG is an advisory and analyst company geared toward helping business leaders navigate "digital transformation" in their organizations. To the best of my knowledge, I have never recommend a particular consulting or analyst company on any of my blogs. I'd like to set new precedence and tell you why I think if you're a business leader you should consider hiring analysts from DCG to help you and your company face the upcoming technological challenges that have just started to surface.

"On the other hand, the U.S. workforce is now 20-odd years into a decline in expertise in science, technology, engineering and math...If you include statistical analysis in that skill set, the decline potentially sets the stage for a perfect storm in self-service IT, where overconfident but underskilled end users run amok in business systems, draw bad conclusions from randomly mashed-up data or corrupt IT's once-pristine data stores."

-  Tracy Mayor, Self-service IT: Are users up for the task?, ComputerWorld, January 9, 2012

There’s a sea change going on – a quiet revolution in the way we work as teams. Successful virtual teams, without question, have been on the forefront of this change. But co-located teams are also beginning to reap the benefits of a new way of working.

When Meetings Ruled the Day

To decode the secret, let’s start by examining a simple concept that traditionally has been critical to teams:  meetings.

Want to take control of the unstructured information that overwhelms your office? Looking to automate business processes and improve management of your corporate intellectual property? Are you unsure of how to choose the right Workflow and BPM provider? If your organization would like to gain substantial improvements in business processes, while reducing paper costs, here are seven tips to help you select the solution that will help you achieve your goals and get a quick return-on-investment (ROI).

1. Proven ROI