Webinar: New Decade, New Portal

Webinar: New Decade, New Portal

In this webinar, Paul Fremantle, CTO of WSO2, will be explaining the benefits of the Gadget approach to portals, and also showing how you can get started with building effective portals fast. Tune in to find out about the best portal for the next decade.

Starts: Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 09:00 AM; Ends: 10:00 AM (PST)
Presenter: Paul Fremantle
Register Now it's free!

Don't Make Conan's Mistake

Don't Make Conan's Mistake - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review

So what's in your best interest? How can you avoid making Conan's mistake?

Stay in your role because you are gaining experiences that will help you achieve your long-term career objectives, or because you think it is the job you can get at the moment, or because it's fun — but you don't stay in your job because of some potential future rewards that may or may not materialize.

No organization can make reasonable promises of future placement — you're setting yourself up for disappointment trusting an organization to honor that agreement. In fact, that's essentially today's career deal.

I've had a similar discussion recently during a gathering of friends and those who were there might remember my stance being exactly this. If I have anything more to add to this great post in HBR, it would be that; every time you think about someone else's dream, you take time away from thinking about yours. So allocate time carefully.

Always think about your dream and consider everything that surround you, including your employer, your peers and the cards life has dealt you in general as tools to realize this dream. Trust me, you will be a very satisfied individual no matter what the present situation is, if you do so.

Gartner's Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users, 2010 and Beyond

Highlights from the report are;

• By 2012, 20% percent of businesses will have no ownership of IT assets. Fueled by technological developments in 2009, such as virtualization and cloud computing, there’s a movement toward decreased IT hardware assets and more ownership of hardware by third parties.
• By 2012, India-based IT companies will represent 20% of cloud service providers in the market. Gartner attributes this to companies leveraging their market positions and R&D efforts in cloud computing, resulting in cloud-enabled outsourcing options.
• By 2012, Facebook will lead the pack in developing the distributed, interoperable social Web through Facebook Connect and similar mechanisms. The interoperability will be critical to survival of other social networks.
• Other social networks (including Twitter) will continue to develop with focus on greater adoption and specialization. However, they will all revolve around Facebook.
• By 2014, building on server vitalization and desktop power management as savings in energy costs, more organizations will be driven by the need to be responsible for carbon dioxide emissions and will include carbon costs in business cases. Vendors will have to provide carbon lifecycle statistics for their products.
• In 2012, 60% of a new PCs total life greenhouse gas emissions will have occurred before the user first turns it on. In its lifetime, a typical PC consumes 10 times its own weight in fossil fuels, but around 80% of a PC's total energy usage occurs during production and transportation. Buyers will be paying more attention to eco labels.
• Online marketing by 2015 will control more than US$ 250 billion in Internet marketing spending worldwide.
• By 2014, mobile and Internet technology will help over 3 billion of the world's adults to electronically transact. Emerging economies will see increase in mobile and Internet adoption through 2014. Worldwide mobile penetration rate will get to 90%.
• By 2013, mobile phones will replace PCs as the most common device for Web access. A piece of advice: optimize your site for the smaller-screen formats.
  

Read the complete report at Gartner >>

2010 and Cloud Stocks

Is 2010 Another Great Year for Cloud Stocks? | AMR Research - Supply Chain Management Experts

Today, cloud applications represent a small percent of software spend. In the Piper Jaffray study, it’s 5.7%. This is expected to grow to 13.5% of total spend over the next five years. Personally, I think that figure is too conservative.

For now, 72% of respondents are leaning toward best-of-breed vendors for cloud applications. That said, though, when asked to select the tech vendor that would be a “material part of your organization’s cloud-computing plans,” Microsoft earned top billing with 65% of the vote, followed by Oracle (61%), VMware (55%), Google (53%), and salesforce.com (52%).

If you’re curious about SAP’s ranking, only 11% see the ERP leader as a key cloud vendor. The relatively low response placed the company 16th on the list, trailing RIM, Dell, Red Hat, Amazon.com, IBM, Sun, EMC, Apple, Concur, and Yahoo.

WSO2 Gadget Server, a Technical Briefing

WSO2 Gadget Server v1.0 Technical Briefing

View more documents from WSO2.

Gartner Acquires Burton Group

Gartner Acquires Burton Group

STAMFORD, Conn., January 5, 2010 —    Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT), the leading provider of research and analysis on the global information technology industry, today announced that, on December 30, 2009, it acquired Burton Group, Inc. for approximately $56 million in cash. Burton Group is a leading research and advisory services firm that focuses on providing practical, technically in-depth advice to front-line IT professionals. The firm has approximately 41 research analysts, 40 sales and client service associates, and projected 2009 revenue of $30 million.