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The meeting is the staple of corporate life. The whole day revolves around when a meeting will be, who will be there and what needs to be discussed. Yet, is this rote practice may have become counter-productive in today's world of the always on, always connected workplace.

Google's enterprise vision is to leverage mobility and the cloud to change the fundamental way people work. Workforce productivity used to be about how you can optimize individual output. Take all those individuals, put their output together and have a meeting to sort it all out. Google thinks that by putting all that functionality into a cloud environment, workers can use whatever device they want and always be working as a group towards on the mission. A faster, more secure, more cost efficient workplace will be the result.

Forrester released two reports on cloud-based e-mail this week: one on selecting a provider, and another on migrating to the cloud.

Although Forrester doesn't recommend any specific providers, the firm does cite three areas to consider when comparing providers.

For the migration report, Forrester looked at the lessons learned by major companies that have moved to the cloud. For example, GlaxoSmithKline moved about 90,000 users to Microsoft Online.

The global recession, the consumerization of IT, the great cloud migration and other factors are changing the role of the CIO. Past failures of enterprise technology to live up to its promises and IT's lack of agility caused by legacy technology have decreased the influence of the CIO, explained R "Ray" Wang in a piece for Forbes last year.

Now in a new paper he has written for his own firm, Wang is exploring the future of the role that the CIO plays. He comes to the table with considerable insights. Wang is a global traveler who meets with CIOs on a constant basis in his role as principal analyst and CEO of Constellation Research, an independent firm with a key focus on the transitions the enterprise is experiencing.