What are the applications that IT experts need to be able to function at optimum performance? The ability to streamline aspects of the business into one application is very useful. Here are five applications that help IT professionals do their jobs at peak efficiency.

XenApp by Citrix - When it comes to virtualization and scalability, Citrix and VMWare are the go-to choices for IT gurus. XenApp is an on-demand application delivery solution that can enable Windows applications to be virtualized and managed in the data center and then delivered to any employee, on any device. Citrix is always ahead of the game in terms of compatibility as well, working with original equipment manufacturers to make sure that XenApp and the Citrix Receiver are available as soon as the hottest new device comes out. (Disclosure: Citrix is a ReadWriteWeb sponsor.)

BoxTone - The "Consumerization of IT" has become a nightmare for your tech guy. Everybody is now bringing in their own phones and tablets and wanting the tech department to make them work. It used to be so easy! Hand out BlackBerries to everyone and link them through the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. IT professionals now have to navigate through disparate platforms like Android, iOS, BlackBerry and Windows Phone (who did no help to IT departments by forking away from Windows CE compatibility).

BoxTone is mobile device management software. The software can help IT pros maintain and enforce security on personal and corporate and deploy over-the-air (OTA) updates to phones to patch security holes or set device permissions. It can leverage the best technology across iOS, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone and Nokia and make scaling your workforce into a mobile machine easier.

Chatter - Salesforce.com Chatter is a great way to communicate in or out of the office. For IT professionals, communication on the go is a necessity when managing tickets across the business. Chatter works a lot like a private Twitter channel and is available for iOS, Android and BlackBerry. Chatter allows for file uploads, status updates, analytics dashboards and has notifications when you are not signed in to Chatter itself.

Microsoft Lync - On the topic of communications, Chatter may not be a robust enough solution for enterprise communications. That is where Microsoft and other enterprise communications providers like Cisco and Avaya step in. Lync is Microsoft's unified communications platform that integrates presence, security, chat, video and telephony into one location. Lync can be on-premises or hosted and with service options available from Microsoft, it can be easy to manage for IT professionals stretched for time.

Mozy - Online data backup is one of those things that you did not know you needed until there is a catastrophe at the server level and your company's data is literally melting on the floor at the data center. So, multiple backup options for data are preferable and Mozy is as good as any of them. Mozy can automatically backup data on a set schedule and delivers information to the data center on a 128-bit SSL encryption.

Photo by flaivoloka

While the rest of us grouse that we can't check in at our local haunts, or log on with our Twitter app of choice, or vote a story up or down on Reddit - or even do something a little more directly tied to social or economic productivity - those folks are working brutal hours under intense pressure to get everything back up again.

Yes, someone or some group of people out there was responsible for the decisions or actions - or lack thereof - that led to the latest outage, and they should be held accountable. But every once in a while, it's nice to shift the recrimination generators into idle, and thank the people who get us all back up and running again.

(And while we're at it, say a nice word or two to the folks whose web apps are affected by those outages, and who keep fielding the "Why the hell isn't MyFavoriteTrendyOnlineService.com running?" calls from people who think cloud computing is how the weather service gives such accurate forecasts.)

More Noise to Signal.

And Dell isn't the only RIM-switcher making headlines today, either. Two of the biggest U.S. banks, Bank of America and Citigroup, are seriously considering the iPhone, it's being reported.

Last month, Apple reported that 80% of Fortune 500 companies are testing the iPhone, including Procter & Gamble, General Electric and JPMorgan Chase & Co., the latter of which is also considering Android, says Bloombeg. 

The article also cited an August survey by Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., which found that 74% of U.S. and U.K. companies now let employees use non-Blackberry devices and in the U.S. alone, that number is 83%. Cost and employee preference were the two main reasons for the switch, the poll found.

Cost savings come into play when a company can either partially or entirely eliminate the need for Blackberry servers. In Dell's case, for example, Dell CFO Brian Gladden told the Wall St. Journal that the company will save around 25% in mobile communication costs by moving off of Blackberry.

But for the employees whose Blackberry phones would have to be ripped from their cold, dead hands (as the expression goes), it's not all bad news. According to Bloomberg, Bank of America's 284,000 employees and Citigroup's 258,000 employees would simply have more choice in devices if the companies decide to permit iPhone usage, it wouldn't be a forced switch.

Although the nation has an acting cybersecurity coordinator in former FBI cyber staffer Chris Painter, no permanent appointee has been named in the six months since the President announced his commitment to create and fill this position. Can the White House appropriately and competently address our national needs without a permanent cybersecurity head? In light of our assessment of America's vulnerability to cyber attacks just six months ago, Reitinger's reaction is surprising.

"It is absolutely essential that there be strong, White House involvement in cybersecurity, and there is strong, White House involvement in cybersecurity," he said. He further vouched for the acting coordinator, saying, "The acting cybersecurity coordinator at the White House, Chris Painter, is a bona fide expert in this field, and has a great team of people working for him."

Still, although Reitinger says things are going well now and that short-term issues are being addressed, how much control does the acting coordinator have to over long-term, national IT concerns - especially considering the problematic and essentially political nature of cybersecurity leadership in Washington? Reitinger told Information Week several months ago that he expected the coordinator position to be a fulcrum for cybersecurity at the national level and within the White House. Have his priorities shifted enough that he feels a temporary position in one administration is truly adequate to address the country's needs?

And what of the President's assurance that national cybersecurity would be prioritized with this new position? We've been reporting since April on calls for the President to create a National Office of Cyberspace, and those requests from all corners - including congressional types and think tanks - have not satisfactorily been met.

To quote Information Security editor Michael Mimoso, "All I want for Christmas is a cybersecurity coordinator."

Is President Obama right to ease up on his commitment to national cybersecurity, and is America sufficiently protected by a temporary cybersecurity coordinator, after all? Or are the cyberwonks justified in their disappointment and frustration? Let us know your opinion in the comments.

While the glitch itself was minor and was fixed in a few days, the real concern - at least at Brown - was with how Google handled the situation. Without communicating to the internal IT department, Google shut down the affected accounts, a decision which led to a heated conversation between school officials and the Google account representative.

In the case of the Google Apps glitch, which began on Friday, September 11th, a couple of students notified Brown's Computing and Information Services department (CIS) that they were able to read emails belonging to other students. The CIS department contacted Google on the following day and sent out an email to the 200 students whose mailboxes were in transition, asking them whether or not they were experiencing the same problem. Some were. The affected students could either see entire inboxes belonging to another classmate or, in other cases, saw less than 100 messages that did not belong to them.

In the end, only 22 out of the 200 students were affected, but the fix was not put into place until Tuesday. That means that the students had access to each other's email accounts for three solid days (Saturday, Sunday, Monday) as well as parts of Friday and Tuesday before the accounts were suspended by Google.

Oddly enough, this situation seems to be acceptable, according to Tom, who, reports Brown's daily newspaper, "praised Google for its prompt response." (We don't know about you, but if someone else could read our email for three days, we wouldn't exactly call that "prompt.")

Massive data migrations are no small feat and Google's slip-up in this case is certainly not the first nor the last time that something has gone wrong. Still, Google is notably concerned when problems like this happen. "It was a small hiccup along the way and it's an issue we've taken extremely seriously," said Google's Rajan Sheth.

The Real Problem Wasn't Email, it was Lack of Communication

However, the real issue that concerned the university was the matter of communication between Google and the CIS department. Before fixing the issue on Tuesday, Google suspended the affected accounts, a necessary step that was taken so no more data was improperly shared. What angered the IT director, though, was that the accounts were suspended without first notifying CIS.

"I've spoken very forcefully with the account (executive), my boss, senior administrators at Brown -- including the president. (Google needs) to find a better way to communicate with us," said Tom.

When considering a move to a cloud service, most companies and institutions focus on how the change will affect budgets and the bottom line. They also think about data conversion issues and possible needs for re-training in some cases. However, one of the things that doesn't come up as often is exactly how communication will take place between the business and the company involved. Sure, companies may discuss the procedures (use this form, this phone number) and uptime guarantees, but they can't possibly imagine every scenario and spell out how they want the cloud provider to perform.

No longer can company execs just stroll into the I.T. guy (or gal's) office and cry out "my email is messed up!" Now there are a few more hoops to jump through. And whether it's Google or someone else, the interactions that take place and the way the issues are addressed will be a learning experience on both ends.

In reality, open-source software provides stable solutions, created by people and for people and used by companies of all sizes. Use Firefox? That's open-source software. Google Chrome? It too is based on an open-source code. Ever look up a term on Wikipedia? The site is completely built on user-generated code and content. "In fact," says Allison Randal, Program Chair of OSCON, "chances are you're using a lot more open-source software than you know: on your computer or powering you favorite websites."

Author: Ravit Lichtenberg is the founder and chief strategist at Ustrategy.com -- a boutique consultancy focusing on helping companies succeed. Ravit works with CEOs, marketing groups, and social media managers to craft customer-centric engagement strategies that result in higher customer value, stronger customer community, improved monetization, and higher profitability. Ravit authors a blog at www.ravitlichtenberg.com.

What Is Open Source?

"The ideas behind open source are about freedom," continues Randal, "that people should have certain basic rights in the software that they use, the same as every other part of life. It's about people's rights to create things they're passionate about."

Mozilla's founders, who spawned Firefox, walked away from the ashes of Netscape with a desire to change the Web browsing experience. Drupal and Joomla are content management systems that enable unlimited options in website building and publishing. Remember how difficult it used to be to build your own website? Now building one is free, open to all, flexible, and extendable: anyone with a passion or idea can build for it, and numerous companies are taking Drupal and Joomla and building easy-to-use website templates that anyone can use, no programming needed. Don't want to pay for Microsoft Office? You can use OpenOffice for free -- it will serve most of your needs.

In essence, these projects, developers, and organizations address mature, business-critical issues in better, faster ways. This form of crowd-sourcing enables businesses to use solutions that would otherwise have required a lot more time and/or people to develop at a much higher total cost.

Open Source Is Evolving

You may have heard the phrase, "Open Source is free as in speech, not as in beer." This phrase refers to the notion that while everyone can freely start and contribute to any project, the actual use of open source solutions may still come with a price tag -- often for services and additional product layers that a company bundles with the open code. But for corporations that already spend millions of dollars just to keep the lights on, investing in open source increasingly makes better business sense. For the CIOs and CTOs of these companies, it's not about the price tag of each solution but rather about the total cost of ownership over time, especially in a downturn economy.

In a study conducted by Gartner and reported by Matt Asay at CNET, CIOs reported they have increased investment in open-source software and decreased investment in proprietary software. CIOs reported that by investing in open source they were able to do the following:

• Reduce costs by 87% (while meeting or exceeding expectations),
• Improve quality by 92%,
• Ease integration and customization by 86%,
• Quicken pace of innovation by 82%,
• Improve support by 84%,
• Increase standards compliance by 91%,
• Decrease time to market by 82%.

Michael Fauscette, Group Vice-President of Software Business Solutions at IDC, recently highlighted changes in the adoption of open source. IDC found that as recently as 2007, CIOs were reluctant to adopt social media software for fear of IP infringement and poor support: two mission-critical elements of any enterprise. By 2008, says Fauscette, CIOs reported that they preferred open-source software precisely because of the quality of support it comes with. And as for their fear of IP infringement, that was no longer at the top of the list because of standards and self-policing.

Open source doesn't only serve IT companies, though. It is now being explored for government and health care data management and access. Open-source software, in other words, has moved from the basements of Linkin Park fans to the desks of the largest corporations in the US.

Sound familiar? The evolution of open source may sound a bit like the evolution of another web-related phenomenon, what has become known as Web 2.0 social media and social networking. Like open-source software, social media is about the basic human right to communicate, organize, and maintain control of one's own experiences. And both address the needs of companies to do more at higher quality with less money. Both social media and open-source software involve communities and are fed by content: code in the case of open source, and media content in the case of social media.

But unlike open source, social media has thus far primarily been a consumer play and is only now being explored by enterprises. Living on the Web, social media is also hardware and distribution-channel agnostic: it does not require pre-installation and does not compete with pre-bundled proprietary products. Historically, open source, being hardware dependent, has had greater distribution challenges: unless the software came pre-loaded on your hardware, notes Fauscette, you would rarely seek out alternatives to replace what you already have. Without a channel for hardware, distribution was driven primarily by hard-core tech enthusiasts.

Seeds of Change

Companies that erected insurmountable barriers to protect their source code now realize that the cost of innovation and competition may be just too much compared to that of their competitors that use open-source software. Take Google's Android, an iPhone competitor built on the open-source platform Linux. Android started off as closed-source software but very quickly became an open-source project. Developers can now build applications on top of Android's platform and then use the code for their own Android-like products, just as developers use Firefox code to build their own browsers.

2008 saw another significant milestone: the establishment of the Symbian Foundation to oversee the development of the Symbian operating system as an open-source platform, licensed under the Eclipse Public License (EPL). The Foundation's members include Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, NTT DoCoMo, Texas Instruments, Vodafone, Samsung, LG, and AT&T. With this development, a once highly protected closed-source cell-phone operating system has opened up.

Caleb Sima, Chief Technologist at Hewlett-Packard, calls this "a clear move on Nokia's part to try to catch up to the competition by using open source and the community to help evolve its features to those of smartphones." Companies are now realizing that open-source software is a competitive advantage.

What Open Source Means to Social Media

Open source is the natural platform for fast-evolving social media and social networking. Forget about having to scale the walled gardens of social networks or having to upload, download, and link together multiple applications. With open source, everything is seamless and transparent. Picture a huge festive dinner table, set with dozens of mouth-watering dishes for you and your guests to pick from. You can heap whatever you like on your plate or, better yet, just dab your bread into whatever dish your please, all while seeing what others are putting on their plate and seeing whether they're using a fork or a spoon and hearing the conversation around the table.

But with all of these capabilities and openness, people will face new challenges on the Web. One big challenge will be to make the Web more personal and make it possible to simulate live interaction. One of the most promising companies to address this is Kaltura, maker of the only open-source online video management platform, with a free community platform, now used on over 35,000 websites and soon to be integrated into Wikipedia for user co-creation of rich media content. (Disclaimer: Kaltura is one of my client companies.)

"Extensions like Kaltura make the Web real," says Fauscette. "Video is in fact one of the big things we'll see. This is an opportunity space, and first-mover advantage will be big." For Fauscette, trust is a major sticking point: with the proliferation of networks, friends, followers, and brands online, helping people figure out who and what to trust will be key to making the Web personal.

Whoever tries to control people's relationships will lose. Whoever enables people to create and share experiences that are relevant to them across any website, with anyone, the way they want will win. And open source will create many more winners than losers.

More About Open Source

OSCON is celebrating its 10th year anniversary this coming week in a four-day conference in San Jose, California. In addition to the usual technical tracks, OSCON has added people and business tracks and many free events. You can register for a free pass to the expo hall (yes, free as in beer) and attend the "Birds of a Feather" un-conference, Ignite party, Hackathon, and much more (all free). Check out the list of events.

Great resources online include Open Source Initiative Open Government, Open Data Initiatives, SourceForge (where you can find a list of ongoing projects and downloads), Open Video Alliance, and the excellent short and sweet write-ups by open-source experts such as CNET's Matt Asay.

Oh, and there's always Wikipedia (where smiles are always open).

A company called FaceTime Communications, based in Belmont, California, recently introduced their new inspection and classification technology called "ACE," which simply stands for Application Control Engine. This patented security technology is capable of scanning a network and identifying more than 1400 Web 2.0 applications and more than 50,000 social networks widgets distributed by sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut.

Scanning for rogue applications on the network is nothing new for I.T., but what's interesting about FaceTime's ACE technology is its focus on scanning for the technologies that often fly under I.T.'s radar: web apps.

The Danger of Web 2.0 Behind the Firewall

As we've mentioned before, I.T.'s failure to adapt to the changing needs of their user base, now younger and more digitally savvy than ever before, has led to a lot of self-provisioning of the easy-to-use applications found on the web. These tools can include anything from Facebook groups to standalone apps like the SharePoint-lite team pages found on Google Sites.

Of course, when users become their own I.T. department, they're unknowingly introducing inherent risks into the previously hardened network infrastructure. Just because a web app is easy to operate, that doesn't make it safe and secure for enterprise use. As users upload and share sensitive files through these unapproved backchannels or have business-related conversations through web-based IM chatrooms, they might not only be putting their company's data at risk, they could also be breaking various compliance laws as well. 

The Difficulty of Monitoring Web Apps in the Enterprise

For I.T., the challenge is keeping up with the barrage of new web apps out there and shutting down those that present a threat. In an independent study commissioned by FaceTime Communications, 62% of I.T. respondents said that there were eight or more Internet applications installed on their enterprise networks - a 300% increase over the first study conducted in 2005. More importantly, the respondents noted that about one-third of their users downloaded the applications they wanted to use - regardless of company policy. Those apps were a mix between apps for business and those used for personal reasons.

I.T. has traditionally struggled to shut down many of today's web applications because they are not all strictly browser-based. Knowing that their adoption rate is dependent on behind-the-back installs on company desktops, many of the apps make sure they can't be blocked by a URL signature. The apps may also masquerade themselves as HTTP, FTP, SMTP and Telnet traffic while exhibiting evasive techniques that help them penetrate the company firewall and escape detection by the current crop of Unified Threat Management systems.

With FaceTime's ACE, though, more than 1,400 of these web applications can be identified and even more social networking widgets can be isolated, too. Those apps can be discovered and shut down regardless of the port, protocol, or evasive technique they use. In addition, the ACE software developers kit (SDK) allows third party solution providers the ability to extend their offerings in order to help their customers manage instant messaging, peer-to-peer file sharing, social networking, Web 2.0, voice-over-IP, anonymizers, IPTV, multimedia, games, virtual worlds, and unified communications. 

What This Means for Enterprise 2.0

If FaceTime's ACE or other similar technologies become a mainstay in the enterprise I.T. toolkit, the explosion of Web 2.0 for business use, a trend typically called Enterprise 2.0, may be dealt quite a blow. The only Enterprise 2.0 apps that will succeed given that scenario will be the ones that worked with the I.T. admins from the very beginning to assure them of their safety. The apps reliant on a slew of the company's rule-breaking users for adoption, however, will be out of luck. Perhaps being sneaky may not have been a great business model after all.

While systems and software used to be very "behind the scenes" and often transaction-based, that is the case no longer. Consumers and businesses alike buy differently, consume differently, and recommend differently. Trends such as social networking, video on demand, and e-commerce will continue to force businesses to adapt to keep up with their customers. They cannot rely on systems that take years to implement, and most don't have the budgets to make large investments, at least they won't for the next couple of years.

The growing focus on SaaS, cloud computing, application platforms, etc. are all responses to this growing trend in the market. There will be other solutions in the future for mobile, etc. that we haven't even imagined. They all drive businesses to use systems that they can deploy, change, and retire quickly. In my main job, I remember meeting a venture capitalist who talked about how his firm looks for opportunities in which it sees lots of "wiggling." He couldn't describe what that really meant, or how one gets paid for wiggling. I thought he was a lunatic.

In retrospect, he does make a good point. Things happen quickly on the Internet and in this changing global economy. When a business sees wiggling (or opportunities), either positive or negative, they need agile systems to respond. One-size-fits-all software and packaging are going the way of the VCR. I think this will continue to grow in importance and focus as enterprises evaluate new systems and invest in new technology. What do you think?

Recently, HP and research firm IDC took a look at some of the biggest trends they're seeing in the datacenter. These five hot new trends are having a big impact on computing today and the future of the cloud. But which ones are most important?

1) Blades

Blades will account for 29% of server sales by 2012. This market is growing quickly as customers are realizing the benefits of a bladed infrastructure: that is, space, time, cost and energy savings. Both enterprise and midsize customers are being impacted by this trend. (Source: IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Forecast, 2008Q1)

2) Going Green

Going green is less about being environmentally conscious and more about saving money. CIOs and IT managers are surprised to find that creating an energy-efficient, high-performance data center through power and cooling is much less expensive they they anticipated. The end result of going green is a reduction in overall costs (energy, space requirements, management, etc) which is savings businesses some serious dollars. 

3) Virtualization

By 2011 more than half of customers' workloads will be deployed in virtual machines. With every new advancement in this area, like integrated hypervisors for example, the need to intelligently control the data center is strengthened. Data center managers need to know how to build a unified infrastructure combining both the virtual and physical environments.  (Source: IDC Multiclient Study, Server Virtualization On the Move 2007)

4) Cloud Computing Means Scalability Is a Must

Data is growing at an exponential rate thanks to cloud computing. Large content-rich data, like streaming digital media (e.g. IPTV, video on demand, broadcast, etc.), static digital media (e.g. photo sharing, online music download, etc.), and web content hosting (e-mail, blogs, Web pages, etc.) are having the most impact. Cloud computing companies need solutions that can easily manage multi-petabyte scalability - without disruption.

5) Linux in the Enterprise

Worldwide Linux server shipments have increased by 35% since 2003. Currently, one out of every five servers runs on Linux and the adoption of Linux servers is expected to grow. The adoption rate will increase by almost 8% by 2012  (Source: IDC, Worldwide Quarterly Server Forecast, 2008 Q1)

If you want to learn more about these trends using a real world example, HP's Pentel Case Study makes for a good read. This company was able to reduce their datacenter footprint from 5 full racks to 1 by using a combination of blades, storage, and VMWare virtualization. They were also able to reduce their power and cooling needs. Those efforts led to a savings of over $200,000 in three years in reduced maintenance costs alone. Their I.T. department is more agile, Oracle performs up to 80% faster, and they can deploy a server in minutes. In other words, these trends are just about changing needs, they're also about saving money.

Out of all these trends, which ones are most important? We tend to think that scalability is going to be a big issue going forward, especially with the growth of web apps and their specific infrastructure needs. We've already seen what lack of scalability can do to a service - we almost lost Twitter, for example, as demand outpaced their ability to provide the service. Knowing the intelligent audience of readers we have here at RWW, we're interested in what trends you think are the most important. 

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/five_big_data_center_trends_for_2008.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/five_big_data_center_trends_for_2008.php Trends Thu, 02 Oct 2008 05:31:40 -0800 Sarah Perez New Dev Suite Lets LongJump Work With Other Apps

When LongJump first launched, the PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) model was only just taking off. Since then, we've seen Google launch their App Engine and more services than ever are taking advantage of Amazon's EC2. Today, the Sunnyvale, California-based PaaS provider, LongJump, tries to one-up those big-name sites with the launch of their new LongJump Development Suite, a tool set that helps developers extend the power of LongJump by allowing interoperability with other systems and applications.

While this ease-of-use made LongJump ideal for enterprise I.T. teams looking for fast and easy ways to build and deploy apps, allowing those apps to interoperate with data from other applications and systems was not possible until now.

About The LongJump Development Suite

With the new LongJump Development Suite, an I.T. department can build the app they need, then use the included visual browser-based UI for data and process modeling. Alternately, they could instead choose to hand of the integration of the app with another system or application to a developer (or team of developers). Finding a developer to work with LongJump shouldn't be an issue since the suite provided is a Java-based development environment complete with a plug-in to the Eclipse IDE (Integrated Development Environment), something that's used by 69% of Java developers today. LongJump also provides a set of service integration points using SOAP and RESTful APIs to connect to other external systems.

Why LongJump?

Unlike both Google and Amazon, the focus with LongJump is on application creation, not just the delivery. When you build on Google or Amazon, you still need to know how to build - you need to know code. LongJump is focused on letting anyone build without code. They aren't the only ones thinking this is the next big trend for the web, either. Earlier this year, for example, we covered an app called Iceberg whose aim was to allow anyone to become a developer.

Will this trend take off? For enterprise I.T. organizations, their bottom-line focus is usually money and time. If PaaS offerings like these mean custom apps can be built quickly and easily without needing to hire outside dev teams, there's a good chance for their success. However, they do have to fight with a number of already decent solutions out there. Thanks to the Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 movement, there are already a slew of business applications built and ready to go. These apps might not be perfect but are often they are often "good enough," and that's proven to be a good way to get in the door of the enterprise...just ask Google Docs.

During this transition, it's not "old with the old and in with the new" - several technologies from the prior period of innovation are still important. These include the following:

• Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) - middleware that enables new component apps
• Business Process Management (BPM) - user-driven automation of manual tasks
• Mobile - beyond laptops to cell phones and PDAs
• X Internet - RFID and sensors at the edge the net connects physical objects to the internet

New Trends CIO Should Care About

Keeping in mind that the above trends are not going away anytime soon, CIOs still need to be aware of the upcoming trends that will define the future of enterprise IT. In the "IT everywhere" wave, business technology (BT) is the driving factor. The control of this technology is being shifted away from IT and is increasingly under the control of the business organizations and the users themselves. Simply put, BT is the future of IT. When looking ahead to the future, Forrester recommends CIOs keep the following trends in focus:

1. Technology Populism: Web 2.0 and social networking in the enterprise. Workers are provisioning their own tools, especially when IT can't provide. IT had best look towards integrating Enterprise 2.0 into their organization - if they don't, the end users will simply go find their own apps to use. The risks of ignoring this trend include compromised security, comprised privacy, and poor control of intellectual property. (We discussed this concept in more detail here).
2. The Information Workplace: The information workplace is a term describing a next-gen platform that consists of numerous parts such as unified communications, portals, enterprise content management apps, office productivity apps, collaborative technologies, business intelligence, data warehousing, and more. However, the information workplace isn't about each of these technologies individually, but how they all seamlessly come together as a whole. Today's information workplace is role-based, individualized, and thanks to the Web 2.0 invasion, it's also often "social" and "quick," as Web 2.0 tools tend to be.
3. Dynamic Business Applications: These are component apps that target certain roles but change easily. Over the next five years, IT's goal is to develop enterprise software that adapts to the business and that's capable of evolving as the business grows. These apps are designed with a focus on the people who use them, but are also highly adaptable as the business changes over time.
4. Digital Business Architecture: This includes SOA, unified communications, and virtual computing among other things as a top-level conceptual model for planning the future of both technology and architecture. A digital business architecture means the design of your business is accurately reflected in your technology.
5. IT Ecosystems: By 2012, there will be a shift in the dominant form of IT delivery from buyers self-integrating technology to having outside providers assemble and manage it. Those with the strongest delivery capabilities will lead the way. This trend will also include a shift away from software investments based on ownership to those based on subscription as well as an increase in new IP sourced from open communities.
6. Enterprise Master Data Management: MDM focuses on delivering trusted data throughout the enterprise. Today the focus is on addressing cross-application data use and management while also considering MDM's multiyear and multiphase business capabilities. In 2008, information and knowledge management professional will work on overcoming the organizational, process, and business case challenges to bringing this data to the enterprise.

The most startling number to come out of this recent study - a survey of 260+ I.T. professionals - is that 63% are now expecting social technologies to impact the business world. Even more interesting is that they feel that the impact will be a positive one - only 3% of respondents viewed Web 2.0 negatively.

However, that's not to say they don't have their concerns. They are wary of one thing in particular: 79% are concerned about the risks of unsanctioned use of these tools by employees. Like we mentioned before, "tech populism" occurs when employees go behind I.T.'s back to provision their own tools from the ones freely available on the web. This opens up a whole new way to jeopardize sensitive company data.

I.T. To Lead The Way

To fight this trend, I.T. departments realize that must lead the way for Web 2.0 adoption and act as an enabler and facilitator of Web 2.0 tools. And this is where I.T. still holds the power - 80% of enterprises reported that funding the Web 2.0 deployments remained within the hands of I.T. This is most likely due to the fact that I.T. is still the major source for technological expertise within a company.

This news means that Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 technologies looking to gain a foothold in business, simply appealing to the CIO or one particular department (like Marketing or HR) won't be enough. Tech marketers looking for insights into how to embrace I.T. in order to gain acceptance should check out the Forrester report for more details and suggestions.

Adobe Launches Online Office Suite and New Flash-Enabled Acrobat 9

Back in March, we said that Adobe was slowly building an online empire. This week, that news turned out to be true. Adobe launched their version of an online office suite at Acrobat.com, complete with word processor (Buzzword), web conferencing/whiteboard app (ConnectNow), online file sharing (Share), file storage, (My Files), and PDF converter. To complement this launch, Adobe also announced a brand-new version of Adobe Acrobat, Acrobat 9, the biggest release since the initial one that introduced Acrobat to the world. The remarkable change in this new version is that Adobe is now incorporating Flash into the PDF experience.

Trouble at eBay

"I think [fixed prices] will disappear online, simply because it is possible - cheap and easy - to vary prices online." That was MIT Media Lab's Patti Maes in 1999, at a time when eBay's business was booming and auctions were seen as the future of ecommerce. Flash forward 9 years, and BusinessWeek this week called online auctions a dying breed, Nick Carr is wondering if auctions were a fad. Indeed, the fixed price ("Buy it Now" only) format is beginning to dominate eBay, and the company has taken recent steps push fixed price even harder. But the death knell of the online auction format is not eBay's biggest problem -- no, that would be the small exodus of sellers from the site.

Yahoo! Pushes Search Results Customization to Users

Yahoo!'s SearchMonkey platform got a little more public this week with the unveiling of the Search Gallery -- the platform's official application repository. The gallery has already been open to developers and curious bloggers for a couple of weeks, but Yahoo! is now pushing it to the public at large via a "Customize" drop down menu on all search results. In addition, starting this week developers can share applications via external links even if they haven't yet been approved for inclusion in the official gallery.

6 Great Tools to Save Links for Later

Unfortunately, there just aren't enough hours in the day. This seems to be especially true when you take on a lot of projects. Between blogging, researching, emailing, and real life, reading all of your feeds isn't something we can do all the time. Sometimes, we see something that we'd love to save it for later without cluttering up our bookmarks. Here are 6 tools to get the job done.

See also: RSS Reset: Dump Your Feeds for a Month

SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY

Web Trends

OpenWeb Asia: Opening the Asian Web to the World

Everyone working on the web around the world would like to connect with people in Asia, but it's not easy to do. That dynamic and populous region is often focused inward and it's made inaccessible to outsiders because there is so little information about what goes on there available in the web's dominant language, English. OpenWeb Asia is a new project that aims to change those trends.

See also: C-Shirt: Remixable T-shirts by Mobile Phone and Nico Nico Douga and the Simulation of Real Time (two Japanese web apps that Marshall checked out during his recent trip to Japan)

I.T. 2.0: How Changing Technology is Having Big Impacts on Business

In case you haven't heard yet - the I.T. world is changing. The rise of social computing technologies, generally branded as "Web 2.0" and including things like wikis, blogs, social networking, RSS, and more are slowly making their way into the business world. This new movement is called Enterprise 2.0, and it's no small shift. They're even having a conference about it next week. But the change encompasses more than just the introduction of new, social software into the formerly stodgy business world - it also includes the movement of server software from in-house data centers to the cloud, the rise of a mobile workforce, the rebirth of thin client computing, a self-provisioning user base, and more.

See also: Introducing the Enterprise 2.0 Launch Pad Finalists

The Numbers Are In, Live Video Online Is Blowing Up

Live video broadcasting service Ustream.tv announced this week that live feeds on the company's website and distributed video players got a combined 10 million unique viewers last month. That's a major validation of live streaming video on the web. When YouTube Live launches later this year, this medium is only going to get bigger.

See also: Watch Out TV: YouTube is Taking Over

Survey: 48% of Bank Customers Want Web 2.0 Gadgets

WorkLight, a startup that offers enterprise 2.0 products, recently did a survey among Facebook users to find out their willingness to use Web 2.0 tools for secure banking. The survey was conducted among 1000 Facebook users between the ages of 18-34. The fact that the survey was conducted among Facebook users gives it a bias towards tech-savvy people. However there are some surprising findings.

SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY

That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

In case you haven't heard yet - the I.T. world is changing. The rise of social computing technologies, generally branded as "Web 2.0" and including things like wikis, blogs, social networking, RSS, and more are slowly making their way into the business world. This new movement is called Enterprise 2.0, and it's no small shift. They're even having a conference about it next week. But the change encompasses more than just the introduction of new, social software into the formerly stodgy business world - it also includes the movement of server software from in-house data centers to the cloud, the rise of a mobile workforce, the rebirth of thin client computing, a self-provisioning user base, and more.

This next big shift is on the horizon, but you can see it coming. Today, there still may be plenty of businesses employing "classic geeks" in their I.T. Department, but that's about to change. Don't misunderstand - the world will always need a good engineer, but the I.T. leaders of tomorrow - the ones guiding the business in the use of their computer resources, the ones working with the CEOs to execute the vision and direction via information technology - they will no longer be what we think of as the classic "computer geek." You know the type - the stereotypical introvert, who's more comfortable behind the glow of computer screen than interacting with the rest of the human race. The one who likes to speak in acronyms that only he or she understands. The ones who know how to do everything from a command prompt. These folks will be a dying breed...at least around the office.

Instead, tomorrow's computer "geek" will be a true member of the business team as opposed to the mysterious man behind the curtain who you only notice when something goes wrong. So what does the "new geek" need to know to run tomorrow's I.T. Department? An entirely new skill set, as it turns out. Here's a short list, but feel free to add to it in the comments:

Enterprise 2.0

No, the CEO isn't going to walk up to you and say "Hey, I've been thinking we should deploy some Enterprise 2.0 software 'round here" - those guys never use the same words we do and that isn't about to change. A good I.T. person, though, knows how to interpret "user-speak" and present them with the tools they need even if they didn't know how to ask for them in our language. If anything, they're going to be more likely to say something like: "Sending out an email newsletter seems outdated - I wish there was a better way to communicate with our customers," or "I wish there was an easier way to keep up with the industry news," or "Wow, how many different versions of this documentation is saved on our intranet, anyway?" The old I.T. guy might mumble and turn their head, but the I.T. 2.0 guy knows to say "Blog! RSS! Wikis!" instead.

Still, it's not going to be as simple as just knowing the terminology. Now it's up to you to recommend the platform - will you be maximizing the investment you have in SharePoint, which already includes many Web 2.0 tools, or do you need a more customized solution? If so, whose? Those are the questions the new I.T. guy will need to answer - and yes, they will still need technical skills to do so, but there's a big difference between knowing those answers and knowing how to properly adjust the MTU size in Windows XP.

Cloud Services

I.T. 2.0 means computing moves to the cloud. Where today's businesses are running their servers in-house and behind the firewall, tomorrow's servers will be hosted by someone else. Microsoft, for example, will be offering hosted services for many of their server products from Exchange to BizTalk, SQL to SharePoint, and more. The Microsoft Online Services beta is underway and Bill Gates is talking about a future where millions of servers will live in their data centers.

And that's just one option. Google's coming after the business world, too. At first, it was just a simple offering of an easy-to-use but rapidly evolving web office suite that could be easily deployed with minimal expense, but then they added Google Apps for your domain, complete with admin dashboards and security settings, Google Sites for team collaboration, and Google Web Security for Enterprise. Clearly, they're well aware that there's a niche they can fill with a set of web tools that take advantage of this new always-on computing world.

Microsoft and Google are big names, but it's just scratching the surface of cloud computing. You also have Amazon's Web Services numerous SaaS offerings, and more. The I.T. 2.0 guy will need to know not just what software is best for the company, but whether or not it should run behind the firewall, in the cloud, or a combination of both.

The Mobile Workforce

The new workforce won't be tied down. With near-ubiquitous broadband and a growing employee roster of Gen Y workers, being mobile will be the norm, not the exception. The mobility that used to be reserved for only the well-traveled sales force, will now be available to almost everyone. Most office workers, except for the very bottom-rungs of time-clock punchers will be issued laptops, not desktops - the blessing and the curse of the mobile worker. Work-from-home won't be considered a perk, but a necessity.

The I.T. department, though, will have to adapt their current solutions to fit this new workforce - one that's not always connected to the company network, but surfing unprotected Wi-Fi from their local coffee shop or their own home wireless network. I.T. will need to find ways to push through the security updates and patches their users need, even if they're never remoting in to the company network. I.T. also needs to be more wary of lost and stolen company laptops filled with company data. Many companies are already turning to virtualization to solve this problem. Users will only have the illusion of a personalized desktop - their data will really live on servers instead. Welcome back to thin client computing.

A Self-Provisioning User Base

This new trend, dubbed "Tech Populism" by Forrester Research, is referring to the new user base of digitally savvy workers. As the boomers retire and Gen Y starts to fill in the ranks, I.T. will be dealing with a technologically-smart crowd of young workers who aren't afraid to find their own tools for the job. Intranet site too kludgy? They'll build their own on Google Sites, Microsoft Live Workspace, Basecamp, or any of a number of other similar team collaboration platforms available. File too big for email? They'll upload it to Box.net, Google Docs, Zoho, SkyDrive, or whatever other preferred file-sharing/storage service they're used to using. I.T. guys turning a blind eye to this practice will soon have their necks on the line when it's revealed that confidential data is in the cloud protected only behind the salesperson's password of "FIDO."

So, what's an I.T. guy to do? They can't lock down the whole internet, no matter how hard they try. Instead, I.T. is going to have to know the business - really know the business - and anticipate the needs the company's employees are going to have. Then, the challenge will be to research, locate, and deploy solutions that provide the ease-of-use the employees want, but also the security measures I.T. needs.

Conclusion

With all these changes, the new I.T. person will be very different than they are today. Those that have the skills of an engineer and the knowledge needed to run I.T. 2.0 are going to be superstars, but they also might be rare. Engineers used to the day-to-day technicalities of running a company network won't necessarily find themselves out of job - it's just that their workplace will change. They'll be moving out to the data centers where they'll work to keep the cloud up-and-running. Meanwhile, back at the office, the socially savvy, I.T. "facilitator" of Enterprise 2.0 will be running the show.

"I have to say I can’t agree with you Sarah, Google is clearly empowering operational level employees within an enterprise. In the event that their IT department hasn’t the funding (although given the fact that GApps is free this is a non starter anyway) or the time resource, operational and team level personnel can deploy the broader GoogleApps products to make the most of their collaboration potential. The way I see it, if IT departments were doing their jobs (and some are) there would be no need to be having this discussion. They would be sufficiently user-centric to decide on the best product for their users needs, be it MS, Google or anything else.

In all this discussion around circumventing, or not, corporate IT departments, people seem to have lost sight of the real issue here. Corporate IT’s role is to assess and implement solutions that provide the functionality to the users that those suers require. It isn’t to build empires or create silos. Any success Google has within an enterprise setting (and I’m not going to wade into the argument about whether or not Google apps is having enterprise level success) would seem to be to be a comment on the efficacy of the IT department itself.

For too long CIOs have been technology centric on the one hand and compliance driven on the other. Between cuddling up to the big software vendors and spending time worried about the skins with regards Sarbanes Oxley compliance, they’ve lost site of the fact that their existing offering to the business are lacking.

Rather than finding ways to block their users making individualised and decentralised decisions, they should be partnering with the business units to truly asses their requirements and the best solutions to fulfil their needs."