Earlier Management
Lawyer: 2e2 customers should act quickly as liquidation looms
Any 2e2 customers that clung on in the hope a buyer could be found for fallen channel giant must act now to minimise disruption to service, a law firm has warned.
More than a week has passed since 2e2's 10 UK subsidiaries were placed in the hands of FTI Consulting, and the administrator seems to have run out of potential buyers …
Big Data versus small data: Unpicking the paradox
NoSQL and Big Data crashed into the ordered world of relational architectures a few years back, thanks to services like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
But while concepts such as key value stores and content-specific stores have certainly enriched our environments, the downside to their arrival is that it has created quite a bit …
2e2 for you: Should zombies be allowed to run NHS IT?
The 2e2 Group finally called in the administrators to its UK ops* late on Monday 28 January, 2013, a month or two after main senior directors were released and replaced on the instructions of owners Hutton Collins.
The IT services firm had recently re-stated a year’s accounts, was rumoured to have been in breach of banking …
Analyst says vendors offer pretend reference customers
Gartner senior research analyst Jarod Greene has alleged vendors sometimes suggest he call reference customers that may not exist.
In a blog post, Greene offers the following three examples of odd things that happen when he asks for customer references:
”I’ve been sent emails from Analyst Relations people that brag about recent …
Microsoft Dell deal would restore PC makers' confidence
Analysis The PC business could experience not one but two seismic events on Monday.
First, the world’s third biggest PC maker is expected to announce a $20bn leveraged buyout, taking it off the stock market and putting it back into private hands.
Twenty-five years after Dell floated, the PC maker’s management would no longer be …
I watched Excel meet 1-2-3, and beat it fair and square
I remember Lotus 1-2-3 very well. It really was as widely used as all the history-of-Lotus stories claim it was. In fact, back around, say, 1984, when almost no software package had a monopoly, Lotus already had its particular niche locked up tightly.
That’s right: WordPerfect was still a serious competitor to Microsoft Word …
Java open-source frameworks 'pose risk' to biz - report
Open-source programming frameworks revolutionised Java development during the last decade, but not enough people know how to use them properly.
That’s according to the CRASH Special Report by CAST that sampled 496 applications with 152 million lines of code and found most apps had been misconfigured. This increased the degree of …
Help us out here: What's the POINT of Microsoft Office 2013?
Analysis It was Verity Stob who identified the key challenge for Microsoft Office upgrades: "Name just ONE feature introduced into Word in the 21st century that the weak-willed upgrader regularly uses," asked the antiquarian.
Fourteen revisions since the first Office that it may not be easy, because spell checking, grammar checking, …
Why did your outsourced IT fall over? Cos you weren't on Twitter
The days of signing off an IT contract then kicking back and scoffing peanuts for the next three years are over.
Executives will have to constantly monitor their outsourcers - even if it means using social networks - if they want to get value for money, according to Gartner analysts in a startling report for 2013.
Companies …
My top tip for Microsoft: Stop charging for Windows Phone 8
Open ... and Shut While Microsoft posted solid numbers for Windows 8, anyone paying attention to Intel's quarterly report can see that the writing is on the wall for desktop computing. Perhaps surprisingly, this is also true of the enterprise, generally not an early mover on technology trends. According to a new Appcelerator survey of enterprise …
Tech titans sell yesterday's idea wrapped in tomorrow's dream
Open ... and Shut News flash: Oracle and SAP are both "cloud washers" who pretend to have sexy, cool technology, but actually are encumbered by legacy systems.
This is the charge that cloud consultant David Linthicum and Deal Architect founder Vinnie Mirchandani level against the two giants, but one wonders why they bother. It's standard …
Microsoftie's tell-all on 'rival-flinging' Ballmer: The politics of disbelief
Analysis A former Microsoft executive has sketched an unflattering portrait of Steve Ballmer that depicts him as a cut-throat Machiavellian schemer, and claimed in his new book that the top man at Redmond has forced out rivals who challenged his authority.
Joachim Kempin, a former head of Microsoft's OEM business, claims chief executive …
Speaking in Tech: 'VCs hate open source because the path to money is longer'
Podcast speaking_in_tech Greg Knieriemen podcast enterprise
This week's enterprise techcast has Neanderthal babies, bets with vice presidents, arguing about taxes ... and even mixes in the odd bit of tech. It doesn't have any guests either, but it hardly needs those, as we have the full complement of the Speaking In Tech crew this …
Big Data about to bottom out, says Gartner
Big Data hype has peaked and adopters are about to enter Gartner’s dread trough of disillusionment, says one of the firm’s analysts, Svetlana Sicular.
Hype about Big Data is certainly prevalent: here at Vulture South the term is often thrown around by vendors who in past years were content to describe their data-crunching …
Tech giants don't invent the future, they package it
Open ... and Shut Enterprise technology vendors have a serious case of "not invented here" syndrome, and it may be challenging the value that they claim to bring to their customers.
After all, none of the big technology trends of the past two decades emerged from the bowels of legacy tech vendors, despite their outsized R&D budgets. Open source? …
Google's Larry Page: MY SECRET TO VAST WEALTH, SUCCESS
Google chief Larry Page has shared the secret to his success: the billionaire search engine nerd reckons companies must make their products TEN times better than their rivals to be successful.
The grinning geek, worth about $20bn, also believes his fellow biz barons should hardly ever think about their opponents when coming up …
Google sinks millions into plush new £1bn London HQ
Google's new digs in Blighty's capital - as widely expected - are being built in Kings Cross, London, the company has confirmed.
The world's biggest ad broker is reportedly sinking £650m into its new home.
The company's UK headquarters are currently in Victoria, but the lease for that building runs out in 2016.
It's been …
Big spike in Euro patents - but 63% were filed from outside Europe
More patents were filed to the European Patent Office (EPO) in 2012 than ever before, said the EPO today. The 258,000 applications filed represent a third record year in a row for the Patent Office and reflect the worldwide push to patent driven by the tech industry.
But the 5.7 perc ent increase in patent applications from 2011 …
Hey HP: You may not rate Autonomy, EDS, but buyers do
Potential buyers are probing Hewlett-Packard over EDS and Autonomy, according to reports.
Bloomberg reports that HP has received an “increase in enquiries” following a recent regulatory filing saying it would dispose of businesses that don’t meet goals.
The Wall St Journal says overtures have come mainly from other US tech …
IBM brains ponder universe, say kids will go nuts for STEAMPUNK
Big Blue wants to show off its ability to chew on Facebook pages and Twitter feeds to predict the next big mainstream fashion: steampunk.
So now you know what your kids will want for presents this year: don't be surprised if they want to suddenly build dirigibles instead of rockets and ask for a steam-powered, gear-driven …
HP maintains seat atop wheezing, spavined PC market
Hewlett-Packard has stayed at the top of the PC industry, fending off competition from Lenovo to remain the biggest PC vendor in the world with 16.2 percent market share. But the industry as a whole is shrinking, and new stats from research firm Gartner confirm the gloomy prognosis from IHS last week.
Dell performed badly, with …
CIOs: Don't listen to tech vendors on ICT skills, listen to US
An alliance of CIOs at some of the biggest companies and organisations operating in Britain has issued a call to action, saying that it's time the government stops listening to technology firms on IT issues and starts paying attention to the people that actually use the technology.
A new report from the Education and Skills …
Forrester: IT spending facing challenges in 2013
The prognosticators have been reading their tea leaves, analyzing entrails, and gazing into their balls to try to figure out what the IT spending picture will look like, and the news from Forrester Research is much the same as El Reg is seeing elsewhere: growth will be a bit slow in the current year, and improving out beyond …
Happy now? Mobiles, cloud, big data now 'a growing security risk'
Innovations in mobile and cloud computing, social technology and the use of "big data" present an emerging risk to organisations' IT security, experts have warned.
The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), which is an EU advisory body, said that those technologies would increasingly provide the platform for " …
Raise a beer: Titans of tech fill out 'Worst CEOs' list
Tech bosses were rapped for drinking beer during conference calls, wearing hoodies in the boardroom and losing huge amounts of money in a round-up of 2012's worst CEOs.
The list was compiled by Professor Sydney Finkelstein of the Tuck School of Business at US Ivy League school Dartmouth College.
Speaking to Bloomberg TV, Prof …
IBM tops chart for churning out patents for the 20TH TIME
It may be arguable whether patents are desirable or over-prescribed in the high tech industry, but there is no doubt that companies use patents as competitive – and anticompetitive – weapons, and therefore they have a huge value. Applying for and receiving lots of patents, then, can be seen as an insurance policy against …
'Not even Santa could save Microsoft's Windows 8'
Open ... and Shut Once upon a time any problem at Microsoft could be magically resolved with a new Windows release. Since Windows Vista, however, that formula hasn't worked. In fact, according to new sales data from NPD Group, it may be getting worse.
In late 2012, departing Microsoft board member Reed Hastings called Microsoft's Surface tablet " …
Tablets to out-sell notebooks this year, reckons tech prophet
Will 2013 be the year that tablets overtake laptops as the most-shipped type of computer tech? Market watcher NPD DisplaySearch certainly thinks so. It now reckons some 240 million tablets ranging in screen size from 5.6 inches to 13.3 will ship during 2013 - almost 16 per cent more than the 207 million notebooks that will ship …
Victory on mobile belongs to Google in 2013
Open ... and Shut It's clear. The way to win in mobile is to solve an exceptionally difficult problem. Apple first did it by streamlining the mobile experience through an integrated OS and app-discovery and installation experience. Google then went a step further and crunched mountains of data to make mobile services breathtakingly powerful. The …
Sinofsky's new blogski: Windows 8 king reborn as management guru
What next for the technology executive who saddled his previous employer with a controversial flagship operating system, polarised management and swiftly left under a cloud? Telling others how to build successful products, of course.
Former Windows chief Steve Sinofsky has launched himself as a product development expert with a …
Open-source attack dog enters Ballmer's inner ring
The head of Microsoft’s research has quietly stepped aside ahead of his retirement next year to join CEO Steve Ballmer's inner circle.
Craig Mundie, a 20-year Microsoft veteran, is now a senior advisor to Ballmer after six years as the company's chief research and strategy officer. Mundie took that role as Microsoft co-founder …
Hey, Apple and Google: Stop trying to wolf the whole mobile pie
Open ... and Shut It's become a truism that the way to win in mobile is with an end-to-end, hardware-to-software-to-cloud strategy. I just wish this were as good for consumers as it seems to be for vendors. If I could get any wish fulfilled for 2013, it would be to have Apple and Google, in particular, go back to doing what they do best - rather …
Chill out, biz barons... your new IT system might not look like the old one
Organisations that wish to update their IT systems and transform their business need to be careful not to be overly prescriptive with suppliers and overlook other important considerations, an expert in resolving IT disputes has said.
Ian Birdsey of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said that organisations often " …
Are your landlines buried in the stone age?
The last few years have seen significant changes in end-user computing. In this workshop we have looked at how there has been a shift from desktop PCs towards notebooks, smartphones have become well established and tablets are on the rise. This has caused some quite fundamental changes in how and where people are able to work. …
Want your social media to swing? First, get the staff onboard
Social networking clearly has the potential to totally change the way we work, especially in large or widely dispersed organisations.
It might actually allow companies to see our natural inclination to share information (the technical term is “gossip”) as a business tool, rather than a drain on company time.
However, more so …
Mark Zuckerberg doesn't know how to use HTML5
Open ... and Shut Even as Facebook dumps HTML5 to embrace native app development, calling its early enthusiasm for HTML5 its "biggest mistake," Sencha, a leading provider of open-source web application frameworks and tools, has not only demonstrated real-world readiness of HTML5, but has actually built a Facebook app that performs better than …
So, you want to get closer to the workers with social media?
We often hear how social networking has the potential to revolutionise the way we communicate and collaborate in business.
People like to gossip, to share information, to argue and to chat, and will use whichever media are available to do so. For proof, we need only consider the inexorable rise of services such as Facebook and …
Mobile devices bring back that old client-server feeling
If you see the phrase “any time, any place, anywhere” in relation to mobile access, and are tempted to point out the language redundancy (any place, anywhere), then you are probably not old enough to remember the birth of client-server in the late '80s and early '90s.
If, however, cheesy music from a Martini ad is now running …
It pays to study the habits of your email users
How many email messages do you receive in the average working day: 20? 30? 50? More? And what volume of email have you accumulated over the past year: half a gig, a gig, two gigs?
Whatever the exact amount, it is safe to say that most of us have to deal with a lot of email traffic and that an increasing proportion of it comes …
Wait, what's that rumble in the storage jungle? Yes, it's Ceph
Open ... and Shut In the open-source world, there are few enablers to success more potent than being distributed within the mainline Linux kernel.
Every open-source company I know aspires to such broad, built-in distribution. Which is one reason why I'm so bullish on the future of Ceph, an open-source, massively scalable distributed storage file …
Email is so last century
Over the course of the past year or two we have started to hear that email is becoming less relevant in this era of social networking.
With websites such as Facebook grabbing the world’s attention and organisations encouraged to communicate with all and sundry via sites such as Twitter and LinkedIn, many are seriously …
Microsoft licence cops kick in TWICE as many customers' doors as rivals
Microsoft audited far more customers on software licensing than its rivals managed during 2012 - and Redmond is expected to turn the screws further over the next two years.
Redmond’s compliance troops swooped on 51 per cent of enterprises and partners polled for the 2012 Software Pricing and Licensing Survey by IDC and sponsored …
