There's a model that's common within the MBA world that describes the different sorts of competitive forces to which an organisation may find itself subjected. Defined by Harvard Business School's Michael Porter in 1979, his "Five Forces" are, in simple terms: - market rivalry (simple competition from others doing what you do); - client power … Continue reading Porter’s Five Forces (and the news for CIOs)
Category: General
The first phase of our Google project, migrating 550 users across the globe onto the system for email, calendar, contacts and chat, completed last week. The project has run very smoothly so far, and it looks like we are in a good position to move forward into utilising Docs and Sites in the next few … Continue reading Continual improvement
So here we go. The 2010 General election. Something to keep the bookies busy in the run up to the World Cup. Whilst my own voting intentions are already made up (I don't like tax evaders at the best of times, more so when they have the audacity to ask for responsibility for spending HMRC … Continue reading Election 2.0
Inspired by a big screen set up in the Google reception area over in Victoria, here's a fly-by view of the Global office network for which my team and I provide services. Google Earth does continue to become a more and more amazing product... Load up the KMZ file into Earth, and select the folder, … Continue reading Google Earth Fly-By
Yesterday I wrote an article about how bandwidth requirements are getting ever greater. Today, for the first time, I ran over my monthly blog bandwidth allowance. So that's over 100Mb of data transferred this month, all of it text (the images are hosted on Picasa). Of course, in this day and age, almost all of … Continue reading Oh, the irony….
This may sound like the bleedin' obvious to you, but in planning that we have begun to look at refreshing core network infrastructure at work, it is notable that the world seems to be heading for fatter, low-latency data, and that that proves a substantial challenge for corporate network design. In the old days, the … Continue reading Fatter, faster…
Now there's a article title to strike tedium into the hearts of good men... ...anyway, have been looking at refreshing the company's IT policy, especially in light of all the cloud stuff that is going on, and was pointed to Out-Law.com by a chap called Jon on the quite remarkable Aardvark service. The material on … Continue reading IT Security Policies… ZZZzzzz
A face in an article in the Observer business section got me thinking about how long this cloud stuff has been around. Dan Wagner, Web 1.0 pioneer, founder of a successful fashion blogging empire, and the man behind ecommerce engine Venda. (Oh. And possessor of one of the worst bleached hairstyles I have ever seen … Continue reading Cloud memories
This morning saw about 450 people across the globe at Imagination Go Google. The project, which has been running since the beginning of September, has been a truly cross-business affair, involving a team of people spread from Sydney through to Los Angeles. At the outset, the objectives were lofty. Accessible information distributed globally between team … Continue reading Gone
Another impact of the way in which the delivery of information systems is changing is in the way in which IT departments can control the use of technology within organisations. The traditional model was that IT departments provided white lists of approved applications. If the IT department said you could use it, then you could. … Continue reading Blacklisting
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