May 2013
1 post
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To Innovate is to Differentiate. To Differentiate...
Part of your Cloud Adoption thinking should be ‘Innovation’, a key stalwart of differentiation. Countless ‘Cloud Experts’, from all walks of life talk about it, but few give time to articulate how.
Firstly the definition of ‘Innovation’, all hail Wiki.
“.. the development of new values through solutions that meet new requirements, inarticulate needs, or old customer and market needs in value...
April 2013
1 post
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Advise for jumpers...??
Advice for any business looking to appreciate the values of Cloud Computing? Successful Cloud strategies are journeys that evolve WITH the business.
Asses the needs before jumping in…….
March 2013
1 post
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February 2013
3 posts
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“Also missed on many occasions is the fact that the true value of (private) cloud...”
– David Linthicum - CTO Blue Mountain Labs
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2013, year of change?
Doing the same as everyone else simply doesn’t work?
2012 was not a good year, with well-established organisations struggling to survive. ‘Bricks and Mortar’ once industry frontrunners, eroding from the corporate landscape. Overrun by agile, fresh and innovative companies with the digital world central to their DNA. These companies challenge ‘business as usual’, exploring beyond the assumed. If...
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January 2013
1 post
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Tech heads ??... →
The mainstream of technology pros are still well and truly wedged in the past relative to the strategic behaviors of cloud computing. All but a few are embracing cloud as “just another technology”, leaving choices on what way to implement, own and administer to engineers. To get the maximum business value from your cloud investments enterprises need to appreciate that it is NOT a technical...
December 2012
2 posts
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“Creativity, the process of taking ideas and making them into ‘real...”
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A Prescription For Distinction
What are the expected returns gained by aligning enterprise ‘must have’ with that of IT? The business ‘most wanted’ be fulfilled, right? In reality there’s an distinct absence of triumph due to both parties modest understanding towards each others need and execution.
Enhanced ROI
Simple, transparent payment models
Flexible, demand driven
Rapid and innovative...
November 2012
3 posts
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“Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.”
– Niccolò Machiavelli
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The VP of "Cloud"
Cloud computing as a value proposition – ‘Business Cloud First’
The economic environment that we live in today forces businesses to take efficient and lean steps, strategically positioning to do more with less. Still countless enterprises are turning to cloud for financial benefit and service optimization. To gain maximum returns on your cloud investments taking a ‘Business Cloud First’...
October 2012
2 posts
4 tags
Achievable cloud numbers?
Enterprise that are contemplating a purchase of one or more cloud solution need to value that cloud is strategic and long-term, not a shareholder driven quarter-by-quarter independent product offering!
Moving and building a ‘right’ cloud view is eighty percent driven relevance in supporting an agile business environment, proficient to change paths at the speed of need. Today, alas this...
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Asking the right questions
What’s being asked….. ‘What cloud should I use… IaaS, Amazon, RackSpace, SFDC, PaaS, Public, Private, HPCloud, IBM, Dedicated, Workday?’
What should be asked…’How do I create opportunities for delivering an agile, responsive and connected enterprise…..’…
September 2012
2 posts
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August 2012
1 post
9 tags
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it?...
Enterprise I.T’s happy. They’ve got that all-important ‘pat on the back for cloud’, haven’t they done well. A cloud strategy perception defined, offered and marketed through the desk of those middle-aged Senior I.T Managers. It’s all server consolidation this, cap ex optimization that. Oh the ecstasy, oh the thrill, oh the opportunity L. For these blinkered eyes I beg you to please recognize that...
July 2012
3 posts
6 tags
Business value 1st, technology 2nd - That's the...
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Is your company.......
— thinking of all value gained from cloud computing rather than a single view of IT improvements?
— aware of the goals and benefits cloud adoption can bring?
— aware to how cloud computing COULD deliver greater and faster strategic and tactical objectives?
…… most don’t
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To the untrained it's tricky.....
To assume that ‘business as usual’ IS ‘business as usual’ is to assume that it’s ‘business as usual’. ‘Business as usual’ is not ‘business as usual’, for this needs to be crystal clear.
I like my job….. [[MORE]]I get to talk with many execs and business leaders. I like to listen, I like to understand the daily challenges...
June 2012
1 post
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In bed with the bo$$
Limitless projects sponsored with the sole aim of creating that ever efficient process focused corporate monster. The days of challenging uniquely on these factors is extremely short sighted and a recipe for disaster.
Today it’s not about ERP or order-to-cash improvements, the darlings of process optimization. Projects with lots of cash doing the same stuff. It’s all the same just tweaking the...
May 2012
2 posts
4 tags
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
– Henry Ford
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Are you this or, 'that'?
Active and inspiring OR pompous and traditional? Sharing and helpful OR detached and superior? Understand and train OR administer and supervise? Lead by character OR lead by rules?
Drive by IMAGINATION OR drive by FEAR?
April 2012
9 posts
3 tags
“Outline → Discover → Organize →Verify → Perform → Observe →Adjust → Complete”
– The process innovation map
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Meet you @ the table.
We the technology holders, we the Cloud innovators need to be at the table of strategic business alignment a lot lot earlier than currently assumed by the majority of Cxx folk.
Knowledgeable companies that will thrive in this age of mass information will be the ones who eat, sleep and breathe business driven technology strategies. To enable this it’s vital to concentrate on ‘what the business...
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Data with them, are you nuts?
“There’s no fu%^ing way I’m putting any company data in any public arena. It’s way too dangerous!”
“Calm down dear, it’s only progression.”
So, let’s start with the standard bloggers template of a Wiki definition: “Security is the degree of protection against danger, damage, loss, and crime.”
Talking with enterprises daily, reassurance of a secure environment is close to the...
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Friday 13th, some see terror others see...
Today’s my final day at Accenture. It’s time to move onward and upward. Accenture have a fantastic pool of brilliant individuals and to these I openly wish them all best in everything they do.
From Monday morning, new exciting challenges lie ahead.
“Cloud computing is significantly more than merely saving on IT expenses. It offers a titanic chance to innovate.”
“Some...
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Delivering coal
A hundred years ago we had ‘the modern industrial enterprise’.
A lone self-sufficient beast mass-producing a steady stream of high output products, “stack’m high sell’m cheap”. Everything was intended to maximize control and regulation, a self-managed and enormously successful model of old. The fewer dependencies on external providers the less risk of a ‘spanner in the works’. Fuel, more...
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In crisis comes opportunity
Fantastic IBM video, it really drives home all that’s exciting about the Cloud revolution. Ousting traditional zilch value-add procedures, empowering businesses to concentrate on more electrifyingly new and pioneering stuff. Offering employees the opportunity to do, and be part of, ideas that were never possible a few years back. This is what energizes me about Cloud; this is what gets me...
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“We know where most of the creativity, the innovation, the stuff that drives...”
– Jack Welch - General Electric CEO
March 2012
12 posts
7 tags
Innovation, a few starters.
Don’t make it a pre-condition to seek Management support and funding. Employees with ideas should promote them to their peers, receive feedback, build the team and execute the plan. Many revolutionary ideas directly attack the notion ‘business as usual’. Executive have a vested interest to keep it ‘business as usual’, mostly for self-gain.
Remove the old pyramids of power. People at the top are...
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Evolution?
Cloud was 2011, so they say! 2012 IS the year of BIG DATA, so they say….!
Be it true or not recruiters and HR need to seek and tempt the few and far between specialists that understand what’s theoretically possible.
— Specialists who are able to make sense of data from everywhere, everything at any time.
— Specialists who are able to pull it all together and understand what’s...
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Cheap and lazy customer service
The idea that customers are more loyal to businesses that go above and beyond their expectations is simply not true.
Ocado keep sending me free offers, refunds and cheaper delivery services, trying to tempt me back. This type of customer service makes only a small impact to the majority. All we want, as customers, is to have a service or product that meets our needs.
If you’re going to be...
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Digital connectivity
Futurologist Adjiedj Bakas wrote a book called ‘The Future of Capitalism’. He went on to explain how the Chinese word for crisis is defined in two single words, ‘danger’ and ‘opportunity’.
‘The crash of 2008 was the fifth crisis in 200 years. All of them occurred at the transition from one era to the next…. during the current crisis we finally say goodbye to the 20th century models of old and...
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Smells like bullshit
Why do companies still not see originality as part of their essential DNA? Is it ignorance, lack of education or just fearful of change? Whatever the reason it’s proving to be fatal and catching out many of the greats (Kodak, RIM). Why does it not ring alarm bells when we’ve just about survived a near global economic breakdown? Something’s severely broken and it’s beyond repair.
Innovation, doing...
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“One persons passion is better than forty people merely interested.”
– E.M Forster
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Watchbeyond blogging 7th March 2012
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Continuous self-improvement
Spending a modest period on the bench got me thinking about the pointless pressures for professionals to remain ‘billable’, no excuses. Too many companies view ‘the percentage of billable work’ as the Holy Grail to which you’re measured on! It’s a carrot and stick scenario that only works if you’re in a role that requires little in the way of innovative...
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Keep calm and spread some techie love
During my career I’ve worked for countless medium/ large technology departments and it still astonishes me to see the complete lack of integration between ‘business’ and ‘I.T’. Most of the time, not all but most, I.T departments are seen as part of the peripheral. Skilled guys’ doing their bit for ‘business as usual’, and this is where all the problems start.
I.T departments’ are...
February 2012
16 posts
7 tags
Emotional BIG data
.. click here for the article
Picture the opportunities this has now opened. We have the ability to harness true emotional feedback in streams and streams of data generated by consumers from all over the world (2 years worth). Historic trend analysis, forecasting and instantaneous real-time feedback. The ability to plug into this new emotional medium, measuring responses based around your...
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The choked enterprise
Do you work for a ‘normal’ risk adverse business, a business that’s choking progress?
Small incremental changes can make up to 90% of a firm R&D portfolio, predominantly resulting in little or no competitive advantage.
WE ALL NEED TO THINK BIG.
While carefully managing risk companies have to spread their ratio of larger, more dangerous projects in order to stay relevant.
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Disconnected and alone :(
Walk into the majority of enterprises and it’s sad to see but true, the lack of integration between the I.T department and business execs. Most of the time I.T departments are seen as an ‘add-on’ network of skilled techies carrying out ‘business as usual’ value, and that’s where the problems start. Too many I.T departments way too disconnected from the real problems and challenges faced daily by...
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Being human on Facebook
Not what I typically post but vital for companies who are looking to embrace, engage and generate value from Facebook.
Log on to Facebook what do you see? Correct, your homepage displaying the latest activities of all your friends and company/ brands pages that you ‘like’. What you may not know is that Facebook’s clever and doesn’t display every bit of information from your ‘liked’ pages...
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It's just being in the right place at the right...
The real-time collaborative value-chain empowers employee participation at all levels with no one leader but a constantly evolving leadership model. No one team member exclusively leads, natural leaders emerge. Once the ‘leader’ has identified that he/ she is no longer the best one to navigate its time to take a step back, giving way to the most appropriate person.
Shared direction has the right...
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Beer
