by Ron Miller

Microsoft's New Cloud and Mobile Approach Uses Same Old Lock-in Strategy

At a glance, the whole Windows 8 cloud-mobile strategy seems like a radical new approach for Microsoft, but when you dig a little deeper, it's really just the same all-Microsoft lock-in strategy it's been using for years. The big difference though is Microsoft is not alone on the playing field anymore and users can choose their devices.

Read my full commentary on my TechTarget View from Above blog.

Photo Credit | Microsoft.

The Disappearing Cloud

A recent survey found that most respondents had no clue what the term "Cloud Computing" meant, but were using cloud services without realizing it. And that's fine because our goal shouldn't be to advance industry buzz words, it should be to make good services that people use, regardless what you call the technology behind it. (Love the picture: Cloud computing - get it?) :)

Read my full post on the Ness Software Engineering Services blog.

Photo by kei51 on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

An outage is an outage

In light of yesterdays' Amazon outage, it got me thinking that it doesn't matter to users where an application is hosted because from their perspective, it's just not working. The only difference is who's getting paid to fix it.

Read my full post on my TechTarget View from Above blog

 Photo Credit | Nature's Images on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

New CIO got one year to move everything to the cloud -- here's how he did it

A CIO was hired with the assignment to close the data center and move the whole operation to the cloud in one year. Here's what he did.

Read my full post on CITEworld.

INTERVIEW: Aaron Levie on the future of high-flying Box

With his manic energy and crazy tennis shoes, Box CEO Aaron Levie cut quite a figure at the company's recent BoxWorks conference. But underneath, he's as serious and focused as a CEO can be. In this interview, he explains why the company will continue to offer a freemium model even as it signs up lots of enterprises, and gives some hints as to what will come next.

Read my full post  on CITEworld.

Photo by Robert Scoble via Flickr.

CIO Leads Way to the Cloud; Users Push Back

Interesting dynamic here. When a CIO decided to move his company to the cloud, the users pushed back. When he got executive buy-in from the CFO, things went much more smoothly and users grew to like the change eventually.

Read my article on CITEworld.

Electronic Arts CIO: Consumerization is a game changer

I saw Electronic Arts CIO Mark Tonnesen this week talk about transforming his IT department from a rack and stack shop to a service organization designed to serve the needs of the business of making games.

Read my article on CITEworld.

Salesforce and Oracle Struggle with Change

While Salesforce and Oracle are two very different companies, the fierce competitors face surprisingly similar issues when it comes to dealing with changes affecting their markets -- and both have a hard time adjusting to market forces.

Read my full post on my TechTarget View from Above blog.

Photo by emdot. Used under Creative Commons License.

When It Comes to IT Jobs, Consumerization Gives and Takes

Conventional wisdom says when you go to the cloud, you lose IT jobs, but when I looked at some job posting data on Indeed.com, I found there were no simple answers to this supposition. As with any other technological shift, it gives and takes.

Read my full post on CITEworld.

Salesforce Finally Makes Total Mobile-Cloud Connection

Salesforce has always been the quintessential cloud vendor, but up until recently it hadn't made the complete enterprise mobile-cloud-social connection. Now the company is all in.

Read my full commentary on my TechTarget View from Above blog.

Photo by piyush.k on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.