Creating an effective and scalable rapid delivery environment

An effective application and service portfolio is essential to the modern business, but it’s not always possible to get what you need off-the-shelf. This shines a spotlight on software development and delivery, and how well the way you deal with these supports the business. The watchwords here are ‘speed’, ‘agility’, ‘efficiency’, ‘robustness’ and ‘scalability’, enabled through the adoption of modern methods, tools and processes across the whole delivery cycle.

Our Content:

From Barcode Scanning to Smart Data Capture

Time for a more intelligent approach

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Beyond the Barcode: Smart Data Capture

The emerging business imperative for richer, smarter data collection

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Can contributing to open source get you a job?

Could voluntary work on open source projects be a stepping stone to employment?

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Kubernetes as an enterprise multi-cloud enabler

Building out your environment to create a full lifecycle delivery platform

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Tackling the software skills crunch

How IT leaders grow their software engineering resources

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Just because it’s innovative, doesn’t make it good!

One of my hobbyhorses at the moment is how words and adjectives that ought to[...]

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To maximise potential, mainframers must reach out and engage

The team here has always had immense respect for the mainframe community

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Does application modernisation mean what you think it means?

Most people in IT probably think they know what application modernisation is

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Kubernetes and the open-source maintainer question

While much of October's KubeCon-CloudNativeCon North America

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Supporting the needs of highly unpredictable workloads

It’s all about flexibility, scalability and cost effectiveness

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Like a teenager, Kubernetes looks almost grown-up, yet still a bit awkward and confused

Platform: that’s the key word that sprung to mind after attending Kubecon

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Distributed Cloud Computing

An emerging strategic imperative for IT leaders

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Is it a Suite, Package, Bundle or Platform?

People have been selling collections of products and tools for centuries, and with the advent[...]

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Remember when Agile was treated with suspicion?

Throwback Thursday: When we researched the topic of Agile development back in 2008

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Achieving success with your S/4HANA proof of concept (POC)

What to consider when selecting platforms, tools and services

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Software-Accelerated S/4HANA Migration

Striking the right balance and maximizing ROI

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The SMB solution selection challenge

It's all too easy for smaller businesses to get caught out

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Data governance in software testing

Throwback Thursday: this week we're going back to 2008

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The workload mobility imperative

And why it matters

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Defining your SAP modernization journey

Quick wins on the road to S/4HANA

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From data migration to VM mobility

Analyst Blog: We need to think differently about data migration

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Get going with Microsoft Azure Stack Hub

Accelerating adoption of hybrid cloud

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Accelerate to hybrid cloud

FUJITSU Integrated System PRIMEFLEX for Microsoft Azure Stack Hub brings cloud into the data center

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Consistency is key with hybrid cloud

Can Microsoft Azure Stack Hub negate your public cloud barriers?

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The pain of intermittent problems

Can data centres handle sporadic faults?

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Taking vSphere into the future

Which route – Converged, Hyper-converged or DIY?

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The Application Complexity Monster

Do you really want to keep feeding it?

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The Service Integration Journey Infographic

  Content Contributors: Bryan Betts & Laura Rose

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The truth about software reliability

Research results: It's not just about quality

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Simplifying Multi-Cloud Service Delivery

The emerging role of the Cloud Services Marketplace

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Optimizing the software supplier and customer relationship

Insights and lessons from the sharp-end

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Persistent Container Storage: The Business Case

Considerations for organizations deploying containers in production

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Operational Feedback and People

The overlooked element of DevOps

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Managing Software Exposure

Time to fully embed security into your application lifecycle

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Moving to HANA

Key migration considerations for SAP HANA and S/4HANA

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How Agile and DevOps enable digital readiness and transformation

In today’s world, software is everywhere – and it is spreading fast. Once it was[...]

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Causes of software development woes

Respondents point the finger at ambiguous requirements

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Integrating Security Into the DNA of Your Software Lifecycle

“Masters” move beyond pure risk management to focus on business growth

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Requirements-driven software development and quality management

Removing the ambiguity from your delivery pipeline

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Microsoft presents its quantum computing credentials

Thoughts from the Future Decoded event

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Is HoloLens a serious business tool?

It's beginning to look that way

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A cloud for all seasons

Open source PaaS ready for prime time?

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Software quality vs speed of delivery

Are you stuck between a rock and a hard place? Much has been written about[...]

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Software Development Methodology Wars

Don’t get caught in the crossfire between evangelists It is in the nature of technology[...]

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Don’t Let an Outdated Software Strategy Hold You Back

Yesterdays software delivery processes are not up to dealing with today’s demands, but modernising you[...]

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Continuous Testing as a digital business enabler

Lessons from leading practitioners

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DevOps and Cloud Computing

Many are exploiting cloud computing to drive business advantage, while others are enjoying the flexibility[...]

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IT Ops doesn’t matter? Really?

Listen to some DevOps evangelists talk, and you would get the impression that IT operations[...]

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The trouble with business executives…

When IT teams and their colleagues within the business get along, life is good for[...]

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It’s Artificial Intelligence, but not as we know it

Ed: AI is figuring more and more prominently in our industry coverage at Freeform Dynamics.[...]

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Technology as a catalyst for cultural change

Time for a more inspirational approach?

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IT Decision-Making in the Digital Age

Making the right technology investments in today’s fast moving digital age can mean the difference[...]

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Cloud computing reality check

Introduction: Is cloud really a kind of magic? Many have positioned cloud computing as the[...]

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IT Ops as a Digital Business Enabler

Some argue that IT operations doesn’t matter anymore; it’s all about developers. Our aim in[...]

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A peek behind the AI bandwagon

When an important topic or trend gives rise to a marketing and media bandwagon, any[...]

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Digital transformation initiatives hampered by poor ICT skills

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recently published a report detailing the results of an[...]

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The Impact of Cloud on IT Teams

We often hear that cloud computing dramatically reduces the need for in-house IT teams, and[...]

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Taking Sales Performance to the Next Level

So you’ve invested in CRM, and maybe a set of sophisticated modelling and analytics tools[...]

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Intelligent Systems in Action

As technology becomes smarter, more opportunities arise to exploit AI, machine learning and other forms[...]

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Digital Disrupters do it to Themselves

The word ’digital’ seems to have overtaken ’cloud’ as the hottest word in the IT[...]

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Taking DevOps to the Next Level

It’s all about continuous delivery

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How a bank optimizes the use of customer information

Mobile, social and other digital channels are now an integral part of customer engagement. As[...]

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Enterprise Git in Perspective

In a nutshell If asked to name a distributed version control system (DVCS), most people[...]

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APIs and the Digital Enterprise

Application programming interfaces (APIs) have been around for decades. In the early days of IT[...]

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The telecom transformation journey

The services offered by telecom companies provide some of the best examples of digital customer[...]

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Integrating the car into our digital life

Self-driving cars provide one of the best examples of how digital technology is set to[...]

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Driving disruptive innovation in a demanding B2B environment

While many are talking about concepts such as disruption and innovation as if they were[...]

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If you think DevOps is BS, you may be a victim of bandwagon marketing

I’ve been coming across more DevOps naysayers and sceptics recently. Whether online or face-to-face, I[...]

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Readers of The Register speak out on Thin Client technology

Managing PC estates is a time-consuming, expensive and thankless task. Better provisioning and management tools[...]

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Thin Client Devices Revisited

Technology best forgotten or time for a renaissance?

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Assembling the DevOps Jigsaw

The world we live in is increasingly digital. As the smart use of technology leads[...]

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Exploiting the Software Advantage

Advances in digital technology create significant opportunities to transform both customer engagement and business operations.[...]

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Taking Cyber Security to the Next Level

As cyber security threats become more sophisticated, targeted and persistent, it’s no longer possible to[...]

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Evolution of the OpenText portfolio

A few days into my first software sales role back in the 90’s, I was[...]

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Orchestrating the DevOps Tool Chain

A great deal has been written about how trends in digital communication and engagement are[...]

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Data Virtualisation for DevOps

The DevOps movement is supported by a whole range of tools, and is particularly well[...]

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Eight Best Practices for Cloud Security

There’s been a lot of FUD spread around in recent years on the subject of[...]

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Insurance through the Looking Glass

Creating a more customer centric business environment has historically been hard to achieve. In this[...]

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So what you gonna do about DevOps?

Having to deal with the ‘next big thing’ once or twice a year is a[...]

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Avoiding the runaway code train

More and more code, delivered faster and faster. According to many, that’s the imperative if[...]

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How to simplify your IT with cloud apps

Lots of you are considering cloud apps, but find it hard to figure out what’s[...]

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Controlling Application Access

Application performance, availability and security challenges are quietly creeping up in the context of internal[...]

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Virtual application networking

If you’re implementing a private or a hybrid cloud, then your network fabric needs a[...]

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Analytics and Big Data

By Tony Lock ‘Big Data’ is a hot topic receiving considerable attention from the marketing[...]

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Lessons from B2B high performers

By Andrew Buss The way that companies connect with each other to do business can[...]

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Electronic trading dogged by information issues

By Dale Vile How many suppliers and customers do you trade with in the average[...]

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Cross-Selling to the Cloud

By Dale Vile The notion of cloud computing taking more of the action in the[...]

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Effective B2B Integration

The way in which organisations communicate and transact across supply and demand chains has a[...]

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Agility without anxiety

Dale Vile met up with Perforce’s Mark Warren to discuss how to do agile development[...]

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Getting private cloud to play nicely

By Dale Vile We were surprised at the strength of positive sentiment and relative lack[...]

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BPM from back office to front office and beyond

Are you tough enough to take on BPM and win? Someone has to. It has[...]

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Selected highlights from IBM UK Impact 2012, London

Websphere and beyond On June 12th, IBM Southbank hosted a one-day version of its Impact[...]

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Private Cloud in Context

To make sense of private cloud, you need unravel it from the broader cloud computing[...]

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Fast Forward to Big Data

Does ’cloud’ have a roll in providing customers with access to new data sources to[...]

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The Business of Electronic Data Storage

By Dale Vile, Tony Lock and Martha Bennett Introduction Storage and retrieval of electronic data[...]

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CA ERwin – Getting reacquainted with an old friend

Back in the deep dark past, when I designed and optimised relational databases for a[...]

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SaaS based Email and Office Productivity Tools

If you have an old email server in need of an upgrade or have calls[...]

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Operating Models in Context

By Dale Vile Change is a fact of life in business, but it’s generally not[...]

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Unlock the business value of your information

Stakeholders are increasingly looking to get information ’on demand’ to regulatory bodies; seeking more complex[...]

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IT is the least of the problems – but can it improve business change?

A lot of time and column inches have been spent over the years looking at[...]

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Challenging the big change agenda

Marketing people and management consultants love the words ‘transformation’ and ‘innovation’. As you listen to[...]

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Defining the Business Change Agenda

Transformation and innovation are often worthy objectives for change initiatives, but business people tell us[...]

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Will SaaS make you more efficient?

SaaS might give you more availability, it might cut your capital costs, and it might[...]

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Software Licensing and Subscription

By Tony Lock KEY FINDINGS Few organisations know what software they are using The vast[...]

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Agile Development – The reality behind the philosophy

Business people often complain that IT projects take too long and deliver results that fall[...]

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Cloud today, tomorrow, not yet

Given all the hype and conjecture recently, we could be forgiven for thinking that we[...]

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Cloud Computing Checkpoint

By Dale Vile KEY POINTS Views of cloud computing are wide, varied and often contradictory[...]

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Licensing in the virtual age

By Andrew Buss Having sat through countless vendor cloud pitches, there seems to be an[...]

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Cloud Service Categories

There are many ways to classify cloud service offerings. The most basic is to relate[...]

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Decision criteria for open source and proprietary software

The selection of operating systems was once one of the major decisions IT managers had[...]

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PaaS potential and practicality: This is a hype-free zone

One of the advantages of using Platform as a Service (PaaS) to develop and deploy[...]

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Cloud computing in context

Audience – IT & Business professionals Occasion – BCS Meeting, Leeds, July 2010 Presenter(s) –[...]

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BPM Beyond Automation

BPM has an application beyond highly structured process automation. Dale Vile talks with The Register’s[...]

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Secure your departmental apps

Throughout a workshop on The Register, we’ve been looking at resiliency and security for hosted[...]

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Lithium helped the penny to drop

A more tangible take on social CRM While I go about my business as an[...]

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Applied Cloud Computing

By Dale Vile and Tony Lock Introduction The term ‘cloud computing’ is one of the[...]

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Managing change in the application portfolio

Nothing stands still forever, particularly not in IT, and with good reason. When we researched[...]

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CRM market dynamics: Response to journalist inquiry

The analyst team here at Freeform Dynamics frequently gets asked for comment by journalists. This[...]

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The Business of Interoperability

By Dale Vile and Jon Collins ‘Interoperability’ is a widely used word in IT industry[...]

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The pre-integration balancing act

For as long as I have been in IT, the ‘right’ way to drive things[...]

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The software licensing minefield

Software vendors make their money from licensing software for individual and corporate use. From the[...]

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Information versus the silos

The idea that ‘information is important and we want to do more useful things with[...]

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Understanding your information assets

Information is power, right? Well, just how powerful must most organisations feel today, given the[...]

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BI versus Decision Support

As an old timer in the industry, I remember the days when the term ‘decision[...]

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Enhancing performance with supply chain management

Organisations in sectors such as manufacturing, distribution and retail have got better over the years[...]

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Application Retirement: What about the Data?

by Jon Collins and Martin Atherton Introducing application retirement: what’s really important to you? Whatever[...]

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The UC survival guide. Keep it ‘in-your-face’ easy

Critical to any new implementation is support. But if the implementation is designed to fit[...]

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Does your IT universe revolve around ERP?

There are a couple of major pivot points for activity within the IT landscape. The[...]

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ERP sans frontières. Access for all

There was a time when the terms ‘ERP’ and ‘back office systems’ were almost synonymous,[...]

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Reg reader tips for ERP success

When we asked Reg readers to tell us about the factors that impacted the success[...]

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How not to screw up an ERP implementation

OK, so perhaps we were a bit ambitious with the title of this article. With[...]

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Choosing an ERP implementation partner. Avoiding getting shafted.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) has been around for a long time, yet there is no[...]

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What personality is your IT department?

Over the years I’ve spent quite a lot of time thinking about the idea of[...]

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ERP deniers their own worst enemy

As new ideas and technologies emerge and develop in IT, we typically go through a[...]

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Selecting an ERP supplier – the pitfalls and practicalities

The selection of an ERP system is a pretty strategic decision for most companies. Software[...]

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Challenging accepted ERP wisdom

So you’ve been through an ERP implementation before and you know how it’s all done?[...]

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ROI in context

By Dale Vile The consideration of Return on Investment (ROI) understandably increased during the downturn.[...]

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Can IT Financing and Management Models Survive IT Change?

By Tony Lock In a nutshell: The models used for businesses to create IT budgets[...]

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Sensible business process management (BPM) for sensible times

By Martin Atherton By most accepted standards somewhere north of two thirds/70% of IT budgets[...]

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Establishing the Business Case for SOA enabled BPM

When it comes to business process modelling and optimisation, it’s easy to get bogged down[...]

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Scoping SOA enabled transformation – Getting Started

Short video clip from Q&A session on scoping SOA initiatives, and why not to be[...]

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Evolution of Dynamic IT

by Dale Vile and Tony Lock Against the backdrop of an increasingly fast moving and[...]

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Perception versus reality in IT

By Tony Lock In the world of information technology there is the impression that everything[...]

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SOA and Growth Markets

by Jon Collins and Dale Vile KEY FINDINGS SOA is as relevant in growth economies[...]

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Clarity on Cloud

By Dale Vile A senior exec from a major IT vendor recently commented in a[...]

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Software Development Snapshot

By Jon Collins Software development is alive and kicking. Indeed, we say this every year[...]

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Does Agile development have a place in your organisation?

by Jon Collins ‘Agile’ is such an uplifting, positive word, its no wonder everybody wants[...]

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Application Platforms

by Jon Collins and Martin Atherton KEY FINDINGS The principle of application platforms is clear,[...]

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CRM Promise and Practicality for the Smaller Business

by Dale Vile The term Customer Relationship Management (CRM) may have its roots in the[...]

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Mobile Marketing Imperatives

by Josie Sephton and Dale Vile The mobile service provider market is increasingly characterised by[...]

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BPM: lessons from the real world

by Martin Atherton, Jon Collins and Dale Vile Is business process management a cure-all for[...]

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Agile Development – Is it Right For You?

by Jon Collins and Dale Vile The software community has always been a communicative one,[...]

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Taking cloud to the mainstream

by Dale Vile The hype around cloud computing is pretty intensive. The IT industry and[...]

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Service Orientation in Business

by Jon Collins KEY FINDINGS While change is a certainty in business, some still struggle[...]

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Is Oracle really the next Microsoft?

by Dale Vile The gobbling up by Oracle of BEA, the last significantly sized independent[...]

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