IT Executive news

• BrandPost: Part 5: How to Eliminate Deadwood in AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform Without Risking Disaster

  14-09-2017 21:20
  In this final segment of our ongoing series about right-sizing public cloud instances for optimal performance and cost efficiency, we are focusing on a common source of cloud overspending: deadwood.Idle or “zombie” instances plague many public cloud environments, insidiously wasting your opex budget dollars. This deadwood can occur without you even realizing it, and is often the result of hasty deployments or a lack of accountability in the cloud world. Someone in the organization li
  
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• BrandPost: The Modern Thinking Divide: How Successful Companies Boost the Customer User Experience

  14-09-2017 21:13
  As customer expectations soar sky-high and companies dig deep to determine how to meet user needs, it’s clear that one of the biggest challenges facing today’s organizations is the move from being product-based to becoming customer and experience-focused. At the core, this is a deeply-transformational effort that centers on creating memorable and unique experiences that drive loyalty, as opposed to creating products and pushing them through a particular channel.For the companies that
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How artificial intelligence is transforming learning

  14-09-2017 20:32
  In an increasingly polarized country, we all share one thing in common: everyone has taken a standardized test. Whether it was the SAT, ACT, GMAT, LSAT, or some other exam, we have all sat at a desk and fretted about the impact our performance might have on our future.Well, today’s kids are about to become a degree further removed from our shared childhood experiences, because they likely will not have to prepare for these tests with oversized test prep books. But where we criticize today&
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Apple's new mega campus is a big mistake

  14-09-2017 20:28
  There is no question that the late Steve Jobs was a genius and was admired by many, I included. Most things he did throughout his career turn out to be highly successful. But even geniuses make mistakes. Einstien made mistakes, Newton made mistakes and Steve's last act before he got too sick to be able to work was a big mistake too.Steve dreamed a huge complex to house Apple employees to make it easier for them to communicate and collaborate. The mega structure was finished in ear
  
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• BrandPost: Looking for New Work Management Tools? Start by Asking Your Users

  14-09-2017 17:25
  Which are the best tools for enterprise work management? The ones that employees will actually use, of course--tools that deliver an easy, intuitive, and flexible experience for users. But beyond the user experience, the tool must offer robust security, administration controls, and integration with other enterprise applications.How do you find the best collaboration tools for your organization? Start with a bottoms-up look at what has already been adopted by individual teams.What Are Employees A
  
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• 74% off Vansky Bias Lighting for HDTV USB LED Multi Color Strip Accent Lighting - Deal Alert

  14-09-2017 15:39
  This bias lighting strip, currently discounted by 74% on Amazon from $49.99 down to just $12.99, reduces eye-strain caused by differences in picture brightness from scene to scene in movies, shows and games, by adding a subtle backlight to your monitor or TV.  The LED lights can be changed with up to 20 color selections customizing and setting the mood of your workspace. The strip is easy to install and can be cut to size and plugs directly in the USB port of the TV or monitor.  Just P
  
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• 61% off Etekcity Wireless Bluetooth 4.0 Receiver - Deal Alert

  14-09-2017 15:36
  Stream audio from your Bluetooth device to any non-Bluetooth enabled receiver, speaker, or car stereo with this adapter from Etekcity, which is currently discounted 61% down to just $19.58. Simply connect the receiver to your speaker system via a traditional RCA or 3.5mm aux audio input, and pair with your Bluetooth device. Its compact design makes it super portable, and its long lasting battery provides up to 10 hours of streaming before needing a re-charge. See this deal on Amazon.To read this
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Measuring IT business value: let’s get over the puppy dog syndrome

  14-09-2017 14:49
  IT leaders can become obsessively focused on convincing their business partners (and themselves!) that their organizations are generating true business value. This obsession is fueled by the recommendations of consultants and research analysts who encourage IT leaders to develop operational dashboards, balanced scorecards, quarterly service reviews, business cases and project post mortems to quantify the business impact of their teams. All too often, after a considerable investment of time and e
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Remedy for frustrations in legacy IT infrastructure contracting model

  14-09-2017 14:39
  A significant driver motivating companies to migrate workloads out of their legacy environment into the cloud is the increasing frustration of operating under onerous, complicated services contracts. Of course, these workloads migrate to the cloud and a software-defined environment primarily for greater efficiency and agility. But many workloads are too expensive and risky to migrate and thus are better suited for maintaining in a legacy environment. So, I’m calling for a better, more rati
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: The evolving role of the Chief Digital Officer

  14-09-2017 14:06
  With many organizations now three to five years into their digital transformation strategies, the role of the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) has been rapidly evolving and maturing alongside. What started as a role close to that of the Chief Marketing Officer, with a focus on the digital customer experience, has now evolved into something far-more expansive – reaching into corporate strategy, innovation, technology and operations. In this article, we’ll look at how the CDO role star
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Why Google, Walmart, Amazon and Whole Foods are pioneers in voice data

  14-09-2017 14:02
  Each day it becomes more apparent to me that data is integral to every facet of our lives.When Google and Walmart got together recently to allow consumers to purchase goods from the retail giant through their Google Home devices – Google’s answer to rival Amazon’s Echo technology – the potential for a fascinating new data set reflecting our everyday lives became even more clear. I’m talking about voice data, sourced from what one day could be a technology that&rsquo
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 5 mistakes companies make when analyzing customer data – and how to avoid them

  14-09-2017 13:47
  Whether in life or in business, sometimes we still get it all wrong even when trying our hardest. Recently I ran into a pioneering tech company that was getting AI wrong in a way that was both comical and a little alarming. To demonstrate their grasp of AI technology, they had a robot working the entrance to an event. The robot’s job was to make sure guests registered before entering. What did the robot do if you hadn’t registered? It blocked your path like an NBA power forward tryin
  
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• When to kill (and when to recover) a failed project

  14-09-2017 12:23
  The project is behind schedule. The pilot has failed to meet expectations. Several key team members have already said good-bye. An important vendor has just discontinued an essential component.The decisive moment has arrived. Is it time to kill the project or press forward in a new direction?That's a simple question. An equally simple answer, however, can be elusive. As economist Paul Samuelson once remarked, "Good questions outrank easy answers."[ Find out why IT projects still fail and be
  
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• BrandPost: Part 4: How to Modernize Public Cloud Instances to Stop Leaving Money on the Table

  14-09-2017 06:43
  In previous blog posts we’ve discussed the challenges organizations face in choosing the right cloud instances, and how understanding workload patterns is critical to right-sizing public cloud instances for optimal CPU and memory efficiency. In this post, we’ll look at a key aspect of instance selection that plays a critical role in optimizing AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud spend:   modernizing your instances.Modernizing public cloud instances is the act of moving from an exi
  
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• BrandPost: Part 3: How to Size Your Cloud Instances for Memory

  14-09-2017 06:14
  In our last blog post in this series, we discussed how to overcome the “bump-up loop” in which you continually increase CPU resource allocations in public cloud instances, even when it isn’t needed. In this blog post, we’ll look at another cloud resource management challenge: memory.Sizing memory appropriately is extremely important because memory is a major driver of cost, and tends to be what we see as the most commonly constrained resource in virtual and cloud environm
  
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• BrandPost: Part 2: How to Avoid the Sneaky (and Costly) Public Cloud Instance “Bump-Up” Loop

  14-09-2017 00:36
  In the first blog in this series, we looked at why it’s so important to look at an application’s workload patterns when sizing for any public cloud, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and others. In this post, we’ll look at another common pitfall that we call the cloud instance “bump-up loop.”Here’s how it works. You use a reporting tool that says your application workload is running at nearly 100% utilization for 3 hours overnight (see fig
  
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