Technology News: Workflow Management

Management From Afar: Coaching a Team of Remote Workers
October 05, 2009

In our global economy, where outsourcing is common and the Internet makes it possible to work from almost any location under the sun, it's not unusual for a company to find itself in the position of having a large portion of its staff in various locations outside the main offices. Particularly in the technology industry, software and application development jobs are often filled by freelance workers.

Adobe-Omniture May Be a Surprisingly Smart Match
September 16, 2009

Adobe's planned acquisition of Web analytics firm Omniture took nearly everyone off guard when it was announced Tuesday. Now that the idea has had a chance to sink in, though, it seems to be growing in popularity. "I think it really does make sense," said Steve Ashley, an analyst for investment research firm R.W. Baird.

Don't Trade Customer Satisfaction for Call Center Efficiency
July 24, 2009

Increasing contact center efficiency has always been a clear path to cutting costs, regardless of economic conditions. Increasing productivity and doing more with existing resources are now more important than ever, but cutting call center costs does not have to result in poorer customer service.

Mobile Software Firm Strikes While the Market Is Hot
July 16, 2009

On June 10, Antenna Software completed the acquisition of Dexterra for an undisclosed amount, solidifying its position as a key player in the mobile middleware/platform space, with a sharpened focus on field force enablement. This market grab comes on the heels of Antenna's acquisition of Vettro's strategic assets in November 2008.

Automation: A Lube Job for a Sluggish Economy
July 14, 2009

Companies are now in the third stage of "economic downturn syndrome." Having passed through Panic and Denial, they're firmly in Acceptance. Panicky knee-jerk responses such as cost-cutting, layoffs, tightening budgets and resources are a thing of the past. Most companies have had a quick breather and segued to the stage of a more carefully considered response.

App Testing at the Speed of Change
July 08, 2009

Adaptability is the name of the game in our fast-paced society. In order to remain on top, every company needs to adapt to the market in which it participates. Software and application developers -- actually, the entire IT department, if you want to get technical -- are particularly affected by this fast pace of change.

Why Business Transaction Management Is Hot in 2009
June 30, 2009

Business transaction management has been getting a lot of attention lately: IT organizations want it, and every major vendor in systems and performance management has rushed to claim they do it. The promise of BTM is to finally be able to manage IT from a business perspective and make sense of the complexity of modern applications.

Beware of the Information Security Inertia Syndrome
June 16, 2009

We all know that some things are easier to do than others. In fact, what separates an average manager from a great one is the ability to balance decisions based on two almost totally unrelated sets of criteria: ease of accomplishment on the one hand vs. value to the organization on the other.

Plan Your Project's Testing - or Plan to Fail
May 26, 2009

Does testing require a plan? That may sound like a silly question, but many organizations leave the testing to the end of the project, and whatever time is left is the time that will be spent on testing. Testing, like any other part of a project, must be carefully planned in order to accomplish the objectives.

Getting IT on the C-Suite's Radar
May 21, 2009

Aberdeen's research shows a 16 percent increase in the number of organizations that are satisfied with the performance of business-critical applications since March. However, the disparity among respondents is profound. Ninety-three percent of Best-in-Class organizations are satisfied with their application performance, and only 48 percent of Industry Average and Laggard organizations show the same level.

IBM Launches All-Seeing, All-Knowing, Real-Time Data Cruncher
May 14, 2009

As the pace of business increases, business intelligence technologies have been forced to speed up so they can crunch more data and do it faster. On Thursday, IBM unveiled InfoSphere Streams, a high-performance computing system designed to, in essence, provide business intelligence capabilities on steroids.

The Crucial Role of Application Testing in Software Development
May 13, 2009

During the software development life cycle, time and resources need to be committed to application testing. This is the testing that is done by the testing group, or black box testers. The allocation of time and resources is always a problem, as some organizations aren't quite sure how much should be assigned.

Planning a Migration Route From Visual Basic 6 to .Net
May 07, 2009

Given the unpredictable nature of today's market climate, many software-oriented companies are scrambling to cut costs and streamline their application development processes. For organizations utilizing Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 as their primary development environment, the difficulty of achieving this agility was magnified by the April 8, 2008, termination of all support for VB6.

IBM Weaves Cloud, Appliance, BPM, CEP and SOA Into One Fabric
May 07, 2009

In an effort to provide needed cohesion across its products and solutions, IBM has unveiled a cloud-based BPM service, tighter alignment with Amazon, better CEP integration, reintroduced a WebSphere private cloud appliance and double-downed on a slew of its industry framework solutions.

Walking a Mile in Their Shoes: Vendor Security Questionnaires
April 21, 2009

"Vendor security questionnaire" -- three innocuous-sounding words that can leave security folks trembling. If you're in security -- no matter what company you're with -- there's a good chance you know exactly what I'm talking about, either because you've experienced firsthand the pain of trying to vet the information security controls of the multitude of third parties that your organization exchanges data with.

Cloud Implementation, Part 2: Cutting a Path to Customization
April 10, 2009

For some companies, the decision to move to the cloud is a no-brainer -- especially if they limit their planning to pure number crunching. Without a doubt, the savings for such a leap, both explicit and implicit, can be huge. Still, though, there are technical issues to consider, not the least of which become apparent when the planning process begins to focus on customization.