ITEC

ITEC Connect is your ongoing source for up-to-date thought leadership from around the industry.

ITEC is all about practical solutions to business problems, educating you and the community, year round.

Phoning it In

By Chris Brogan, VP Strategy & Technology, CrossTech Media. on 4/29/2008

I was speaking with some product developers at Garmin the other day, and they mentioned the next quarter release of their nuviphone, a handset that looks a bit like Apple's popular iPhone, but with a mix of features that might appeal to business users as well. Later in the week, I was looking at the Packet8 website and reading about their VoIP services and how they integrate with Salesforce.com. Business leaders take note: as new communications applications add features, your team needs to re-assess which technologies are in place at your organization for communications. A phone is no longer just a phone.

Social Media for Business

By Chris Brogan, VP Strategy & Technology, CrossTech Media. on 4/29/2008

For our Webinar on May 1st, 2008 at 2PM ET, I plan to discuss business strategies and tactics around using social media, both as an internal collaboration tool, and as an addition to a company's external networking, lead generation, marketing, and community management strategies. It's a space and a topic that has interested me for years, and has been one of the primary focuses of my research over the past several years. Why? Because I believe this upcoming generation of collaboration tools empowers people to perform business tasks and communication in a far more human way, and that businesses can benefit from it.

Planning for Cloud Computing

By Chris Brogan, VP Strategy & Technology, CrossTech Media. on 4/29/2008

With companies like IBM and Dell and Sun offering cloud computing solutions to compete with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud in different flavors, the question can be asked: is it time to move your IT infrastructure out of your building and into the hands of a managed hosting environment? And if so, what goes and what stays?

Building Community Through Participation and Dialogue

By Chris Brogan, VP Strategy & Technology, CrossTech Media. on 4/29/2008

Our ITEC events are known by you to be your regional IT event. Instead of the old fashioned huge trade show experience, these events are smaller, and as such, give you the opportunity to see everything, meet people that you might want to meet, and learn about new products and services without a lot of travel and frustration. But ITEC only comes to your neighborhood once a year, and yet, we here at CrossTech Media are thinking about the business of technology all year round. After a talk with CEO Stephen Saber today, I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be part of the larger ITEC or CrossTech Community, and what I hope it might mean to you.

When Corporate Blogging Isn't About YOUR Company

By Chris Brogan, VP Strategy & Technology, CrossTech Media. on 4/29/2008

The best of corporate blogging comes when the post isn't directly related to you. One such master of this style is BT's own J.P. Raganswami, who writes posts like this thought-provoking piece at Confused of Calcutta. The post has nothing to do with telecom, nothing to do with new BT products and services, and yet, when you read it, you think positively about JP and his ability to provide useful information.

Rethinking Data Centers

By Chris Brogan, VP Strategy & Technology, CrossTech Media. on 4/15/2008

I've been working on a new Executive Briefing called The Next Data Center, targeted to C-level and decision makers, and covering topics such as virtualization, cloud computing, security, green initiatives, cooling, and more. It's fun for me, because I worked on several data center projects in a past life, including rolling in big Sun and EMC platforms, moving data centers in a hurry (when Exodus shut down their center during the merge into C&W), and revitalizing a failed dot-bomb ISP data center that we bought shortly afterwards. Things have changed since those days, and that's the very point of the event: to learn what's coming next.

Salesforce Teams Up with Google Apps - Microsoft Has to Wonder

By Chris Brogan on 4/15/2008

Google and Salesforce.com have announced an integration, where a company can use Google's mail, calendar, and instant messaging platform together in an integrated fashion with Salesforce.com's other offerings. Now chat and email conversations with customers will thread into the rest of the Salesforce data. Though this is already available for Microsoft Outlook, putting out a web-based offering means that the underlying OS and other desktop applications don't matter as much.

Still Think Amazon Sells Books?

By Chris Brogan on 4/15/2008

Amazon's cloud computing business is on track to make more money than its retail business, according to a blog post by Between the Lines, by ZDNet's Larry Dignan. As their web services business offers more and more features, including static IP addresses, user-determined kernels, and now persistent storage space, reasons why NOT to consider a cloud alternative to racking your own servers are dwindling.

Is Your Enterprise at Risk from Internet Applications?

By Chris Brogan on 4/15/2008

A study conducted by Palo Alto Networks and reported in the New York Times Bits blog says that problems ranging from unauthorized proxy redirects, masked applications, and the consequences of moving corporate data out to the Internet and back are some of the challenges facing organizations seeking to use these forward-thinking technologies today.

EMC Moves Into Consumer/Small Business Space By Buying Iomega

By Chris Brogan on 4/15/2008

Storage experts EMC have signaled their interest in expanding their market to reach midsized and small business customers, as well as consumers by purchasing Zip Drive manufacturer Iomega for $213 million dollars, according to a post on Engadget.

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