Stories by Bob Violino

In depth: Unified communications still fragmented

Unified communications (UC) technology has garnered a fair amount of attention, much of it due to vendors touting their UC offerings as the answer to problems workers have keeping in touch with colleagues, business partners and customers in a highly frenetic, increasingly mobile business world.

IT's 6-step guide to adopting consumerization

If your IT department is resisting the "consumerization" trend, it's in the minority. Recent research shows that most enterprises are proactively addressing this trend and the new relationship between IT and users that often accompanies a consumer IT strategy. What do they know that you don't?

Cloud SWAT teams

Cloud computing poses unique security challenges for organizations, and multiple industry surveys have shown that security and privacy are among the key concerns of executives considering the cloud.

Preparing for the real costs of cloud computing

Most experts agree: The cloud is moving past the hype stage and starting to deliver tangible benefits, primarily increased flexibility and agility.

Off to a Fast Start

Feeling like your business intelligence efforts are a bit sluggish and out of touch with what the company needs? Maybe it's time to try agile BI, a rapid development methodology that solicits end-user input early and often and delivers BI systems fast.

7 ways to do big data right using the cloud

There's a wealth of data out there companies can use to better understand customers and identify emerging business opportunities and threats. But how to access and work with all that data? An emerging type of service called data as a service, or DaaS, promises to help.

Baker Hughes: Wake-on-LAN technology has resulted in 40% energy savings

Baker Hughes, a provider of oil and gas services, has made energy consumption a major factor in its decision-making processes.

Citigroup: Desktop standardization cuts energy costs by $6 million per year

New York-based financial services firm Citigroup began a strategic data center transformation in 2005, with the goal of reducing its data centers from 68 to 24 by the end of 2010. Citi not only met that goal, but exceeded it by cutting down to 22 data centers.

KPMG: Aims to reduce its carbon footprint by 25% through environmental stewardship

In the past 18 months, the IT group at KPMG has helped update and create new processes and workflows for the company's paper-, energy- and carbon-intensive systems.

Build BI tools fast with agile approach

Feeling like your business intelligence effort is a bit sluggish and out of touch with what the business needs? Maybe it's time to try agile BI, a rapid development methodology that solicits end-user input early and often, and delivers BI systems fast.

How to live with malware infections

How can you be sure your organization doesn't have insidious viruses or other malware lurking within systems and applications, waiting to inflict damage? You can't.

Preparing for the real costs of cloud computing

At a cloud computing conference in New York in June, a number of speakers pointed out that the cloud is moving past the hype stage and is beginning to deliver tangible benefits to organizations. These improvements include increased flexibility and agility.

ISACA launches audit program for social media governance

ISACA, a global association of 95,000 IT assurance, security and governance professionals, has launched a new customisable audit program to help enterprises address the complex and emerging area of social media governance.

Cloud Security Alliance updates controls matrix

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) has launched a revision of the Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM). The new matrix (version 1.1), available for free download, is designed to provide fundamental security principles to guide cloud vendors and help prospective cloud customers assess the overall security risk of a cloud provider.

Filippo Passerini: Strategic thinking enables IT

Filippo Passerini attributes his business and personal style to lessons learned while playing competitive chess as a teenager. One lesson is to continually anticipate what's coming and think two, three or more moves ahead. Another is to pay attention to the clock and not take too much time to make a move.