Articles about Information Technology

In creating a world that doesn’t break down, a huge $20B opportunity is on the table for the process industry to address. Astute manufacturers should focus on reducing unplanned downtime and increasing asset utilization, as both processes represent the biggest opportunities for financial improvement in production operations.

Albert Einstein could well be alluding to smart manufacturing when he said: "If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on it, I would use the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes."

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The adoption of cloud IT services by small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) is increasing at an exponential rate. But despite the robust adoption rates and proven track record of cloud technology, many organizations of all sizes, including SMBs, are still relying on on-premises backup methods. By doing so they may very well be draining themselves of valuable resources, including financial resources.

This article discusses the specific ways in which these organizations that continue to rely on on-premises instead of cloud backups are costing themselves money. It discusses benefits of adopting the cloud backup model, and addresses common concerns and misconceptions IT and business professionals often mention as reasons for staying with on-premises backups instead of adopting the cloud.

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Met Office, the UK’s national weather service, has a new IT solution, thanks to a partnership between the service, IBM and Computacenter. It will allow the Met Office to process greater volumes of weather data faster.

Currently, the service collects and safeguards around 200 million weather observations every day. The new environment includes two new mainframes with 44 cores, and 200 terabytes of attached storage.

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Worldwide IT spending will jump another 1.4 percent this year, according to a new report by Gartner. The report says IT spending is expected to hit $3.5 trillion this year. A quarter before, the increase was 2.7 percent, but the difference occurred mostly due to the strengthening of the US dollar.

"The strong US dollar has cut $67 billion out of our 2017 IT spending forecast," says John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner. "We expect these currency headwinds to be a drag on earnings of US-based multinational IT vendors through 2017."

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IT environments require either moderate or significant transformation if they are to meet business requirements over the course of the next five years, a new report says.

The report by 451 research, entitled "Voice of the Enterprise: Cloud Transformation," says that 80 percent of organizations agree IT departments need disrupting to stay relevant.

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Digital technology is disrupting the manufacturing sector, but it seems as it is not afraid of it. As a matter of fact, the manufacturing industry seems to be embracing new technology and is excited to see what the future holds.

This is according to a new report by Fujitsu, entitled Fit for Digital, which takes a closer look at the UK’s manufacturing sector.

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As shown by disruptive businesses such as Airbnb, cloud computing is changing the face of business as we know it. Organizations of all sizes anywhere can now harness the power of cloud-based tools to innovate and collaborate faster and more seamlessly than ever before.

Cloud is becoming the foundation for digital transformation, enabling enterprises to manage the pressure of increasing the pace of their production cycles and boosting collaboration throughout the world. McKinsey estimates that by 2018, more than half (51 percent) of enterprises will adopt cloud as their primary IT environment -- up from just 10 percent in 2015. Indeed, it is no longer often a question of "if" but rather "which" cloud services enterprises should use.

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IT modernization is essential to addressing the needs of modern digital businesses, according to a new report by Avanade. The report is based on a poll of 800 IT decision makers in organizations scattered all over the world.

On average, IT decision makers believe that by modernizing IT, they could boost their company’s revenue by as much as 14 percent. That’s almost $1 billion a year, Avanade says.

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Despite the on-going uncertainty as the UK triggers Brexit proceedings, IT employees remain in high demand as rapid developments in IT are increasingly causing companies to experience wider skills gaps that they are struggling to fill. At 21 percent, IT and digital skills were cited as one of the top three skills most needed by organizations to achieve their business objectives this year.

IT professionals in cloud infrastructure, projects and change management, development and security saw the biggest salary increases last year of over two percent, however almost half of IT employees were dissatisfied with their rate of pay this year.

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When it comes to cloud skills, there’s a significant gender gap, and it’s particularly visible in the UK. This is according to a new report by Microsoft, entitled "Microsoft Cloud Skills Report: Closing the Cloud Skills Chasm." According to it, the gender mix among technical IT staff is 20 percent female versus 80 percent male. In just a fifth of companies (21 percent) the gender mix was 40 percent or greater.

Microsoft says this gender imbalance is "concerning," but perhaps even more concerning is the fact that very few companies are actually doing something about it. A third (35 percent) said they had no policies to address the issues (46 percent for companies with 250 to 999 staff). A quarter (23 percent) said they didn’t know of any actions put in place.

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It’s no secret that cloud-based collaboration tools are transforming the way we work, and Microsoft, with Office 365, is playing a major role in shifting workplace communication. Last year, Microsoft continued to enhance and develop Office 365 Groups as a powerful hub for team productivity. When armed with Office 365 Groups, employees have the opportunity to collaborate within a dedicated space with popular Office 365 features like mail, persistent chat, and collaboration powered by familiar technologies like Exchange, SharePoint, OneNote, Skype for Business, and Planner.

Before organizations can embrace this new way of working, however, IT teams need to combat the challenges of natively managing Office 365 Groups. Why? First, there are several ways for users in an organization to create a Group within an Office 365 tenant -- meaning IT admins must determine the most effective way to implement administrative controls to prevent unnecessary sprawl. Once users have the ability to create new Office 365 Groups, IT is also tasked with controlling group membership, placing safeguards around content within groups, and overseeing the lifecycle of Groups, including the eventual decision to delete or archive a Group and its content.

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In today’s complex business environment, the increasing rate of change has resulted in increased expectations for more value in less time. Today’s organizations are expected to delight customers, stay ahead of competitors, and react and adapt instantly when needed. To meet these demands, software must be capable of evolving and adapting continuously. As a result, regardless of industry, the thing on which companies now compete has become hyper-automation of the software development process.

Enter DevOps. Business leaders from fledgling startups to enterprise heavyweights, are coming to the realization that they need to embrace concepts like DevOps. As DevOps specialist and author Gene Kim states: "DevOps solves the most important business problem of our generation, [which is] how organizations make the transition from good to great."

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One of the best things about today? Stuff just works.

Consider the hours you once spent tapping your pen to the tune of broadband dial-up. And what about blowing on your Sega cartridge to get the game to load? These are a thing of the past.

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IT decision makers (ITDM) in the EMEA region serve as their company's "gatekeepers" and primary influencers, when it comes to choosing new technology purchases for the company. This is according to a new report by Spiceworks, which digs deeper into the roles of ITDMs and business decision makers (BDMs) when it comes to purchasing new technologies.

The study, "ITDM vs. BDM: Tech Purchase Superheroes," says BDM’s role is to "give final approval for technology funds and purchases."

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Just above half (58 percent) of UK workers believe it’s possible for them to get their dream job, according to a new report by Hired. The interesting thing about this stat is that the global average is significantly higher -- 70 per cent.

The similar statistic is with people that already believe they have their dream job -- globally, 44 percent of them think so, compared to 35 percent in the UK. And it gets worse.

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