Bernard's Blog

I'm quite certain that more people are trying to cure Swine Flu than will every catch it. I'm also reasonably certain I'll end up regretting saying that. However, its interesting to see how a multitude of more modern technology is being applied to the...

Some interesting insights from Dan Rasmus on Productivity, Efficiency and Patient Care at the NHS. Measuring productivity gains in meaningful and tangible business oriented outcomes is an ongoing challenge. "It isn’t good enough to create correlations...

This article from freshbusinessthinking.com would suggest it could be. http://www.freshbusinessthinking.com/business_advice.php?AID=2375&Title=SharePoint+Steers+Companies+Through+Economic+Downturn SharePoint forms the cornerstone of Microsoft's Business...

If there are two things we're all desperate to save right now it is money and the environment. How fortunate it is, therefore, that by enabling the workforce to work from any place and at any time Unified Communications technology can save both travel...

I think our BI vision is one of the most clearly defined market visions Microsoft has. I also think that it is a market where we can really add value and change the dynamics of the market. Making BI commercially viable enough for every employee to utilize...

Somehow the BI team seem to corner some of our most exciting demos. Thanks to Nic for compiling this top-ten list in one place. http://blogs.msdn.com/bi/archive/2009/04/23/top-10-demos-for-microsoft-bi.aspx As a side note,  its worth noting that...

While no one is under any doubt whether that we are now experiencing a set of economic conditions we have not experienced for a generation (if not more), there is a growing debate on the nature of these conditions and for how long we should plan for "recovery"...

I feel validated! "Banning Facebook and the like goes against the grain of how people want to interact. Often people are friends with colleagues through these networks and it is how some develop their relationships." Using technology to build...

With the endless resurrection of the "ghosts of 1929" I'm starting to believe that even the dead have failed to miss the economic events of the past few weeks. Typically, in times of economic uncertainty and downturn, IT braces itself for an...

Nearly half of Britons -- 44 percent -- are discomgoogolation sufferers, according to a survey, with over a quarter -- 27 percent -- admitting to rising stress levels when they are unable to go online. Interesting statistics. It appears that not having...

Another good spot from Steve. I blogged about Software Consumarization before. The Unilever example is not atypical. Businesses from all walks of life are finding it challenging to integrate a digitally enabled workforce into an organization viewed...

There's been much press on this lately. We've long held that whilst there's a future in cloud computing and software-as-a-service, the current limitations in reliability and privacy mean a pure-play cloud solution is unlikely to ever be truly viable....

I'm a little tardy picking this one up... http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/07/business_intell_2.html?cid=RSSfeed_IWK_ALL ... but I love stories like this. BI is very much a productivity exercise.  In this case it's more about...

Good find by Jason. In line with my previous post, customers have far greater expectations on how rapidly organizations can react to their needs. That can range from delivering a product to replying to e-mail. One very powerful tool that BPI offers is...

In IBM's "The Enterprise of the Future" there is a profile of "financial outperformers" and "underperformers" driven by research from the Global CEO Study series. This is accompanied by the statement "financial outperformers...

Examining the Oxford English Dictionary, there are more definitions than one might expect. It's no surprise, therefore, with so many definitions of "search" in the English language, that defining it in the context of a technology solution and...

Some good commentary from Steve on cloud-computing and Tom Austin's view of it in ComputerWeekly.com . There's certainly no shortage of pundits when it comes to cloud-computing and Software-as-a-Service. There does seem to be a definite shift away from...

Thanks to Pej for posting this one. It really is a good demonstration of how each of the five capabilities of BPI work best when they are applied together to provide this kind of synergy. It adds weight to the argument that you can't do BI without having...

Some interesting thoughts from InformationWeek. Collaboration is a challenge/solution/capability applied to a variety of business processes. One that's increasingly common is innovation. There's a very definite momentum gathering in the formalization...

Putting our money where our mouth is...     Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Team Blog : Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 to provide native support for ODF and PDF document format standards

I'm really excited to have the opportunity to present at this year's Microsoft WorldWide Partner Conference in Houston. The topic of my presentation will be: Become a “Chemical Synapse”. Use the combined proposition of BPIO and Microsoft’s...

I had the pleasure of attending one of Nick's classes several years ago. I was quite young and impressionable at the time and much of what he said has stayed with me since and I've found it all very valuable. Much of what we discuss with productivity...

One of the great things about Microsoft Office is its extensibility. Part of what makes it a great choice for Business Productivity Infrastructure is the capability to run it as an application platform also. Office Labs showcases some of the tools developed...

I've always found our BI webcasts to be incredibly valuable and so I thoroughly recommend signing up for the upcoming set: THE BI Blog : PerformancePoint: Implementation web cast series

The essential concept of the alignment trap is that a poorly performing or excessively complex IT organization won't accomplish the desired business outcomes regardless of how well aligned IT is to those outcomes. I would also argue that the concept...