CTOVision

The Technology Implications of the Obama Win

There are several megatrends sweeping the technology industry today.  Some of them are about to be accelerated.  

I like to use five key topic areas to track megatrends in IT: 

- Convergence and trend towards unified communications and user empowerment
- Globalization and increasing internationalization of IT and demographic shifts
- Increasing open development of software and hardware
- Power, Cooling and Space (PCS) impacting data centers and every place computing is done
- Increasing pace of technology development and probability of disruption

Over the past two months two major events have occurred which are impacting these trends.  

The first was the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the resulting cascading effects on the financial industry.  The impact on IT spending and the movement of more enterprises to grid/cloud computing because of that are still being assessed, but for some thoughts see: Wall Street Crisis

The second was the Presidential election of Barack Obama.   

Disruptive Technologies List Updated

The list of the positive technologies I believe all enterprise Chief Technology Officer s should be tracking has now been updated.  Please check it out at: 

http://www.ctovision.com/disruptive-technology-list.html

I try to keep this list up by remaining in dialog with enterprise CTO s and soliciting their feedback on the list.  I also keep watching what the venture capital folks are investing in and try to closely track what the big IT firms are up to.   The result is the list.

I've also started writing slightly more detailed reviews of key positively disruptive technologies.  I post them under titles "Disruptive Tech:..." and you can find links to those pages on the right hand side of the CTOvision.com blog.

For now this list includes:

• Disruptive Tech: Adapx
• Disruptive Tech: Adobe
• Disruptive Tech: Agent Logic
• Disruptive Tech: Attensity
• Disruptive Tech: Basis Technology
• Disruptive Tech: Centrifuge Systems
• Disruptive Tech: CopperEye
• Disruptive Tech: Endeca
• Disruptive Tech: Forterra Systems
• Disruptive Tech: Initiate Systems
• Disruptive Tech: Inxight
• Disruptive Tech: Language Weaver
• Disruptive Tech: MetaCarta
• Disruptive Tech: PixLogic
• Disruptive Tech: Quantum4D
• Disruptive Tech: Triumfant

See also:

http://www.ctovision.com/2008/02/it-disruptivity.html

Special Request: Collaboration Tool Survey

With the help of vizu.com I have just created an online survey I'd appreciate you taking a quick look at.  The survey is located at this link:   http://www.ctovision.com/collaboration-tool-survey.html  and is also, for now, along the lower right hand column of the CTOvision blog.  You can enter your responses either place for a look at results. 

The point of the survey is to get a quick feel for collaboration tools that CTOvision readers use.  I don't know what results to expect, but if there are conclusions of note I'll blog about them here.  

Thanks in advance

Bob

The New Acrobat.com vs The New Acrobat Connect

My last post was all about a conclusion I made in my personal collaborative tool of choice.  After evaluating many capabilities I settled on Acrobat Connect, a hosted collaborative environment that has a version that exceeds my needs for a very low cost. 

Then I saw the new online system just announced by Adobe called Acrobat.com    Acrobat.com provides even more collaborative features, like a better way to share audio (you can still use their free conference bridge but can also use VOIP by sharing your microphone, for example).    But Acrobat.com also ties together all the other online office capabilities, including a word processor (Buzzword), PDF file format converters and means to save and exchange files with others.   There is also a developer API. 

The entire interface is GREAT looking.  But also of note, Acrobat.com is free to sign up for.   That beats the low price of Adobe's connect.

Enter my office: using Adobe Acrobat Connect

I have picked a primary online meeting tool for my consultancy (Crucial Point LLC).  Although I will use any tool a client or associate needs me to use, the tool I prefer is Adobe Acrobat Connect.  

Why did I select Adobe Acrobat Connect?  A key reason is that no downloads are required for this to work (assuming, of course, that you have flash player installed on your system, which 98% of the computers on earth already do).