IETV - Mary E. Shacklett - Latest Vblogs

Mary E. Shacklett
Financial Services Policies Lag Tech Advances
12|4|12 | 2:18 | 6 comments

Regulations haven't kept up with advances in mobile devices and credit cards.

Mary E. Shacklett
Watch Your Business Secrets on Multi-Tenant Clouds
11|26|12 | 1:56 | 1 comment

Multi-tenant clouds assure security for clients, but not necessarily for their ideas. Here's one thing you should discuss with your cloud provider before you sign on.

Mary E. Shacklett
Making Project Management Work for Marketing
11|19|12 | 1:45 | 2 comments

Project management and marketing don't generally work well together, but now the cloud delivers PM software that is more compatible with marketing's creative and spontaneous nature.

Mary E. Shacklett
Enterprises Beef Up Data Recovery
11|2|12 | 2:22 | No comments

Global enterprises are now looking beyond having just two datacenters and toward establishing multiple datacenters in different parts of the world.

Mary E. Shacklett
iPhone Pushes Mobile Ad Boundaries
10|26|12 | 2:00 | 14 comments

Now apparently the mobile platform of choice, the Apple iPhone has benefited from its sound understanding of human factors and ergonomics – but is this reputation threatened by a looming avalanche of advertising?

Mary E. Shacklett
Making Wishes for Internet Innovation
9|19|12 | 2:07 | 11 comments

Three ways the Internet can improve over the next few years.

Mary E. Shacklett
Don’t BYOD to the Internet of Things
9|10|12 | 2:46 | 10 comments

The bring-your-own-device approach isn’t suited to monitoring of enterprise equipment and processes. In these cases, it is up to IT to come forward with gear suited to the task.

Mary E. Shacklett
Enterprises Like SaaS for Social Networking
9|6|12 | 2:04 | 8 comments

Enterprises are discovering that using social networking within the secure setting of a SaaS provider's network gives them an unusual opportunity to freely collaborate with partners, suppliers, and even competitors.

Mary E. Shacklett
Online Retailers Need to Double Down on Customer Service
8|28|12 | 1:46 | 2 comments

Recently, Amazon was recognized for its customer satisfaction excellence. It has made no secret that being customer-centric is a primary goal. This should be the goal of every e-tailer that wants to build market share.

Mary E. Shacklett
Online Education That Benefits Enterprises
8|20|12 | 1:57 | 8 comments

Tongji University in China has teamed with local businesses in the development of a "real world" banking system that now enables students to master technical skills that are immediately transferrable to enterprises.

Mary E. Shacklett
Where IT Draws the Line on Social Media
8|16|12 | 2:03 | No comments

As social media make their way into company operations, IT'ers and engineers are using it to exchange ideas and collaborate on problem solving with others. But there is also a line to be drawn when it comes to proprietary information sharing.

Mary E. Shacklett
Scrum Brings Social MediaThinking to Projects
7|30|12 | 2:12 | 8 comments

The very low-tech "scrum" project technique introduces "crowd talking" to projects and also sets the entire crowd to problem solving. So far, these new social-media-style meetings appear to have supercharged project execution.

Mary E. Shacklett
Microsoft Opens Up Office Options
7|16|12 | 1:38 | 2 comments

Microsoft's recent decision to bundle its Office software with business partner offerings indicates that cloud software may be in the news, but licensed packages are still in demand for failover.

Mary E. Shacklett
IT Compromises on Perfection
7|11|12 | 2:35 | 4 comments

IT is slowly accepting Marketing's need to get information out on the Web quickly. One key is accepting Website imperfections – and fixing them later.

Mary E. Shacklett
Business Analytics & the Excel Spreadsheet
7|3|12 | 1:12 | 4 comments

One of the great early business analytics success stories has been the incorporation of Excel spreadsheets. It is a perfect example of how new technology can optimize old tech, and how old tech can bring value and adoption to the new.

Mary E. Shacklett
Cloud Best-Practices Need 360-Degree Approach
6|19|12 | 2:56 | 2 comments

Sites plugging best-practices into their cloud solutions need an approach that considers not only "homegrown" best-practices from their own datacenters but also cloud best-practices from their vendors and the application providers that work off those vendors' platforms.

Mary E. Shacklett
More Doctors Getting On Board With Social Media
6|13|12 | 2:08 | 8 comments

Doctors are finally increasing their participation on social media sites, but not for one-to-one communications with patients.

Mary E. Shacklett
KPIs for the Cloud
6|5|12 | 2:56 | 2 comments

As enterprise experience grows with cloud, expect more companies to demand KPI performance for the business as well as SLA performance for IT.

Mary E. Shacklett
Going Public Can Hurt Innovation
5|30|12 | 2:25 | 4 comments

Innovation and going public can be strange bedfellows. It's also a major reason many companies that can afford to do so remain private.

Mary E. Shacklett
IT Puts Public Cloud in the Silo
5|23|12 | 2:06 | 5 comments

Enterprises are using public clouds, but until better security and IT tools come along, there won't be fullscale integration with IT infrastructure.

Mary E. Shacklett
HPC May Be Headed for Cloud
5|10|12 | 3:07 | No comments

High-performance computing has traditionally been the province of academia, but enterprises are now giving it a serious look. The interest is prompting several universities to consider offering HPC cloud services to private sector organizations.

Mary E. Shacklett
Time to Think About Cloud ROI
5|4|12 | 2:41 | 4 comments

CIOs need to be developing their ROI metrics for cloud now. Why? Because there may be a number of "hidden" fees that need to be added to the vendor's user "per seat" cost.

Mary E. Shacklett
Law Will Define Next-Gen Privacy
4|25|12 | 1:48 | 7 comments

The plan for unmanned police drones to patrol traffic and other city conditions in Seattle has sparked a new set of legal concerns about privacy. Law traditionally lags technology, but we can expect now to see a new round of activity in the courts as legal definitions begin to emerge on what "next-gen privacy" will look like.

Mary E. Shacklett
Cloud Honeymoon Set to End
4|18|12 | 2:24 | 9 comments

Many CIOs are findng themselves in the midst of a "cloud honeymoon," with little empirical data available about how cloud should perform and with other C-level executives just happy to have cloud. But this is likely to end in the next 18 months, when the hard questions about cost savings, agility, and speed of deployment begin to emerge.

Mary E. Shacklett
More Enterprises 'Following the Sun' With IT
4|3|12 | 1:49 | 3 comments

In the interest of providing true 24/7 processing in a global economy, more enterprises are toggling production among datacenters, sharing databases, and placing key IT subject matter experts in remote areas.

Mary E. Shacklett
Benefits of a 3-Datacenter Model
3|26|12 | 2:36 | 2 comments

With 24/7 processing and business continuation paramount, more organizations are considering having three datacenters, where primary and secondary datacenters are in their immediate region and a third is in a remote geography. Why? To avoid repercussions of a major disaster that could hit every IT resource in a specific region.

Mary E. Shacklett
Doing Social Networking Right
3|19|12 | 2:31 | 9 comments

Companies are still getting their feet wet with social networking and what employees should and shouldn't broadcast. But they don't always involve HR and PR. Here's why they should, and what they risk when they don't.

Mary E. Shacklett
Private Cloud Reaches a Tipping Point
3|12|12 | 2:33 | 8 comments

Less than a year ago, we were debating whether private or public cloud would prevail. Private cloud now appears to be a clear favorite. The reason? Organizations of all sizes are getting comfortable with cloud, and vendors are providing solutions that make the adoption of private cloud straightforward and less risky.

Mary E. Shacklett
Enterprise IT for Independent Agents
3|7|12 | 2:33 | No comments

As enterprises extend private cloud offerings and IT support to their networks of independent agents, there is more goodwill and potential IT revenue to be gained from remote IT service support over the Internet. Enterprises that consider this strategy may gain important diffentiators when it comes to attracting the best independent agent sales talent.

Mary E. Shacklett
Corporate Email Needs Best-Practices
2|21|12 | 2:08 | 8 comments

Corporate email is a great natural time manager, a great way to communicate across time zones, and a natural way to keep records on ongoing projects and conversations. But there are limits to its benefits.

Mary E. Shacklett
New Jobs Meet Rich IT Talent Pool
2|8|12 | 2:12 | 5 comments

Internet-enabled learning (online schools) and certifications have combined to produce rich IT talent pools just as the jobs market is starting to accelerate. Win-win!

Mary E. Shacklett
DR Should Include User Empowerment
2|1|12 | 2:59 | 6 comments

Disaster recovery is about restoring service to users, but when restoration times are protracted, companies should empower users so they have maximum flexibility for dealing with their situations.

Mary E. Shacklett
Real-Time Analytics Needs a DR Plan
1|11|12 | 1:56 | 8 comments

As companies begin to embed real-time business analytics and business intelligence in their operations, they'll need more than 24/7 availability. Companies will also need to include BA and BI in their disaster recovery plans.

Mary E. Shacklett
Verticals Need Turnkey Cloud Solutions
1|3|12 | 2:28 | 3 comments

65% of CIOs are on board with cloud, but 55% are still thinking about it. Risk is the major barrier to entry. Cloud purveyors can help to address this by providing turnkey cloud solutions targeted at specific vertical industry markets.

Mary E. Shacklett
Cloud Needs System Management Superstructure
12|26|11 | 2:14 | No comments

Cloud is pushing classic corporate data centers beyond their physical boundaries and into new territory to where they one day might be expected to federate with different clouds. For this to happen seamlessly, a new class of systems management superstructure software will be needed.

Mary E. Shacklett
We're in an Integration State of Mind
12|15|11 | 1:59 | 4 comments

Integration can be tough when it comes to bringing disparate systems and applications together. But Internet-facing devices like the iPhone remind us on a daily basis that integrations have to make sense in the "minds" of individuals and businesses, no matter how good they might be technologically.

Mary E. Shacklett
Risking Lock-In With Commodity Cloud Solutions
12|1|11 | 2:06 | No comments

Companies might be eager to secure commodity cloud solutions like virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), but they need to maintain their agility so they can change vendors in the future, if need be.

Mary E. Shacklett
Help Is Coming for Virtual Image Deployment
11|15|11 | 2:18 | 3 comments

Today, most sites manually create scripts for virtual system image and deployment in the cloud. This consumes time and can introduce error. Now, systems vendors are coming to the rescue with new automation tools that expedite and bulletproof the process. This is good news for the cloud.

Mary E. Shacklett
Hackers Aggressively Target Mobile Devices
10|13|11 | 02:08 | 2 comments

Mobile device hacking in business is dramatically on the rise as companies use more consumer-grade devices. User education remains one of IT's best preventive strategies.

Mary E. Shacklett
Mobile Serves a Game-Changer to IT
10|4|11 | 2:41 | 1 comment

Cheaper, consumer-grade mobile devices are allowing SMBs to capitalize on Internet mobile communications and are replacing more ruggedized devices in industrial applications for companies of all sizes. Cost is one factor. Comfort is another.

Mary E. Shacklett
Let's Rethink Internet Advertising Channels
9|21|11 | 1:57 | 8 comments

Proctor and Gamble recently announced it was planning to eliminate some of the middle ranges of its product lines. Does a potential re-segmentation of the US market portend a change in approaches to Internet advertising as well?

Mary E. Shacklett
Speeding Up Virtual Systems Creation
9|13|11 | 3:04 | 6 comments

Now there are new tools that give businesses the ability to expedite virtual systems creation for multiple platforms, with reduced chance for error. These tools could reduce virtual systems creation and deployment times by as much as 80 percent.

Mary E. Shacklett
Tales of E-Commerce & Solid State Disk
8|30|11 | 2:12 | 2 comments

Solid state disk continues to be expensive for datacenters to acquire. But technologists have some new and exciting ideas.

Mary E. Shacklett
The Power of Kleenex
8|2|11 | 2:27 | 4 comments

In the past, the most powerful brands became the products that they represented, whether it was Kleenex for tissues or Coke for colas. Super brands are no different on Internet. The techniques of branding might change, but the challenges to achieving super-brand status remain the same.

Mary E. Shacklett
Website Abandon Rates Matter
7|26|11 | 2:28 | 11 comments

Companies have fine-tuned metrics for measuring abandon rates on phone systems and in call centers, but Website metrics are still a work in process.

Mary E. Shacklett
Social Transforms Supply Chain
7|12|11 | 2:33 | 5 comments

At last, social networking technology provides hope that traditional electronic data interchange (EDI) bottlenecks and process delays between suppliers and buyers can be eliminated.

Mary E. Shacklett
Mobile Apps Emerge for IT Workload Management
6|28|11 | 2:02 | 2 comments

As organizations advance their private cloud initiatives, higher IT service levels will be expected. Now, new mobile applications allow IT infrastructure managers to manage IT system workloads and to intervene with re-prioritizing work or trouble-shooting when necessary.

Mary E. Shacklett
Let's Hear It for Really Fast Broadband!
6|21|11 | 1:46 | 10 comments

Initiatives like Internet2 continue to advance rapid broadband in the US, but the country still lags behind others. It's time for industry to join government in investing to further innovation and economic growth.

Mary E. Shacklett
And the Winner Is... Private Cloud!
5|23|11 | 2:36 | 4 comments

Whether you're a super-sized enterprise or the smallest of SMBs, the preferred implementation of cloud is private.

Mary E. Shacklett
Smartphone Convergence Hitting Supply Chain
5|6|11 | 1:38 | 3 comments

Device convergence onto the smartphone is beginning to appear in retail outlets and the supply chain warehouse. The advantages? Reduced labor hours, fewer devices to manage, and better customer service.

Mary E. Shacklett
Virtualization: A Double-Edged Sword
4|19|11 | 2:27 | No comments

At first, virtualization propelled business interest in the cloud. But as businesses grow more comfortable with internal virtualization technology, cloud providers will have to find new ways to bring value to the business.

Mary E. Shacklett
Cloud, Internal Systems Should Work Together
3|17|11 | 1:57 | No comments

The power of internal systems can be leveraged into the cloud, and the cloud can extend the reach of internal systems. Companies are building out best-practices that capitalize on the strengths of both.

Mary E. Shacklett
Next-Gen Apps Will Be Net-Centric
2|24|11 | 2:07 | 2 comments

The app development debate up until now has been around whether to develop for a thick or thin client. But the real revolution is just beyond that debate: It is whether to recraft application design so that it is Internet-centric.

Mary E. Shacklett
Collaboration: A Private Matter
2|3|11 | 2:10 | 2 comments

Increasingly, CIOs are taking the position that online collaboration is mission-critical and best practiced in private clouds. Here's why.

Mary E. Shacklett
There May Be Too Much eTail in Retail
1|19|11 | 2:28 | 2 comments

Almost every brick-and-mortar store these days has Internet. But we may need a little less “E” with our retail.

Mary E. Shacklett
EMR: Still a Work in Progress
1|4|11 | 1:57 | 2 comments

More healthcare institutions are now using the electronic medical record, but having seamless, end-to-end communications is still a dream for the future. Getting EMR vendors to agree on a universal data structure would be one giant step forward.

Mary E. Shacklett
Passing Down the Cloud
12|21|10 | 1:45 | 2 comments

Once a cloud service is implemented, there should be a systematic handoff of responsibility for the cloud from IT to the business. If companies fail to do this, they risk not capitalizing on the business benefits of the cloud.

Mary E. Shacklett
Reassessing the Biz Case for VDI
12|14|10 | 2:08 | No comments

More companies are taking a step back to look at how best to implement virtual desktop infrastructure that uses cloud services. It appears that VDI is especially well suited to businesses with many remote sites.

Mary E. Shacklett
Enterprises Tackle Internet WAN Problems
12|7|10 | 2:20 | No comments

Some enterprises requiring high levels of quality online customer service in emerging countries are taking new approaches to their monolithic transaction systems by splitting them up and assigning them to local country cloud providers. Watch to find out why!

Mary E. Shacklett
New Media Bring Up Old Questions
11|15|10 | 1:16 | 6 comments

As organizations use more social media, business users are clamoring for access, and we’re faced with an age-old question: Who should set policies on access and content?

Mary E. Shacklett
Banks Readying Mobile Apps
11|8|10 | 2:41 | No comments

With their online customers now nearing 50 percent, banks are starting to develop and deliver mobile applications, thereby differentiating themselves with mobile product offerings and custom GUI interfaces.

Mary E. Shacklett
HR: Serve Yourself!
11|1|10 | 2:09 | 3 comments

As organizations go "leaner," self-service Internet technology is empowering employees to change their employee benefits or take online training to prepare for future career advancement.

Mary E. Shacklett
Pre-Packaging the Cloud
10|20|10 | 1:43 | No comments

Since not all cloud services providers consistently meet IT standards of excellence, traditional purveyors of IT hardware, software, and best practices are entering the field with "pre-packaged" data centers for cloud providers that are intended to meet corporate IT's high expectations.

Mary E. Shacklett
Terminating SaaS Contracts
10|15|10 | 2:04 | No comments

When negotiating SaaS contracts with a vendor, it’s uncomfortable but critical for IT to focus on termination clauses.

Mary E. Shacklett
The Clouding of IT Practices, Part 2
Part 2 of 2 | See complete series
10|6|10 | 01:48 | No comments

As IT retains more cloud services to run systems, IT policies and operations – like service-level agreements (SLAs) – are changing, too.

Mary E. Shacklett
The Clouding of IT Practices, Part 1
Part 1 of 2 | See complete series
9|29|10 | 1:56 | 4 comments

Cloud services bring great benefits to IT, but they also force revisions to IT practices. One area where cloud services are having an impact is disaster recovery and business continuation.

Mary E. Shacklett
Software May Need a Culture Shift
9|17|10 | 2:10 | 2 comments

Businesses are starting to ask for software that stays generic and can be fully optimized. For most commercial software developers, getting there might involve entire makeovers of internal values and infrastructures.

Mary E. Shacklett
Wish List for Mobile Devices, Part 2
Part 2 of 2 | See complete series
9|7|10 | 1:53 | 1 comment

High on the list of desired improvements from the mobile industry are: shared digital storage for the Internet; phone capability across borders; reduced electro-magnetic radiation; and rewards-based service plans.

Mary E. Shacklett
Wish List for Mobile Devices, Part 1
Part 1 of 2 | See complete series
8|31|10 | 1:41 | 3 comments

By 2014, mobile devices will overtake laptops as the appliance of choice for consumers. But device makers still have some wishes to fulfill, including mobile app simplification and the ability to better perform word processing/spreadsheet functions.

Mary E. Shacklett
Online Education Gets a Boost
8|30|10 | 2:02 | 8 comments

Online education, improving to better replicate the interactions that occur between teachers and students face-to-face, grew in double digits during the recession. Still, there’s more work to be done.

Mary E. Shacklett
Prepare for Next-Gen Virtualization
8|3|10 | 2:07 | 2 comments

Cisco's UCS and IBM's zEnterprise have upped the ante for virtualization and 21st century computing. In the future, look for integration of disparate operating systems at the firmware level, self-healing architectures, and workload optimization across entire data centers.

Mary E. Shacklett
IT & the Importance of Selling
7|7|10 | 1:41 | 2 comments

Now that we are past the initial user exuberance with the Internet, Web-based applications, and mobile devices, IT is entering a new phase of integrating business processes and rules with the Web. This is hard work, and keeping business users engaged in the process is no small task.

Mary E. Shacklett
Internet Mobile Technology Changes the Homefront
6|10|10 | 02:01 | 6 comments

There's more to mobile technology than cellphones and PDAs. The next time you get a package delivered, get your electric/gas meter read, or have a service tech over to service your cable TV, say hullo to the Internet

Mary E. Shacklett
Internet Storage, Part 2
Part 2 of 2 | See complete series
5|26|10 | 2:25 | No comments

Enterprises are taking a hard look at new technologies for managing huge volumes of stored data.

Mary E. Shacklett
Internet Storage, Part 1
Part 1 of 2 | See complete series
5|19|10 | 1:57 | 3 comments

Large, unstructured files are generating a data explosion within enterprises – and forcing corporate IT to rethink how it deals with storage.

Mary E. Shacklett
Online Banking, Part 2
Part 2 of 2 | See complete series
4|28|10 | 2:25 | No comments

As banks seek to improve their online customer experiences, they are recognizing that many of the Web-oriented skills they are looking for are already at mature levels in the retail industry. Increasingly, banks are breaking with the tradition of hiring from within the industry and are importing retail talent.

Mary E. Shacklett
Online Banking, Part 1
Part 1 of 2 | See complete series
4|21|10 | 3:10 | 3 comments

Since the mid-1990s banks have had three main online objectives: establishing an e-presence, providing enough security for bank customers, and shifting banking transactions from brick-and-mortar branches to the Web. Results have been good, but banks still struggle when it comes to delivering a pleasing online customer experience.

Mary E. Shacklett
Retail Supply Chain Goes Web
4|7|10 | 2:19 | 2 comments

The recession has generated worries among retailers about what to stock and what consumers would and would not buy in troubled economic times. Turns out it was enough to tilt the supply chain in favor of Web-based solutions that could track suppliers more effectively.

Mary E. Shacklett
Mainframes & Internet, Part 2
Part 2 of 2 | See complete series
4|6|10 | 2:54 | 1 comment

Mainframes are a major driver of "behind-the-scenes" Internet e-commerce because of their fast and reliable transaction processing, a rich heritage of business applications that continue to deliver value, and a new ability to host operating systems like Linux, which allows sites to free up floorspace and reduce energy consumption.

Mary E. Shacklett
Mainframes & Internet, Part 1
Part 1 of 2 | See complete series
4|2|10 | 1:46 | 6 comments

When it comes to the high-volume transaction processing of e-commerce, many are surprised to learn that much of this processing is being done on mainframes. The fact is, 70 percent of worldwide enterprise applications that are mission-critical reside on mainframes – and mainframes are major e-commerce processors.

an IBM information resource

Mary E. Shacklett: Vblogs