| CMPnetAsia: With a recent Radicati Group report predicting that 74 percent of all corporate phone lines will be IP-based by 2009, switching to VoIP seems to be a foregone conclusion. While cost savings is the biggest driver for VoIP adoption, some companies are also experiencing big business benefits. For instance, the CIO of Singapore-based NTUC Income Insurance credits a 40 percent jump in auto insurance sales to the company's VoIP system. This article provides a nice overview of the six most common approaches to VoIP, complete with cost comparisons. They are: on-site IP PBX solutions, achieved through a mid- to large-scale deployment, an inexpensive, all-in-one appliance or open source solutions; media gateways; IP Centrex; and managed VoIP services. The overwhelming favorite is IP PBX, according to Gartner. | Sponsor: IT Manager Development Series | | Maximize Your IT Management Career
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Developer.com: Does your CIO cynicism kick in when you hear tech geeks waxing rhapsodic about the much-hyped development language Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)? Fair enough — but Ajax offers some solid business benefits, including cost savings, says this author. Ajax-enabled applications are faster and result in an improved workflow, which means added productivity, fewer errors when completing tasks and reduced training times. Ajax applications also gobble less bandwidth. He compares a sales application created with Ajax to one created with a traditional development architecture; plenty of charts and graphs later, he estimates that the Ajax app would yield a 30 percent to 70 percent reduction in labor costs. Channel Register: Only 28 percent of enterprises are satisfied with their vendors' software pricing and licensing policies; this despite the fact that two-thirds of vendors have tweaked their policies during the last two years. A subscription-based model appears to be emerging as the favored method of buying software, according to a report by the Software and Information Industry Association. The number of vendors offering subscription models as their primary pricing method rose to 40 percent in 2005 and is expected to reach 60 percent by 2007. The number of enterprises that prefer the subscription model increased to 43 percent, up 7 percent from the previous survey. A big problem: Nearly three-quarters of firms manually track compliance or, worse, don't track it at all. The article includes a link that lets you download the entire report. | | Special Offer: Free White Paper Understanding the Total Cost of Ownership of IP Telephony Solutions
In this study conducted by an independent research and consulting group, the often-hidden costs associated with IP telephony ownership are revealed. Discover this analysis methodology for determining TCO based on six cost categories. It's highly flexible and can be used to generate similar benchmarking for many different sizes and types of deployment comparisons. Check it out today! | | | | CIO Insight: An unusual — but apparently growing — way of reducing software development costs is to partner with vendors to jointly develop applications. Such deals cut the customer's cost, boost its influence with the vendor and, in some cases, even result in royalty revenue. The vendor, in turn, gains valuable customer insight that can be used when selling to other customers. SAP typically cuts development costs in half during what it calls "strategic development projects" with customers. Several real-world examples of successful partnerships are included. For the flip side, there's a Q&A with a consultant who says that such deals must be carefully structured so as not to favor the vendor too heavily. Deal with intellectual property issues up front and use your own agreement form, he advises. Techworld: Oakland County, Mich., saved more than $2 million at hardware upgrade time by switching to thin clients, in which computing power is managed at the server level rather than at individual desktops. The savings came from a combination of cheaper hardware, reduced support costs and more cost-effective software license management. The county is also enjoying better disaster recovery, since users' files are stored on the servers with nightly data backups. The IT department won users' support by providing password-protected access for their personal files and replacing old monitors with snazzy flat-screen monitors. The IT department also upgraded the county's LAN so that users would benefit from faster applications. IT Manager's Journal: This in-depth yet concise take on 64-bit computing should help CIOs determine how best to use the emerging technology to maximize processing performance and enjoy other benefits that should ultimately help cut IT costs. The article runs through the 64-bit platforms available, detailing the complementary operating systems and software, and discusses how 64-bit works in language that a non-engineer can understand. Since both Intel and AMD are slowly but surely eliminating their 32-bit processor models, it makes sense to educate yourself now. | IT Marketplace | | | | | Tell the IT Business Edge audience of technology decision makers about your product, service, event, or job. Click here to list it in the IT Marketplace! | | 3 QUESTIONS:
Getting a Good Return on IT
With Guy Battista, executive vice president and CIO of First Data Corp., which was recently selected by SearchCIO.com as one of its 200 Return on IT Leaders for 2005. Battista also was voted one of the top CIOs in the United States by CIO magazine in 1998. Question: What are some questions that First Data asks when considering making new technology investments?
Battista: We ask ourselves three basic questions: What are the benefits or cost savings opportunities this investment will bring? What is the payback period for this investment? Are we making more money because of this investment or saving more money because of it? Question: How does First Data ensure that its business and technology objectives are closely aligned? Is there a specific process for doing so?
Battista: The IT group and the individual business units we support develop objectives together to ensure alignment and the business unit sets the priorities. The process then is to meet monthly to review accomplishments and review the next month's projects. This helps us all know where we are on current priorities. If we need to, we adjust the priorities with guidance from the business units. Question: Are there any emerging technologies that First Data is especially excited about?
Battista: There are many technologies that we constantly look at, especially those that could provide a competitive advantage. Rather than focus on the "bleeding" edge technologies, however, we like to look at what I'll call the "best of need." These are those new technologies that can give us the best return on investment, either in increased revenues or reduced costs, and deliver what we need for the business. | | Also from IT Business Edge: Voice & Data Convergence Voice & Data Convergence examines the strategic and tactical implications of emerging IP telephony technologies, from VoIP services to advanced CRM systems to security considerations. Find out what every IT decision maker should know. Click here to sign up! | By the Numbers
370 percent Increase in jobs postings for IT project managers over the last two years, according to online recruitment firm Dice, compared to an increase of 162 percent for all positions during the same time period. 28 percent Enterprises satisfied with their vendors' software pricing and licensing policies, according to the Software and Information Industry Association. $60 million Minimum amount that 45 percent of executives at the biggest banks in North America and Europe expect to spend through 2007 to comply with the Basel II framework, according to Accenture.
Breaking Headlines
insightexec: According to a recent PMP Research report, just 4 percent of companies say their CRM systems have delivered all of their expected benefits, and 20 percent have identified no major benefits from using them. Part of the problem may be difficulty in measuring their effectiveness. Only 34 percent of respondents have been able to evaluate their CRM efforts using effective measures. Seventeen percent have not established successful metrics, while 41 percent say it is too early to tell how well systems have performed. The dissatisfaction is driving down spending. Some 40 percent say they have spent less than $440,000 on CRM over the past three years, and a third of respondents do not know what they will spend next year. Not exactly a vote of confidence. (Free registration required) silicon.com: The IT department as we know it may go away — or at least there will be fewer of them — if you believe the analysts at Gartner. Increased outsourcing and the continuing commoditization of technology will result in one in 10 IT departments disappearing over the next five years, Gartner says. The latest forecast reflects earlier Gartner predictions calling for a radical revamp of IT to focus more on business issues. The fate of at least some IT departments, Gartner says, is that they will be absorbed into the broader business. "The primary focus of the new organization will be business transformation and strategic assets of information and process. When mature, it may no longer be identified as an IT organization," a Gartner analyst says. Computerworld: The tech industry shed 140,696 jobs in the first three quarters of 2005, an 18.8 percent increase over the 118,427 jobs cut in the first three quarters of 2004, according to global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. All is not negative, however. The number of jobs lost between July and September was 24 percent lower than the 54,701 job cuts reported during the same period in 2004. The only significant tech job growth was in the professional services area, where the rolls for computer systems design and related services grew by about 30,000 since September 2004. Continued industry consolidation is one reason increased tech spending hasn't resulted in new jobs being added, says Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Emerging Trends
ZDNet: Speaking for at least some of us, this author says he's not sure what Gartner's latest catchphrase, "rapid results," means, even after listening to several Gartner executives and analysts attempt to explain it. When Gartner's CEO tells him it means delivering business impact from IT in less than 18 months, he astutely points out that this "sounds like ROI." It also involves aligning IT with business objectives, says Gartner's global head of research. Hmmm. We haven't heard that one before. CIO Update: Companies can expect to pay more for IT professionals in 2006, according to Dice Inc., an online recruiting firm geared toward technology professionals. IT salaries began trending upward in early 2005 with a 2.4 percent increase in average pay, according to Dice. In 2006, the firm expects an increase of 5 percent or more, especially for high-demand jobs. A similar increase is forecast by Robert Half Technology, which says that the five jobs with the biggest increases in both salary and demand will likely be: IT auditor, lead application developer, network security administrator, business systems analyst and data analyst/report writer. Upper-level execs will fare well, especially project managers. InformationWeek: Financial institutions have a bigger burden to bear than many other businesses when it comes to compliance costs, due to their need to comply with the Basel II framework, an international agreement that places specific requirements on how banks compute the risk associated with their assets. According to a recent Accenture survey, 45 percent of executives at the biggest banks in North America and Europe say they expect to spend more than $60 million through 2007 on Basel II compliance, with 36 percent of that amount used to update IT systems and interfaces. The compliance efforts of Merrill Lynch & Co, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro and ING Direct, the retail-banking subsidiary of the Dutch ING Group, are detailed. IT Business Edge: Maximizing IT Investments
| Issue 43, Vol. 3 | | DISCLAIMER: At the time of publication, all links in this e-mail functioned properly. However, since many links point to sites other than itbusinessedge.com, some links may become invalid as time passes. | | This e-mail is sent by: NarrowCast Group, LLC, 124 N.First St., Louisville, KY 40202 | Copyright ©2003-2005 NarrowCast Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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Ann All covered a variety of business topics as a newspaper reporter before switching to automated teller machines — which, unbelievably, are just beginning to migrate to a Windows-based platform and more modern networking technologies like TCP/IP — as the editor of online trade publication ATMmarketplace.com. She can be reached at investments@itbusinessedge.com. | |
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