Expert Advice

As the prolific trend of adoption would suggest, the case for cloud is compelling from both a business and technology perspective. There are a number of reasons for this, but one of the more compelling reasons from a technologist's point of view has to do with the ability to abstract lower levels of...

Because of the rapid pace of SaaS adoption, many security practitioners have found themselves scrambling to ensure the security of the specific technologies their enterprises want to employ. However, the dynamics of SaaS can make this a challenging exercise. This is because most of the options for s...

By now, most organizations have adopted cloud. Increased and widespread adoption as well as expansion of existing deployments are reflected in recent surveys. This suggests that if you're a technology pro and your organization is like most, you've already spent considerable time addressing how to fi...

For most technologists in the enterprise nowadays, cloud is a pretty big deal -- and securing it can be an even bigger deal still. Security was the top concern of 46 percent of respondents to a recent survey by North Bridge Venture Partners. While this number is actually down from last year's 55 pe...

Millions of people have created avatars that live in Internet virtual worlds. Those virtual worlds include Second Life and Maple Story, as well as video games. Although these virtual worlds and games are used regularly by individuals around the world, few consider the ownership and other legal right...

E-commerce companies rely on Big Data to glean valuable, real-time insights that drive smarter, more profitable business decisions. Problems can arise, however, when Big Data infrastructures become riddled with bottlenecks and don't perform optimally, causing critical intelligence to be delayed or u...

U.S. residential broadband Internet penetration has grown more than 400 percent since 2002, when just 16.5 million U.S. households had fast Internet service. The increased presence of these high-speed connections has implications for a variety of devices, which increasingly are arriving in the home ...

For many Western companies, a lack of confidence and basic local knowledge is stifling opportunity for international expansion. There are two key markets that I consider to be low-hanging fruit for U.S. merchants: Russia and China. First, develop a simple strategy for processing international paymen...

If presenting to the technology industry analyst community is so important, why do most companies do such a poor job? I have participated in more analyst briefings over the last 25 years than I can remember. Companies all want the same positive result, but they all go about it very differently. Only...

If we take a page out of our not-so-distant past, we can see that on the web, both commerce applications and functionality have contributed to the demise or success of mobile apps. The success of business models, return on investment and viability of mobile initiatives all depend on how well m-comme...

By the end of 2012, 60 percent of U.S. broadband households owned at least one app-enabled consumer electronic device. With connected device ownership at mainstream levels, there is a solid foundation for app development and rapid growth in app economies. Of the primary devices used to access apps, ...

While there are several key barriers preventing widespread enterprise ad, option of VoIP, more and more large companies are recognizing the usefulness of this technology. The enterprise VoIP equipment market will increase at a compound annual growth rate of 15 percent between 2010 and 2014. Meanwhil...

In case you missed it, 2012 -- the so-called "year of mobile" -- came and went pretty quickly. Now we simply live in a mobile world. E-commerce is moving to mobile devices more and more, and that trend is not likely to stop anytime soon. U.S. retail mobile commerce sales will grow from $13.63 billio...

The definition and makeup of the "personal cloud" are areas of intense debate. A variety of companies with a stake in cloud-based engagement have very different perspectives on what is and is not included as part of a consumer's personal cloud. "The cloud" broadly refers to the content, services, ...

One of two things will happen with the upcoming launch of the brand new RIM BlackBerry 10. Either it will be a success and help RIM get back on a growth curve, or it will end up being like the Palm Pre, loved by the media and analysts yet wanting for sales. Can RIM recover with BlackBerry 10? It's p...