Expert Advice

The cocooned gTLD has started to spread its wings, and soon it will show its colors and become a butterfly. Its well-guarded fuzzy and slow progress has finally propelled it to a much-anticipated metamorphosis, but the world still waits for some flying maneuvers. Mother ICANN has worked very hard to...

Many small-business owners may not realize that the cloud plays a big role in their business operations, and its importance is growing every day. I'm often asked, "What exactly is the cloud, and why does my company need it?" Simply put, the cloud hosts resources and applications that are accessed th...

Does "green data center" refer to having more greenery around your data center site? No, definitely not. It means reducing your carbon footprint by making effective usage of the core center of your organization -- your "information assets." Being green requires an end-to-end, integrated view of the...

In an era when the sting of recession has not yet worn off, many consumers are continuing to look for ways to save a few dollars. One of the effects on the retail industry is the increasing desire of shoppers to avoid unnecessary shipping fees. While many consumers want to be able to purchase an ite...

The prudent CIO sees the need for a quantum level improvement in the way IT delivers services and resources. To survive, IT must rapidly regain competitive strength by emulating the key strengths of external cloud suppliers. The internal IT delivery model has to change from a bureaucratic process th...

Some people are considering now buying a home because they realize that residential prices are quite low. They reason that if they don't get into the market now, they might miss the window of opportunity to purchase a home at a deep discount from previous prices. Others are looking to get into the m...

As recently as just a few years ago, consumers had a limited set of research options when they were looking to make an informed product purchase. They may have done a Google search to learn where to buy the product or noticed an advertisement and visited a store to speak with a sales rep about it. F...

On June 20, 2011, ICANN made an announcement to a packed meeting in Singapore that created a global shockwave. With a thousand delegates bearing witness, ICANN released its long-awaited gTLD program, creating new types of domain names with unlimited potential. The application fee per name starts at ...

Because of power tools like marketing automation, marketers are able to contribute to revenue in a very measurable way. Expectations are high because of this capability -- like salespeople, marketers are now accountable for making a direct revenue contribution to the top line. They are being aske...

It is extremely exciting to be in the middle of what is arguably the fastest growing segment of the largest growing market in the world right now -- the mobile application ecosystem. Following are the top 10 trends and the top 10 opportunities that I see evolving over the coming quarters and years ...

Tablet commerce may be the new kid on the block when it comes to online retail, but as a recent Forrester research poll indicates, many online retailers are seeing that half of their mobile commerce transactions come from tablet devices. Moreover, an estimated 7.6 percent of the U.S. population will...

To borrow from Shakespeare, many companies find themselves asking "to VDI or not to VDI?" The first step to determine if Virtual Desktop Infrastructure is the right solution for your company is to identify exactly what VDI means for your organization. VDI actually encompasses several types of delive...

Most businesses with which I am familiar, especially those of small to medium-size, are so caught up in day-to-day challenges that the only time they take a good look at the health of their business and the timeliness of the filing and payment of certain taxes and levies is when they review their an...

Retailers aren't investing seriously in mobile platforms right now, and who can blame them? Despite the lofty percentage growth cited by mobile shopping advocates, retailers privately lament anemic mobile conversion rates and report total revenue figures that can kindly be described as "modest." En...

Last month, e-commerce giant Amazon made a foray into the flash sales marketplace. With European flash sales stalwart Vente Privee entering the North American market, and with the tremendous growth of U.S. flash sales players like Gilt Groupe and Rue La La, it's clear that the flash sales sector i...