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Business process management comes of age

Business process management (BPM) technology has been such a long time coming that it has largely missed out on the dubious benefits of being heavily hyped. Even so, there is now clearly a build up of excitement and interest around BPM. As enterprises slowly wake up to the possibilities of BPM, this Infoconomy business briefing will help IT decision-makers understand how to take advantage of this powerful enabling technology.

The mobile enterprise: IT has left the building

IT has left the building. Mobile employees, the last section of the workforce to have its core activities automated through IT, are increasingly being equipped with devices, applications and wireless communications capabilities designed to bring major efficiencies to field-based business processes.

Enabling employees to work seamlessly with enterprise systems, no matter where they are, is a challenge technologically as well as for management. This Infoconomy industry report will help IT decision-makers understand the problems - and solutions - involved in mobile IT.

Making enterprise storage a top business priority

In the opening three months of 2003, organisations as a whole increased their storage capacity by 49%. In any other industry that kind of growth in capacity would be regarded as wildly extravagant. But not in storage, where disk drive makers have continued to find ways of packing more data into smaller spaces and to build drives for less money. Just to stand still, some are finding they must increase the capacity of their machines by 50% or more a year.

With storage requirements and the storage capacity of systems increasing all the time, this Infoconomy industry report will help IT decision-makers understand how to make the most of their budgets and their storage and to take advantage of new technologies and management capabilities.

The open source operating system goes mainstream

For something that was originally conceived in a bored Finnish student's bedroom one summer, Linux has made surprisingly deep inroads into the enterprise. Today, the Unix-like operating system helps power more than one-third of all web servers and many enterprise software suppliers are furiously porting, or have already ported, their software to Linux.

This Infoconomy business briefing explores how Linux has worked its way into the enterprise and it what it offers the IT department's bottom line.

Practical strategies for business agility

"When the rate of change outside exceeds the rate of change inside, the end is in sight," warned Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE, in his book, From the Gut. In yet another busy month of consolidation and change in business, it was this kind of sentiment that attracted more than 100 executives to the Information Age Agile Business conference in London on June 26.

The applications software imperative

A diverse band of business gurus, industry leaders and management theorists is pushing a tough but increasingly strident message: Volatility is a fact of business life — learn to live with it.

This Infoconomy industry report focuses on how to create an organisation that can cope with these changes — a real-time enterprise:

Paperless office postponed

It doesnt happen that often, but every now and again, business is hit by a big problem that can only be solved by technology. And in 2003, the biggest single problem that organisations face is managing documents lots and lots of them.

The Optimised Enterprise

Seven out of 10 organisations fail to execute on their strategy, according to business intelligence guru David Norton, inventor of the balanced scorecard approach to business monitoring. The reason? They lack adequate management tools. Business performance management, or BPM, aims to address these shortcomings. But it is not a product as such rather an amalgam of technologies and methodologies designed to integrate and enhance organisations' decisionmaking processes. Together, these technologies can be used to present managers with a unified and clear view of enterprise activities, showing key performance indicators such as sales growth or profitability.

The IP Powered Enterprise

The technology to enable the convergence of data, voice and video onto a single network backbone has been around for a number years. But, until very recently, most organisations have stuck with their existing, separate, 'stove-piped' networks because they fulfil their requirements perfectly well. Now, a combination of budgetary pressures and the need for 'technology refresh' is forcing many businesses to reconsider the potential of consolidated networks.

The maturing of the midrange

It is no longer an option for smaller companies to be technology laggards they must embrace the electronic economy. This Infoconomy business briefing looks at the business, cultural and technology drivers shaping the midrange business applications market.

The managed services advantage

The way organisations invest in technology has changed. The depressed economy has led to an enormous focus on the cost of technology and the return on that investment. Many areas of technology have suffered as a result, but outsourcing has enjoyed a healthy surge in popularity. This Infoconomy report examines the market models, the business drivers and economic imperatives pushing organisations towards the managed services model.

Towards computing on demand

Since the beginning of 2002, one item has dominated the agenda of the major computer vendors: the rationalisation of IT architectures to deliver computing power as a dependable efficient service. This Infoconomy report examines the feasibility, cost and manageability of utility computing.

The Empowered Enterprise

In the wake of the Information Age Empowered Enterprise conference in London, this Infoconomy management report assesses the processes, applications and cultural changes that are necessary to build a dynamic, flexible organisation. It also gives business leaders and other decision-makers insight into how other companies are applying empowered enterprise strategies.

Omnipresent: Empowering the agile workforce

Agile working promises flexibility of working, with access to corporate data and systems wherever employees happen to be. Omnipresent: Empowering the agile workforce explains how to implement and benefit from an agile workforce

Process control: Technologies for building the agile enterprise

Once in while, a new technology creates a step change in how business is conducted. Business process management is, according to many industry experts, such a technology. This report outlines how BPM works, what it origins are, what its limitations are, and how it can be used to transform businesses, giving them the ability to very quickly adapt their IT systems as the environment changes.

Unified resources

IT decision makers have reached breaking point over storage. To address this problem, storage industry experts are urging them to ditch their direct attached storage architectures and move storage resources onto a network. But networked storage can bring a new set of problems, such as added complexity and the fact that many storage products from leading vendors do not interoperate.

Desktop evolution

Seismic shifts are underway in the desktop software market. The two major catalysts behind this change are software giant Microsoft's decision to impose a controversial subscription-style licensing scheme, called 'Software Assurance', and web services - the new applications approach to 'discover', assemble and deliver software modules as a service over the Internet.

Creating growth: Strategies for getting high-tech back on track

The technology industry is going through the harshest period in its history. This survey of more than 100 industry executives identifies the strategies companies are employing to kick-start growth.

Driving performance

The business intelligence (BI) industry has adjusted its attitude. Having enthusiastically supported the heady business expansion of 1999-2001 with products for every aspect of customer, B2B and web analytics, BI vendors are now repitching the value of their offerings where they are need today around managing or reducing costs and selectively targeting areas where there is demonstrable and timely return on investment.

Team tactics

To run an effective services operation in the current economic environment, managers clearly need better tools in order to manage resources more effectively and estimate costs more accurately. Suppliers say organisations that have implemented professional services automation (PSA) software are already enjoying both bottom-line cost savings and top-line revenue growth.