Archive by Author

Harvard Students Top 5 Medical Apps

by on April 25, 2011 in Telehealth, UC News

Quite an interesting list, here are the top 5 downloaded apps by med school students at Harvard, care of Mobihealthnews:

Dynamed – Students and physicians can use this clinical reference tool created by physicians for point-of-care situations

Unbound Medicine uCentral – This apps serves as a portal bringing popular medical publications to students’ iPad with the tap of the screen. The app includes 5 Minute Clinical Consult, A to Z Drug Facts, Drug Interaction Facts, and others.

VisualDx Mobile – VisualDx provides physician-reviewed clinical information with thousands of medical images showing the variation of disease presentation through age, stage, and skin type.

Epocrates Essentials – The app is an all-in-one mobile guide to drugs and disease with an integrated disease database with conditions, plus over-the-counter medications and hundreds of diagnostic and laboratory tests.

iRadiology – A learning tool for medical students and residents, iRadiology provides quick reviews of classic radiology cases and images.

 

Popularity: 2% [?]

Unofficial Windows Phone Lync Client Released

by on April 25, 2011 in Lync, Microsoft

In a prelude to a busy 6-9 months for Lync mobile clients the small team developing the unofficial Windows Phone client have released the necessary server to complement the Marketplace application.

The REST server can be found here

Implementing a dedicated server to push out information such as updates and AD is likely to be a very similar solution used by the official Lync clients that Microsoft/RIM and Nokia will release over the coming months.

While I’m sure most large Lync installs will await news of the official mobile release schedule from Microsoft hats off to Michael and his small but dedicated team members who have developed a great looking client.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Fitting Tablets into IT

by on April 3, 2011 in Apple, Lync, Microsoft, Office 365, Sharepoint, Wave 15, Windows 8

Over the past couple of weeks Dell and Micosoft executives have questioned the longevity of the tablet.  Is this wishful thinking on behalf of two large IT organsations that have been obliterated by Apple’s tablet dominance or a valid point?

Such a question is a great spur for debate within an IT organization and has led me to think through how I would respond in the broadest possible sense.  Should IT start to base their strategy and services on multiple devices which includes a tablet or concentrate on desktop/laptop alone?

In my view IT has to focus on a strategy that supports a dual operating system for Desktop and Mobile.   With tablets able to fit into either category.  I could envisage a need within a large enterprise for tablets with different operating systems.

If I’m in a large enterprise today I would base my dual operating strategy around a Windows provision for my information workers who are content creators and then an Apple based provision for my mobile workers and content consumers.

I would not restrict my business utilizing other operating systems such as Android, Phone 7, OSX.  I would want my information worker applications to operate on these platforms.  Users would be free to use but they would have to self support.

For standard information worker applications I’d plan around an evergreen Microsoft strategy of Exchange, Sharepoint, Lync and Office.  I would have the necessary Microsoft infrastructure to support native external support without the need for middle ware such as Citrix.

Why so much Microsoft?  Quite simply Microsoft has the most comprehensive offer for information workers with the most effective delivery mechanism via their cloud and on premise solution.  When applications are reviewed separately Microsoft may not be market leading but as a complete whole that can be managed and utilsied by end users they are far ahead of the competition.

MS Licenses are expensive but this cost is off set by a reduced need for staff numbers required to manage a mixed estate.  Their Office 365 offer continues to mature and I would review Office 365 as a delivery mechanism and use MS’s pricing as a benchmark for an internal on premise provision.

Given the simplified Microsoft estate I would review the number of technical staff required within internal IT.  I would also review the existing contractual arrangements with system integrators.  System integrators often have to manage complex estates and within a simplified Microsoft estate I’m not sure what value they can add to the IT provision.

Couple of comments on the above. I don’t mention the version numbers as I would institute a policy that would maintain the latest version of software. Secure-id would only be used for sensitive application data such as finance etc.

Applications should be built on industry standards of HTML however I recognize there will be industry specific applications.  These should be placed within the remit of business IS rather than Infrastructure IS with the costs borne directly by the business.  I would have concerns about building bespoke applications within Microsoft office applications.  Such applications can prove beneficial however the support of the application would have to include the ability to upgrade as we move through the Microsoft 2-3 year upgrade cycle.

One open question is whether by default all my workers would automatically receive a desktop option with a mobile as a secondary option or would I allow my business to choose a mobile device as a primary device and a desktop device as an optional secondary.

Google OS will also be in the mix and is especially relevant for small to medium enterprise today but for large enterprise today I would move forward with a dual Windows/Apple strategy.

 

Popularity: 5% [?]

Ocado and Tesco Technology Competition

by on March 19, 2011 in UC News

Nick Lansley of Tesco’s is a particular favourite blog of mine and reading his latest blog post on Ocado scraping the Tesco website proves a fascinating insight into how technology is fueling the competition within the  supermaket sector.

At the Retail Week conference, Ocado CFO Andrew Bracey admitted that they scrape the Tesco grocery site in order to get Tesco prices with which they price match with 8,000 of their own products.

Sitting in the audience, I was intrigued by Ocado’s admission that they scrape our site (that is, run scripts from client machines that mechanically operate our web site pretending to be a human customer. Such scripts will loop through every department, aisle and shelf, and then harvest the text of all the products that appear on the page).

Only recently I would assume supermarkets would have to rely on specialist agencies to track their competitors pricing with people visiting the shops and recording the costs (I’m certain this still takes place).  In such a manual process price data could take several days of lag before moving through to the finance and pricing teams.  With server based scripting however data gathering time differential could be reduced to hours and minutes.

As Nick points out the Tesco pricing being scraped by Ocado is not quite real time but I would assume the data is accurate enough to produce exception reports to the Ocado buying, pricing and store management teams that could quickly adjust the pricing.  Indeed the process could be taken one stage further and potentially automatically update pricing to reflect competitor pricing.

This example typifies how crucial technology is to a company’s competitive advantage.  The ability for a company to generate and capture large data in real time dramatically effects the potential to gain sales and market share.  To highlight a negative example on how IT can effect the bottom line the recent sad end to Auto Windscreens was reportedly due to a mis-performing IT system that was delayed and then did not function correctly when released.

The message for me for crucial to any board of directors. Where ever your CIO sits make sure he or she is fully embedded within the strategy and operations of your core business.  They can literally make or brake your business.

As a quick aside I wonder if the next generation of cloud computing will see providers such as Google and Microsoft storing company data with offers such as Office 365 and Google Apps and then providing the stored data back to the company in real time with business intelligence applied?

Popularity: 3% [?]

Microsoft’s Maturing Office Cloud

by on March 17, 2011 in Microsoft, Office 365

I’ve been fortunate enough to be involved with projects that have reviewed Microsoft’s BPOS (and now Office 365) readiness for large enterprise and have also had a chance to speak to some of MS’s largest case studies.  I think it is fair to say that with the BPOS service Microsoft has had something of a roller coaster ride with rapid evolutions to the commercial and service framework over the past two to three years.

Given the maturing nature of the service Microsoft seem to be entering a third phase of BPOS/Office 365.  They have learned from their early mistakes that allowed salesmen to over promise yet provide a delivery and service organisation that at times underdelivered to customers.  After locking down the service and offer in 2010 it now seems Microsoft are confident enough in their own ability to deliver to provide increased services, features and partners to the Office 365 offer.

From Simon Leyland Blog

There are still plenty of challenges ahead, especially with regards to how Microsoft manage their relationship with resellers of Office 365 and how they can transfer customers over quickly and seamlessly in large software upgrades (2007 – 2010 – 2012/3).  Having been on the inside of these developments it is clear to me that Microsoft are investing heavily in Cloud and while they will continue to make mistakes they have a financial and resource commitment to get their offer to market right.

Popularity: 2% [?]

3D Avatars and Kinect

by on March 15, 2011 in Kinect, Microsoft, Wave 15

It’s clear that Microsoft would like to implement their Kinect technology into the enterprise and here is another research project that is developing technology to inject live speech within an interactive 3D avatar. I’m sure a company like Proton Media (who already work closely with Microsoft) would be interested in implementing this type of technology within their 3D worlds.

I’m convinced that Microsoft’s Wave 15 will start to incorporate many elements of the Kinect and Research projects and if they do manage to execute correctly it could bring an entirely new dimension (forgive the pun) to their Office, Desktop and Collaboration value proposition.

Take a look at the avatar project here

Popularity: 5% [?]

Home Automation with Kinect

by on March 14, 2011 in Kinect, Microsoft

Another video of how Kinect technology can and most likely will be used within the home over the next 10 years.

For further detail take a look at the authors blog here

Popularity: 2% [?]

Windows Phone 7 ‘NoDo’ Video Update

by on March 13, 2011 in Microsoft

Via the excellent Winrumors here is a good summary video of the new features contained within Microsoft’s interim Windows Phone 7 update ‘NoDo’.  The video highlights the three major features to be updated;

  • Copy and Paste
  • Improved Application Resumption
  • Marketplace Search

Take a look at the video below:

Popularity: 2% [?]

Kinect and 3D Capture

by on March 13, 2011 in Business Process, Kinect, Lync, Microsoft, UC News

Mirageblocks is a very interesting concept. Merging 3D projector, Kinect and Capture technology you can start to quickly and easily virtualise real world objects. As the blog states this could have many different applications. Taking online shopping to the next level is certainly one but I also see plenty of opportunities within the enterprise.

One use case springs to mind immediately. Manufacturers continue to divide the design and build process. Typically the design is taking place in the west and manufacture taking place in the east. I know from experience that this process is not smooth. The process has to be iterative but communication challenges and the long distance can often elongate the manufacture time to several months. Utilising UC technology with innovative products such as Mirageblocks will significantly reduce the time it takes from design to manufacture by reducing the amount of lag that it can take to move from the design to manufacture. Companies that embrace this way of working will certainly reduce product development time and reduce cost and as a result will gain competitive advantage.

Take a look at the Mirageblock blog here from the Microsoft Research team

Popularity: 3% [?]

Google Voice Turns Two

by on March 12, 2011 in Google, Google Voice

The Google Voice product team have just released a brief summary of the features they have added to Google Voice over the past two years. While it’s great to see what has been completed it would be great to know more about the plans for 2011 and 2012.

Voice is a critical element of consumer and enterprise communication and the companies that can make voice easier to use and cheaper to run will have a distinct advantage in the market place.

Interestingly Google and Microsoft diverge on the issue of providing voice services to consumers and enterprise. Google seem keen to provide voice services directly from their own cloud and take on the regulatory responsibility which that entails. Microsoft however are purposefully staying away from providing voice services from their Office 365 cloud – potentially relying on partners.

Read the Google Voice article here

Popularity: 1% [?]