Group items tagged

Last week, we welcomed Brian Solis, Altimeter principal analyst, thought leader and book author, to Yammer HQ to give a fireside chat, followed by signing of his new book: "What's The Future of Business?" I was thrilled to interview Brian, and we covered a variety of really meaty subjects - just check out the video below! The theme of the evening was transformation - transformation that is happening in our lives as individuals, how we relate to each other through technology and what we as businesses must do to stay relevant to the connected customer. Even the book itself is transformation of the book publishing convention. Unlike a regular, information-dense business book, "What's the Future of Business" attempts to bring together the best of both worlds: hard-hitting facts and practical frameworks, as well as a visual experience. The experience of the book is just as important as the content therein. What is the future of business? The future of business is experience, according to Solis. We as connected consumers make decisions outside of the sales funnel that companies have organized themselves around. We reference experiences of consumers who came before us, and contribute our own experiences to this dynamic tapestry. When consumers share, they are reacting to an experience, and the future of any business depends on its ability to provide experiences that are worth sharing. In his talk, Brian talked about the 4 moments of truth that add up to shareable experiences. At every stage of the customer journey, it is our job as businesses to design an experience to trigger the sharing of a moment. The Zero Moment of Truth comes when the consumer is starting to explore choices and is just becoming aware of needs and possible solutions. 1st Moment of Truth happens when the consumer is ready to buy. Consumer packaged goods companies have perfected providing the right experience at this point. 2nd Moment of Truth happens after the consumer purchases,

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency expects to save $12 million over four years. The City of Chicago anticipates saving $1.3 million over the same length of time. And the State of Minnesota expects to save at least $800,000. Governments of all sizes are finding ways to reduce IT costs while improving efficiency. What's their secret weapon? With public sector budgets shrinking in many places around the globe, smart governments are making taxpayer dollars stretch further by migrating from an on-premise environment to Microsoft Office 365 in the cloud. By moving to Office 365, governments can reduce both their capital and operating costs. And by saving money, they can make taxpayer dollars go further during a time when budgets are tight and there's often less revenue to work with. So how exactly can Office 365 save governments money? First, governments can cut back on the capital cost of investing in more computer servers. Second, they can reduce the administrative cost of having to maintain an IT environment. Third, they can lower their energy costs by reducing the size of their data centers. And they can also reduce costs using the many tools within Office 365 that improve employee efficiency. According to a study conducted by Forrester Consulting, Office 365 delivers an ROI of 321 percent with a payback period of two months for a composite midsize organization. That translates into huge value for public sector organizations! Among the government agencies that anticipating money saved by implementing Office 365 is the Environmental Protection Agency. The agency expects to save $12 million over four years by moving to the cloud and Office 365. Some of those savings will be in energy costs as the agency relies on Microsoft to operate its data centers. "The EPA will continue to lead the pack on environmental stewardship, and moving an IT environment to the cloud is a natural part of that," says Greg Myers, vice president of Microsoft Federal. "There

Today's post was written by Howard Kourik, Director, Information Systems, San Diego County Regional Airport Authority The San Diego County Regional Airport Authority manages operations at one of Southern California's busiest regional airports, San Diego International. We were created to serve the public and have a mandate from the state of California to address the local area's long-term transportation needs. While we are a public entity, we function very much like any other business. In fact, we don't accept any tax dollars to support our operations. Instead, we rely on landing fees, the rent we receive from tenants, and a percentage of the profits from concessions-the restaurants, newsstands, and other shops located in the airport-to fund our growth. And like every business, we're constantly looking for ways to bring down our costs by operating more efficiently. We evaluated a lot of technologies to help us trim costs, but we selected Office 365 because it not only saves money, it gives us what we need to meet future IT demands. With our eyes on current and future needs, we did some modeling to gauge regional demand for our airport services over the next decade. It quickly became clear that we needed to add runways, terminals, and other "bricks and mortar" facilities, and upgrade our network infrastructure. Still, the only way we could budget for that expansion was to reduce or eliminate some of our fixed capital costs. I knew that one important way we could trim expenses was by taking a closer look at the technology we use and how we manage it. Our email system offered a prime example of how, by rethinking the way we deliver core IT services, we could cut down on operational "drag" and potentially save our IT team lots of time. Historically, we've managed our email in a clustered environment across four physical servers. So, we were not only worrying about the cost of the servers; we had to invest in mirroring software and an antivirus so

Part of the thrill of working for the Office Division is the opportunity to tackle thorny business issues on behalf of our customers while providing them with a road map for the future. That may be why an interesting article caught my attention this week. In it, the author examined some of the investments Microsoft is making in the unified communications space. While I didn't agree with all of the conclusions it contained, the article certainly underscored the interest in communications and collaboration and how to make people more productive. Communicating and collaborating with others is really at the heart of what we do every day. Whether at work or at home, people have the need to make meaningful connections with one another. Compounding that need are the realities of the world we live in where instant access to information is expected, friends and coworkers are scattered across geographies and many adults are juggling multiple mobile devices. At Microsoft, we believe technology isn't the problem to these complexities, it's the answer. We're committed to providing capabilities that help people make sense of it all and to do so in a way that is intuitive, barrier free and agnostic to the devices on which we rely. We're incredibly proud of the fact that our long term-term vision for communications and collaboration not only marries the best of the cloud and the desktop, it's a holistic approach that spans "from the living room to the boardroom" placing people at the center of everything we do. Our communication and collaboration vision comes to life utilizing client and cloud assets, including Lync, Skype, Yammer, Outlook and SharePoint. These tools are enabling enterprise social capabilities, HD video conferencing and document collaboration as part of a highly secured, reliable and extensible platform. At the risk of looking geeky, I have to admit that I have a soft spot for Lync and it's comforting to know I'm not alone. More than 90% of

A few years ago I was taking a tour of a dome shaped house, and the architect explained to me that domes are an optical illusion. Whenever someone enters a room, their eyes inadvertently glance up at the corners of the room to give them the contextual dimensions of the space they're in.

www.office.com/setup Blogs: When it comes to technology in the workplace, most every convenience is balanced against a potential threat. Email and the cloud-for as much as they've revolutionized the way we do business-have enabled new methods of theft and fraud and necessitated new regulations. That means planning a secure future for your company is no easy task. Thankfully, you don't have to set out on the road to protection without a map. Keeping a few key considerations in mind can help guide your way and keep your business safe from harm.

Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute, and Google's top rated Futurist Speaker. Unlike most speakers, Thomas works closely with his Board of Visionaries to develop original research studies. This enables him to speak on unusual topics and translate trends into unique business opportunities.

The future is not only bright for consumers but also those working in the technology and application development fields. The projected job growth for Mobile Application Developers is 131% and with an average salary of $115,000 per year, Mobile Application Development is be considered one of the most promising careers in the job market.

Apple kicked off its 2014 Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco today with a slew of new product announcements and updates, most of which will be available in the fall to the general public.

This site was very informative regarding Apple's next approach to reinventing iPhone's IOS and the Apple Desktop and laptop operating system as well. According to the site and the recent WWDC convention; Apple is going to provide a coding application called "Swift." This application is supposedly going to simplify the coding process for mobile developers and software engineers. According to the article and the recent convention Apple is also going to create an application that will monitor your health condition. This application will be able to forward your health information to your health care provider for future health care awareness and updates. Thanks to this site I was able to learn what Apple has been hiding up their sleeves for the past year. I was no aware prior to reading the article that Apple was going to provide new coding software for mobile developers. I believe this type of technology is very inspiring for someone attempting to enter the mobile development industry. This site has confirmed for me that I have chosen the right career path.