Blogs: enterprise

The focus at WWDC may appear to be on consumer markets, but Apple has also made major improvements to its offering to enterprise users with a range of iOS 7 features that should maintain the maker's place at the crest of the BYOD wave -- and  few hints of where it is going...

Momentous, earth-shattering changes in IT have proven to be a divisive factor for many companies. Over the past four decades, these moments of change, or inflection points, have turned the industry on its head and sent us collectively diving into the future. Through each of these inflection points, we have witnessed obvious benefits, particularly in user productivity. But, these new opportunities also carry with them significant, unintended consequences.

A leaked report claims Microsoft intends bringing Office to Apple iPads (and Android slates) -- but not until 2014. Meanwhile IDC informs us that PC sales have slumped to a 20-year low. In the Post-PC environment, Microsoft's refusal to follow trend means it has signed its own death warrant:

As bad as Windows Phone's market share is among consumers, it's even worse in what you would expect to be Microsoft's strength -- the enterprise. A new report finds that in the fourth quarter of 2012, only 0.5% of all mobile devices activated in enterprises were Windows Phones. And because of the study's methodology, that might even be an overstatement of its share.

Here are three areas I believe the 3rd platform, and hence the combination of cloud, mobile, social and big data, will be critical for CIOs in 2013

In the pursuit of optimized IT models, chief information officers (CIOs) need to carefully evaluate their existing IT infrastructures and make choices that cut costs and streamline processes.

If you want to see Microsoft's future, take a look at its just-released earnings report. It shows a company increasingly reliant on selling to enterprises, and less tied to more fickle consumers.

In a previous post – “Big data deluge: new challenges for collaboration" – I discussed the vital importance of managing explosive volumes of data to ensure effective collaboration. In reality, that’s only half the story. The other side of big data is the opportunity to leverage a large body of intelligence from multiple sources for effective collaboration.

A major push for chief information officers (CIOs) in 2013 will be the development or refinement of a new end-state vision for IT that anticipates the challenges of the rapid growth of data and identifies how new applications can leverage big data assets.

Instead of focusing on the Top 10 vulnerabilities, let's chant the mantra of necessary security controls.