Quocirca on IT-Director.com

Just who is sharing your sensitive information?

Fran Howarth, Quocirca — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 18:11:53 +0100

Businesses are increasingly reliant on electronic collaboration, requiring that teams can collaboratively create, manage and share documents on which they are working. Those teams may not only be... [Read More...]

No north-south divide on the internet

Rob Bamforth, Quocirca — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 11:51:52 +0100

A summer silly season think tank report in the UK caused a bit of a controversial stir when it suggested that northern cities were beyond revival and that for economic... [Read More...]

In a downturn, should you build a new datacentre?

Clive Longbottom, Quocirca — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:32:59 +0100

With new hardware constructs such as blade computing combined with virtualisation driving greater densities in datacentres and stressing capabilities for the provision of power and cooling in... [Read More...]

Putting IT centre stage in the green debate

Simon Perry, Quocirca — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:15:33 +0100

Quocirca dropped by last week's Green IT event to wander the various vendor stalls and listen in on the clever, the confident, the clumsy, and the borderline confused that make up the mixed bag... [Read More...]

More woes from the finance sector

Fran Howarth, Quocirca — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:05:47 +0100

In gloomy economic times, organisations across the board look to cut costs-and one key way of doing this is to contract out business functions to partners through outsourcing. Research just... [Read More...]

When it all looks bad, what's the best thing to do?

Clive Longbottom, Quocirca — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:07:10 +0100

Amid all the doom and gloom of the financial situation, we're all facing a similar problem - how to keep our businesses afloat. With many organisations taking the standard knee-jerk... [Read More...]

Serena eats own dog food (no, not the tennis player)

Bob Tarzey, Quocirca — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:57:44 +0100

On the surface Serena Software is an old-school vendor. Its business is the dull side of software development - application lifecycle management (ALM) - which includes things like version control,... [Read More...]

Putting more fibre in the UK broadband diet

Rob Bamforth, Quocirca — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 10:04:09 +0100

While some parts of UK government think it's time restaurants printed the number of calories against each item on the menu, there is another pressing dietary issue to address - the lack... [Read More...]

Will Web 2.0 survive the downturn?

Rob Bamforth, Quocirca — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:19:59 +0100

Only a few short months ago, there was a widespread belief that the world was changing into a fully immersive online experience where user-generated content would undermine all traditional business... [Read More...]

Comparing Apples with Apples

Clive Longbottom, Quocirca — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:46:06 +0100

At a recent analyst conference, it was noticeable that a) there's a growing number of Apple laptops in the analyst community, and b) the Apple iPhone seems to be the tool of choice within the... [Read More...]

Learning from the credit crunch to avoid a broadband crunch

Rob Bamforth, Quocirca — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:14:36 +0100

While it might be the most pressing issue de jour, the financial system isn't the only area where government needs to inject a bit of liquidity to get a market moving. The way in which... [Read More...]

What is Symantec's vision?

Bob Tarzey, Quocirca — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:12:41 +0100

This week Symantec ran its Vision conference in The Hague, the European centre of freedom, security and justice, as its executives were keen to point out. So what is Symantec's... [Read More...]

PUE, DCiE and TCE - and what's still missing...

Clive Longbottom, Quocirca — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 06:51:00 +0100

Back from another Indian trip, and interesting discussions around how organisations can measure their datacentre's effectiveness when it comes to carbon footprint. One measure out... [Read More...]

McAfee and the provision of secure computing

Bob Tarzey, Quocirca — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 05:59:00 +0100

Sometimes a company's name is so close to what it does that it can be a distraction. This is certainly true of Secure Computing (Secure) that aims to provide its customers with, well -... [Read More...]

Customer service not lip service

Rob Bamforth, Quocirca — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 07:56:35 +0100

You would think that as economic conditions harden that customer service might improve. Certainly it should if businesses want to remain competitive, but the problem is exacerbated because all too... [Read More...]

IT professionals are looking for green leadership

Simon Perry, Quocirca — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 08:02:57 +0100

In an increasing number of conversations Quocirca has with technology professionals it is becoming clearer that more and more people fundamentally get the problem of climate change. This is true for... [Read More...]

From brand name to dictionary

Bob Tarzey, Quocirca — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:03:22 +0100

One of the pleasures of being an analyst is spending hours on the phone learning of the latest innovations from vendors regarding their products. To animate such discussions, a presentation is often... [Read More...]

How open is "open"?

Simon Perry, Quocirca — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 08:52:53 +0100

If you were asked to open the window there would be little confusion in the request. Similarly a request to shut the window would normally be interpreted to mean that you... [Read More...]

Available virtualisation

Clive Longbottom, Quocirca — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:06:28 +0100

One of the perceptions around virtualisation seems to be that it automatically provides you with high availability (HA) and fault tolerance (FT). Certainly, as a platform, it paves the way for this... [Read More...]

Are we approaching a green IT tipping point?

Clive Longbottom, Quocirca — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 10:48:18 +0100

Anyone following the ongoing scientific research into climate change will be familiar with the term environmental tipping point. It usually refers to some point beyond which... [Read More...]

Google at 10

Bob Tarzey, Quocirca — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 06:00:00 +0100

Happy 10th birthday Google, but have you done anything for businesses? [Read More...]

The value of business networking

Fran Howarth, Quocirca — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 09:00:00 +0100

Web 2.0 gets a lot of attention these days. While the term encompasses many types of interactive technologies and user applications, one particular application that has taken off fast is that of... [Read More...]

Picture this?

Rob Bamforth, Quocirca — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 08:05:00 +0100

A whole bunch of episodes have demonstrated how bad many organisations are at protecting secret or personal data, especially those in the public sector. This is particularly apparent when data is... [Read More...]

Cooling by place name

Clive Longbottom, Quocirca — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:38:07 +0100

Over in Australia last week, speaking at a datacentre event, I listened to a few other presentations where some new ideas were being put across for low-cost, low-carbon approaches to datacentre... [Read More...]

Transmitting power wirelessly from Colorado Springs to San Francisco

Simon Perry, Quocirca — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:26:07 +0100

By all accounts, it was a thoroughly exciting demonstration - the lighting of an incandescent bulb from distance with the power being supplied wirelessly. Even from this relatively modest first... [Read More...]

PCs, NetBooks, MIDs and other form factors

Clive Longbottom, Quocirca — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:14:47 +0100

There I was last week, sitting at Intel Developers' Forum in San Francisco, looking at a wealth of sexy new devices, wishing that I could lay my hands on a few of them. There's a... [Read More...]

Who do you work with?

Clive Longbottom, Quocirca — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 07:19:00 +0100

Three years ago Quocirca conducted some collaboration research using an online survey generating more than three thousand responses, which suggested a small proportion of employees should perhaps get... [Read More...]

Keeping on the right track - even railway carriage walls have ears

Clive Longbottom, Quocirca — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:12:45 +0100

While mobile phone coverage isn't perfect - as noted by small and medium-sized businesses in recent Quocirca research - there's still NO NEED TO SHOUT. However a train journey... [Read More...]

Cisco eats its own dog food - and it tastes OK

Bob Tarzey, Quocirca — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 06:00:00 +0100

Use of collaboration tools can reduce travel costs, but claims need to be substantiated. Cisco takes a lead. [Read More...]

Old databases never die and some won't even fade away....

Bob Tarzey, Quocirca — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:00:00 +0100

At the age of almost 40, a refreshed (and free) Ingres is still an option for anyone needing a database [Read More...]