Sure, Microsoft’s announcement of a universal Windows development platform got lots of applause at its developer conference last week. Likewise its free licensing of Windows for devices with screens smaller than 9-inches.  But, does this really matter? And, if so, where and how much? Developers always like to do less work. And Microsoft wants as ...

If it isn’t already, one of the newest corporate status symbols will soon be the appointment of a Chief Data Officer. Many of those making the appointments won’t know exactly what a CDO does, which is still a bit all over the place, but they will feel having a CDO shows they are mastering that ...

Joe Belfiore puts on a good show. The Microsoft corporate VP who introduced Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows Update 8.1 this morning at the Build developer conference is as good as any TV infomercial pitchman you’ve ever seen. Like many others, I keep hoping Windows Phone will find some traction. Its new Siri competitor, called ...

I’ll start with what might pass for a joke. How do you tell a CDO from a CIO? It’s easy, just ask them, “Are you a Chief Data Officer?” The CIO will answer, “No, but I wish I was” where the CDO will respond, “Why do you ask?” That joke is usually told about psychologists and ...

Big Data analytics isn’t as magic as it seems. Blind belief in your data can make you look really foolish. Those lessons Google seems to be learning the hard way, at least in its effort to use search inquiries to map influenza outbreaks. Mapping the illness in near real-time is a noble goal that the ...

A billion dollars sounds like a lot of money. And it is. Yet, when Cisco says its going to spend $1 billion over the next two years to get into the cloud business, I wonder who they think they are kidding? Does Cisco think the billion, once spent, will position them solidly against Amazon and ...

Big name tech CEOs gathered in Washington last week to sound an alarm that Big Data and the cloud may never live up to their potential. Why? Because of problems with privacy, security and government intervention. Hardly a shock, right? Which is to say that whiny CEOs, who haven’t figured out how to solve privacy ...

I love Dropbox, so the above headline was a hard one for me to write. In the past, I have referred enough friends to the service that my 1GB free account has grown to 9GB and is always very full. My Microsoft Office apps even use Dropbox as their default save folder. Dropbox is an ...

What starts simple — let’s run applications in the cloud! — has a way of becoming complex. Despite what some see as Amazon’s best efforts to keep connections between cloud and core at bay, enterprises find clouds can’t always replace what they already use. Nor should they. Clouds need to connect to other clouds and ...

I remember a time when cloud-based Google Apps were supposedly poised to give Microsoft Office a run for its money. When Google was trumpeting supposed big wins getting Google Docs into corporations and government, and getting Microsoft out. Whatever happened to that? Inside Google, what we knew as Google Apps was called “Drive” long before ...