IT Employee Confidence Index Up in Third Quarter of 2009
The IT Employee Confidence Index increased 4.4 points to 50.2 in the third quarter of 2009, according to a recent survey commissioned by Technisource, the technology placement division of Spherion Corporation. The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, reveals increased confidence among IT workers, as more technology professionals reveal confidence in the economy and job market. Additionally, 40 percent of workers are likely to look for a new job in the next 12 months (compared to 37 percent in the second quarter of 2009).

Results from the IT Employment Report:

• Despite nearly one-third of technology workers (31 percent) believing the economy is getting weaker (compared to 48 percent in the second quarter of 2009), more workers are likely to search for a new job in the next year (40 percent versus 37 percent in the second quarter).

• Fewer IT workers are confident in the future of their current employers. Specifically, 57 percent say they are confident versus 64 percent in the previous quarter.

• Sixty-three percent of workers believe there are fewer jobs available opposed to 73 percent in the second quarter of 2009.

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Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2010
Gartner, Inc. analysts today highlighted the top 10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2010.. Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.

The top 10 strategic technologies for 2010 include:

Cloud Computing. Cloud computing is a style of computing that characterizes a model in which providers deliver a variety of IT-enabled capabilities to consumers. Cloud-based services can be exploited in a variety of ways to develop an application or a solution. Using cloud resources does not eliminate the costs of IT solutions, but does re-arrange some and reduce others. In addition, consuming cloud services enterprises will increasingly act as cloud providers and deliver application, information or business process services to customers and business partners.

Advanced Analytics. Optimization and simulation is using analytical tools and models to maximize business process and decision effectiveness by examining alternative outcomes and scenarios, before, during and after process implementation and execution. This can be viewed as a third step in supporting operational business decisions. Fixed rules and prepared policies gave way to more informed decisions powered by the right information delivered at the right time, whether through customer relationship management (CRM) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) or other applications. The new step is to provide simulation, prediction, optimization and other analytics, not simply information, to empower even more decision flexibility at the time and place of every business process action.

Client Computing. Virtualization is bringing new ways of packaging client computing applications and capabilities. As a result, the choice of a particular PC hardware platform, and eventually the OS platform, becomes less critical. Enterprises should proactively build a five to eight year strategic client computing roadmap outlining an approach to device standards, ownership and support; operating system and application selection, deployment and update; and management and security plans to manage diversity.

IT for Green. IT can enable many green initiatives. The use of IT, particularly among the white collar staff, can greatly enhance an enterprise's green credentials. Common green initiatives include the use of e-documents, reducing travel and teleworking. IT can also provide the analytic tools that others in the enterprise may use to reduce energy consumption in the transportation of goods or other carbon management activities.

Reshaping the Data Center. In the past, design principles for data centers were simple: Figure out what you have, estimate growth for 15 to 20 years, then build to suit. Newly-built data centers often opened with huge areas of white floor space, fully powered and backed by a uninterruptible power supply (UPS), water-and air-cooled and mostly empty. However, costs are actually lower if enterprises adopt a pod-based approach to data center construction and expansion. Cutting operating expenses, which are a nontrivial part of the overall IT spend for most clients, frees up money to apply to other projects or investments either in IT or in the business itself.

Social Computing. Workers do not want two distinct environments to support their work -- one for their own work products (whether personal or group) and another for accessing "external" information. Enterprises must focus both on use of social software and social media in the enterprise and participation and integration with externally facing enterprise-sponsored and public communities. Do not ignore the role of the social profile to bring communities together.

Security -- Activity Monitoring. Information security professionals face the challenge of detecting malicious activity in a constant stream of discrete events that are usually associated with an authorized user and are generated from multiple network, system and application sources. At the same time, security departments are facing increasing demands for ever-greater log analysis and reporting to support audit requirements. A variety of complimentary (and sometimes overlapping) monitoring and analysis tools help enterprises better detect and investigate suspicious activity -- often with real-time alerting or transaction intervention.

Flash Memory. Flash memory is not new, but it is moving up to a new tier in the storage echelon. Flash memory is a semiconductor memory device, familiar from its use in USB memory sticks and digital camera cards. It is much faster than rotating disk, but considerably more expensive, however this differential is shrinking. At the rate of price declines, the technology will enjoy more than a 100 percent compound annual growth rate during the new few years and become strategic in many IT areas including consumer devices, entertainment equipment and other embedded IT systems.

Virtualization for Availability. Virtualization is again on the list of top strategic technologies because Gartner emphases new elements such as live migration for availability that have longer term implications. Live migration is the movement of a running virtual machine (VM), while its operating system and other software continue to execute as if they remained on the original physical server.  The key value proposition is to displace a variety of separate mechanisms with a single "dial" that can be set to any level of availability from baseline to fault tolerance, all using a common mechanism and permitting the settings to be changed rapidly as needed.

Mobile Applications. By year-end 2010, 1.2 billion people will carry handsets capable of rich, mobile commerce providing a rich environment for the convergence of mobility and the Web. There are already many thousands of applications for platforms such as the Apple iPhone, in spite of the limited market and need for unique coding. It may take a newer version that is designed to flexibly operate on both full PC and miniature systems, but if the operating system interface and processor architecture were identical, that enabling factor would create a huge turn upwards in mobile application availability.
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Study Reveals Empowered Consumers Have Sky-High Expectations When it Comes to Customer Experience
The fourth annual Customer Experience Impact (CEI) Report, a Harris Interactive study sponsored by RightNow, found that consumer expectations are high and delivering great customer experiences is critical.  In fact, 86 percent of consumers have stopped doing business with an organization after a bad customer experience, up 27 percent from four years ago. 

The 2009 CEI report also showed that if consumer's expectations aren't met, they have multiple avenues to express their dissatisfaction and with social tools at their disposal, the repercussions of this can be enormous:

• 82 percent of consumers indicated they would tell others about a bad experience -- up from 67 percent in 2006.

• Many consumers that had a bad experience shared their experience online by posting a negative customer review on the company's website (23%), Facebook (7%), or a blog (6%).

In addition, the 2009 CEI report identified several opportunities for consumer focused organizations to engage with customers, deliver better experiences and drive revenue:

• Consumers that are online want an interactive website experience that allows them to quickly and easily find the information they need; 62 percent of consumers go to a company website to find information if they are having a problem.

• If consumers can't find what they need online, they want the option to engage with a live person; 73 percent of consumers prefer to speak directly to a live customer service agent.

• Organizations can even tap into the power of the social web to ensure superior customer experiences.  For example, online consumers are looking for service and support on Twitter. 58 percent said if they had complained about a bad experience with a company on a social networking site, such as Twitter, they would like the company to reach out directly and respond to their comment.

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SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

The New York Times best-selling Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling over four million copies. Now, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with SuperFreakonomics. Four years in the making, SuperFreakonomics asks not only the tough questions, but the unexpected ones: What's more dangerous, driving drunk or walking drunk? Why is chemotherapy prescribed so often if it's so ineffective? Can a sex change boost your salary?

Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and great storytelling like no one else. By examining how people respond to incentives, they show the world for what it really is -- good, bad, ugly, and, in the final analysis, super freaky.

Click here for more information on this book.