If you follow tech news, you know the big three trends: the cloud, tablets and consumerization of IT. It’s an exciting time in enterprise IT (depending on who you talk to, of course).

But some tech journalists aren’t sold just yet. Microsoft Office still reigns, they say. Tablets don’t match the PC’s versatility or durability, they add. Here’s a rundown from some of the naysayers. Read and make your own judgment.

He maintains that Microsoft’s biggest competitor isn’t Google Apps, but earlier versions of Office.

What Revolution?

InfoWorld’s Eric Knorr is on fire. In his recent article, “The IT Revolution that Isn’t,” he picks apart the three biggest trends bit by bit.

On the cloud: “[L]ast time I looked, Microsoft Office still had over 80 percent market share. Will there be a rush to the cloud when Office 365 launches later this year? No way: Office 365 puts Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync servers in the cloud, but Office itself is meant to stay on the desktop.”

He maintains that Microsoft’s biggest competitor isn’t Google Apps, but earlier versions of Office. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Cloud Computing, tablets, This Week in Tech News Angry Birds, Apple, CIO, consumerization, InfoWorld, Microsoft

According to a leading industry source, more than 50 percent of enterprise-sized IT infrastructures are running mixed Microsoft Office end-user environments. Half the knowledge workers are running 2003; the rest are getting to know 2007 and the Ribbon.

When half your knowledge workers are using one version and the rest another, that’s a whole lot of lost functionality — and wasted time.

The recession and Office 2007’s immense learning curve are partly to blame, but, ultimately, it’s you, the IT leader, who must take responsibility for diminished return on investment. There’s still time to finish your migration; here are six reasons why you should:

1. ROI: You purchased X number of licenses and only have migrated half. You do the math: You purchased the upgrade for a reason — to take advantage of new and easier to find productivity features.

2. The dreaded Office 2007 learning curve: As evident in the hundreds of expletive-laced Tweets about Office 2007, the new user interface is a downright shock to many knowledge workers. Where’s the file menu? How do you save a document? What is this Ribbon? If you finish your migration, you will not have to face these questions again when you decide to upgrade to the next version (which also has a Ribbon interface). Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Finish What You Started, Office 2007 CIO, downtime, learning curve, Office 2007 migration, ROI, software support, the Ribbon

In previous posts, I examined why corporate workers hesitate to call their help desks when stuck with a software quandary. I referred to the so-called stupidity factor, or fear of looking stupid, as one of the top reasons.

In an e-mail response, a reader pointed out an even greater obstacle, something he called the infuriation factor. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Computer Literacy, How To, ROI, Worker Productivity best-of-breed, CIO, Help Desk, IT leaders, Outsourcing, ROI, software support, Worker Productivity

In a previous post (see Real-Life Help Desk Tales, Part 1), I touched upon why people don’t call the help desk when they need software assistance (fear of looking stupid, unpleasant past experience, assumed time investment). In this post, I will take a closer look at the stupidity factor. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Computer Literacy, How To, ROI, Worker Productivity CIO, Computer Literacy, Help Desk, IT leaders, mariachi band, software support, Worker Productivity

I wrote a post last week titled “Six Reasons to Finish Your Office 2007 Upgrade” and received a comment that deserves repeating.

Depending on their game plan, IT leaders can come out champions, creating their own Cinderella stories by proving ROI.

The reader said she upgraded to 2007 but asked to switch back to 2003 because her company didn’t provide any training.

She began her comment with a question: “So, how do you propose to deal with user frustration?”

Here’s how I replied:

“I know how immensely frustrating Office 2007 can be without training and support. If it was installed on your work PC, and your company provided no training or assistance, then I suspect your CIO is either clueless or just cheap. Upgrading employees without any sort of assistance is shortsighted.

“For home PC users, that’s another story. The redesign is jarring, to say the least. As one commenter put it: It’s as if Office was an automobile, and the manufacturer put the steering wheel in the trunk and the gas and brake pedals on the ceiling.

“Here’s the thing: Microsoft’s intent was to make the user interface more intuitive. Whether they accomplished that goal is up for debate. However, a look at the Office 2010 beta version reveals that the Ribbon is here to stay, so sticking with 2003 will only lengthen the learning curve.”

In a recent ad campaign, my company framed it in basketball terms: Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Finish What You Started, Office 2007 Migration Assurance Program basketball, CIO, Help Desk, March Madness, NCAA Men's Basketball, Office 2007, Windows 7

While the Marines are busy banning social media and some corporations are clamping down on Twitter and its ilk, the state government of California is encouraging its workers to embrace Web 2.0.

California officially adopted the use of social media. But it’s hardly a Farmville free-for-all.

On Feb. 26, the state officially adopted the use of social media. But it’s hardly a Farmville free-for-all.

The state issued a policy that sets clear rules for its use, including a limitation to only authorized users who have been trained regarding their roles, responsibilities and security risks. (View a PDF of the policy here.)

The document states: “State agencies are encouraged to use social media technologies to engage their customers and employees. Many state entities, including the Governor, have used these communication channels with great success but as with most technologies, there is a measure of risk that must be addressed and mitigated.”

In addition to the policy, the state issued a five-page “Social Media Standard,” which includes a few interesting clauses (read the full document in PDF form here):

No. 8: “Users shall not utilize tools or techniques to spoof, masquerade, or assume any identity or credentials except for legitimate law enforcement purposes, or for other legitimate State purposes as defined in agency policy.”

No. 9: “Users shall avoid mixing their professional information with their personal information.”

And, No. 10: “Users shall not use their work password on social media web sites.”

Participating agencies must comply with the policy by July 1.

Related reading: “What We’re Reading: If  Harvard Says So Edition” | “Social Media: The Elephant in the Office”

MORE INFO IN: Desktop Application Support | Contact PC Helps

Jenny Sweeney Social Media California, CIO, FACEBOOK, Farmville, government, Social Media, the Marines, Twitter, YouTube

We read a variety of tech publications to keep up on industry news – Wired, CIO.com, Computerworld, Ars Technica. Each fills its own niche. A brand-spanking-new publication has joined the fray, and it’s worth a read.

Monday marked the launch of EnterpriseEfficiency.com, a social community of sorts for CIOs and IT leaders where they can discuss and swap ideas on how to make IT departments more efficient.

For a site that just launched, it’s remarkably robust, and has an impressive lineup of contributors, including veteran tech pub journalists, authors and supergeeks.

Of note is editor-in-chief Fredric Paul’s blog post about the challenges of supporting multiple mobile platforms in the enterprise. (Read the post here, “How Many Smartphone Platforms Do We Really Need?”)

And speaking of efficiency and CIOs,  PC Helps is a sponsor of Windows Intelligence, the largest one-day Microsoft conference in California. The conference is being held on March 29, 2010, in person and online. Brian Bradley, PC Helps’ VP of business development, will be speaking about Office 2010. Visit the Windows Intelligence web site for more information and to register. (Be sure to use Microsoft promo code PCHELPS for a discounted rate.)

MORE INFO IN: Desktop Application Support | Contact PC Helps

Jenny Sweeney What We're Reading CIO, IT infrastructure, IT leaders, tech pubs

The Dutch, who know a thing or two about frugality, have a saying, “Goedkoop is duurkoop.” The English translation: “Buying cheap is buying expensive.” And nowhere is that adage more fitting than in outsourcing.

University of Tennessee researcher Kate Vitasek offers an in-depth look at how shortsighted cost-cutting and nine other behaviors can hurt companies in her new book, “Vested Outsourcing,” which was published earlier this month by Palgrave Macmillan.

For her study, Vitasek looked at outsourcing deals and identified the most common mistakes companies make when contracting. Among them: Micromanaging, lack of formal governance, metrics obsession, and, of course, cost-cutting as a quick-fix measure.

Cost-cutting, Vitasek writes, is the easiest to identify. Companies desperate to trim the bottom line take the cheapest offer. The result is a tradeoff in quality, service or both.

For more about the study, visit Vitasek’s blog, which features a wealth of articles. It makes for great snow day reading. And for previous posts published on this blog about the subject, see the following: Wasting Money is Bad for the Bottom Line, When Mistakes add up to Millions, and The Real Cost of Offshore Outsourcing.♦

MORE INFO IN: Desktop Application Support | Contact PC Helps

Jenny Sweeney Outsourcing, This Week in Tech News CIO, goedkoop is duurkoop, Help Desk, Kate Vitasek, Outsourcing, the Dutch

Poka-yoke – I never had heard the word before, but I was delighted to discover it two weeks ago in a Harvard Business Review article written by Michael Schrage.

Poka-yoke is Japanese for “mistake-proofing.” Think of the “In Case of Fire Break Glass” boxes found in office buildings. Because they include a wee stick with which to break said glass, they would qualify as poka-yoke.

Best of all, your employees will experience minimal downtime and very little lost productivity.

In business, Schrage explains, poka-yoke is the “simplest, cheapest, and surest way to eliminate foreseeable process errors.” He urges managers to perform a poka-yoke audit of their own department.

“What are the persistently simple — and simply persistent — dumb mistakes we make that our technologies can help us catch and destroy?” he asks.

Here’s where I believe IT managers should start: the help desk.

Say your company is planning an Office 2007 migration, and you, as CIO, have decided that because of the current economic climate, assistance isn’t needed. After all, your reliance on internal help desk staff during previous Office upgrades didn’t turn out disastrously. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Office 2007 Migration Assurance Program, ROI CIO, Harvard Business Review, Help Desk, Japan, Michael Schrage, Outsourcing, poka-yoke, software support

Would you groom a poodle only halfway? Not finishing your Office 2007 migration is just as nonsensical.

According to a leading industry source, more than 50 percent of enterprise-sized IT infrastructures are running mixed Microsoft Office end-user environments. The reasons are many: the recent “econolypse” spurred IT leaders to cut budgets and lay off workers, leaving Office 2007 deployments incomplete; IT management underestimated the amount of work that a migration required, and they reacted by halting phased rollouts; and some CIOs and other IT leaders who were not mandated to deploy the new version to the entire company doled it out in a “drip” fashion.

The result is an enterprise that looks something like this: Half of your employees use Office 2007, and the rest are still running Office 2003. All you’ve heard from the former are “Where’s the file menu?” and “How do I save a document?” From the latter, you’ve likely endured endless grumbling about their frustration with Office 2003-incompatible files created by colleagues.

It’s not just user aggravation you have to worry about either. Running two versions invites compatibility issues, minimizes the return on your Office 2007 investment, and keeps your internal help desk semi-knowledgeable about the software.

We’ve compiled a kit that will show you how to cost-effectively finish your Office 2007 migration while minimizing the end-user and help desk learning curve, increase productivity and more accurately project call volume. You can view it here.

MORE INFO IN: Office 2007 Migration Case Study | Office 2007 Migration Assurance Program | Migration Readiness Checklist | Migration Competitive Analysis | Contact PC Helps

Jenny Sweeney Finish What You Started CIO, econolypse, Office 2007 migration, ROI