Last week was momentous for Microsoft. On Wednesday, it officially released Office 365, its cloud-hosted application suite, and, as expected, the media was all over it. The NY Times, Huffington Post and Wall Street Journal weighed in, as did the usual tech pubs like InformationWeek, ZDNet and NetworkWorld.

A look at the hype surrounding Office 365.

Some of the press centered on the particulars — what exactly it is, how to use it, why you should care — while other reports looked at what cloud computing means for business, and for Google.

Of note is ZDNet’s report on a Forrester study, “The ROI of Cloud Apps,” which looks at points companies should consider before signing up.

And then there’s the blog post from Shan Sinha, Google Apps product manager — “365 reasons to consider Google Apps.” Be sure to read the comments section. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Cloud Computing, Google Apps, Office 365 Huffington Post, NetworkWorld, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, ZDNet

At last Wednesday’s Apple event announcing the iPad 2, Steve Jobs kept referring to something he calls the “Post-PC world.” This new era of computing, according to online tech publication Engadget, “won’t be a debate about displays, memory, wireless options — it will be a debate about the quality of the experience.”

This is part of the Post-PC experience we’d all like to block out: Setting up new devices or troubleshooting misbehaving ones.

This edition of What We’re Reading focuses on just that: The experience. Read on…

“It’s Apple’s ‘Post-PC’ World — We’re All Just Living In It” (Engadget, 3/3/2011)

As mentioned in the intro, Jobs introduced Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Mobile Devices, tablets, What We're Reading computerworld, Engadget, Harris Interactive, iPad 2, PC World, Steve Jobs, tech support, Wall Street Journal

According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, the best way to keep your top executives is to make it easier for them to leave.

When the economy rebounds, if your employees aren’t happy, they will leave.

That’s right — offer them challenges, enhance their skills, expand their networks.

Perhaps that would have made perfect sense 30 years ago, when taking a job often meant staying with a company for the duration of your career. But today, when job-hopping is standard and one-company careers are a relic, grooming employees just doesn’t seem prudent.

But it is, and even more so in an economic recession. (When the economy rebounds, if your employees aren’t happy, they will leave.) Consider the article’s points, and apply them to employees at any career stage, from entry-level to C-suite. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Rants, Training recession, software support, Wall Street Journal

You can weather the economic downturn lamenting the halcyon days of boundless IT spending and grand tech projects, or you can treat it as a challenge, as a time for reflection and behavior modification. At least that was the sentiment at the recent MIT Sloan CIO Symposium, where CIOs and their ilk met to discuss – what else? – the recession and its effect on the role of the CIO. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Outsourcing, ROI, Tech Babble CIO.com, MIT Sloan CIO Symposium, Outsourcing, Satyam, SearchCIO.com, Wall Street Journal