5 pitfalls of self-service BI

Over the past several years, businesses have increasingly adopted self-service business intelligence (BI). In its November 2016 “Self-Service BI Market – Global Forecast to 2021” report, Research and Markets forecast the global self-service BI market would double to $7.31 billion by 2021. The benefits seem clear. Whereas traditional BI is frequently seen as slow and…

IDG Contributor Network: Is technology spending a cost of doing business or a source of alpha?

There is a growing trend of taking the technology spending away from the enterprise IT organizations into the business and to the third-parties —  such as pure-digital service providers and Fin-tech companies — with a hope of stimulating innovation, improving agility, and reducing cost. Meanwhile, as business relevancy and technology spending are drifting away, enterprise…

6 steps to devops success

Since its inception, devops has been debated in IT circles. Some have considered it a marketing fad; others have believed it will revolutionize IT operations. Year after year, analysts predict rapid growth, and while the devops movement has grown at a steady pace, it hasn’t yet caught fire among more mainstream organizations. Here, the blame…

Demystifying the dark science of data analytics

Although few will publicly admit it, data analytics remains something of a dark science for many IT leaders, replete with mystical methods and seemingly inscrutable practices. Yet despite its somewhat enigmatic reputation, analytics has repeatedly demonstrated that it is a proven science, a powerful tool that generally leads to significant improvements in productivity, efficiency, sales,…

6 hard truths IT must learn to accept

Sometimes the truth hurts. It can be hard to admit that you’ve lost control over how your organization deploys technology, or that your network is porous and your code poorly written. Or no matter how much bandwidth you’ve budgeted for, it never quite seems to be enough, and that despite its bright promise, the cloud…

9 IT projects primed for machine learning

Machine learning is fast becoming a reality for forward-thinking organizations. But for most businesses, the best way to take advantage of the capabilities of machine learning technologies remains something of a mystery. Still, the drumbeat to experiment keeps getting louder. And the truth is, your competitors may already be laying the groundwork. IDC forecasts revenues…

The top 9 ITSM suite vendors for 2017

Organizations looking to codify IT management in service of business needs often turn to IT service management (ITSM), a set of policies, processes and procedures for managing customer-oriented IT services. ITSM offers various frameworks for businesses to create management standards around IT services and customer service practices, and to help businesses build structure around the…