Multi-cloud strategy: Pros, cons and tips

The competitive arms race that is the public cloud market affords CIOs several options as they look to rent software and infrastructure. Differences in price, business requirements and feature sets often force IT leaders to solicit more than one cloud vendor to serve their business technology needs, which many refer to as multi-cloud strategy. […

Hiring STEM OPT employees: What businesses need to know

International students who want to supplement their U.S. degree(s) and academic knowledge often turn to Optional Practical Training (OPT) programs to gain on-the-job experience, especially in STEM fields. The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) OPT programs allow international students to extend their stay in the U.S. without changing their immigration status by extending their F-1…

How TIAA invests in women in IT

Women make up less than twenty percent of the technology workforce. We need not discuss the many downsides to this low number; our time is better spent working to improve it. Rahul Merchant is doing just that. He is executive sponsor of TIAA’s IT Women’s Council, a multi-faceted employee resource program at the $6B financial…

IDG Contributor Network: Shift your focus from technology acquisition to real solutions and outcomes

Approach technology decisions from the standpoint of what solution you are trying to bring to bear upon a particular business problem. The solution is the approach to each business issue.  The approach may involve multiple specific technology products, but the solution mindset sets forth how those technology products should be integrated to provide the answer to…

What is Kanban? Workflow management simplified

Kanban definition Kanban is a simplified workflow management system aimed at achieving efficiency and agility in the production process. While it is commonly used in software development, Kanban focuses on gradual improvement in every area of the business — not just IT. Developed in Japan by Toyota in the early 1940s, Kanban is not designed…

IDG Contributor Network: 5 technical capabilities required in modern enterprise data strategies

Creating a data strategy a decade ago was relatively easy compared to today. Back then, database experts debated the capabilities and performance of relational databases from Oracle, Microsoft and IBM, or whether to use open source databases like MySQL and PostgresSQL. A minority of enterprises explored NoSQL databases including document stores, key-value databases and columnar…