Agora Insight
At Agora Consulting Partners, we have a long held practice of
sharing business and technology information with our clients,
partners and friends. We formalize this content in our
newsletter, Agora Insight. The Fall 2009 issue deals with
new software releases that we think are worth investigating as
well as some strategic initiatives you can use to save money in
your IT operations while providing better service and support to
your business customers.
On September 16th, 2009, Microsoft unveiled Project 2010 at
the Project Conference in Phoenix, Arizona. Agora is part
of an exclusive Microsoft Partner Advisory Council for
Enterprise Project Management solutions, so we received a
detailed, inside look at the new features.
More...
SQL Server 2008 includes a new version of Report Builder
which has been upgraded from the one originally shipped with SQL
Server 2005. It allows end users to create ad hoc reports
without the requirement for deep technical knowledge. It
provides an intuitive, easy to use interface to provide report
building capabilities to a much wider group of business users.
More...
Information Technology is a core platform and competitive
advantage for organizations. There are diverse and complex
roles within an IT organization from help desk through to
application development. Aligning an IT organization
through metrics can help ensure the different roles are driving
towards the same strategic objectives.
More...
Most well-established companies have amassed a complex
infrastructure of applications, including both new and legacy
systems. These application portfolios become increasingly
costly to support and maintain, and enhancements and integration
of new solutions become more and more difficult to implement.
Businesses routinely invest almost 70% of their IT spend on
maintaining these application portfolios.
More...
A project is a planned undertaking to achieve a given goal.
Within the context of a business this goal typically supports a
strategic objective such as increasing revenue, launching a new
product or streamlining operations. Since the achievement
of the objective is dependent on these projects, there is a
direct correlation between project success and an organization's
success.
More...
Windows Internet Explorer 8 was officially released by
Microsoft on March 19, 2009 for all Microsoft's major platforms
in 32-bit and 64-bit flavours. The new release has a host
of new features that will make the end user experience better.
It also has some changes that may mean some existing sites will
not function correctly.
More...
You may have an opportunity to reduce costs and provide
additional functionality to your end users by utilizing your
existing investment in Microsoft SQL Server 2008. The
standard SQL Server licence includes many Business Intelligence
capabilities that are expensive add-ons with other database
platforms. More...
Bad economic news is all around us and will affect most
organizations with reductions in revenues, expense and staff
cuts and greater scrutiny of all expenditures. For many it
is easy to conclude that now is not the time to be investing in
project management tools and processes. In fact, the
opposite is true. Here are four reasons.
More...
Enterprise application development is a complex task.
Today's enterprise applications are responsible for keeping the
organization functioning smoothly and driving revenue.
Mistakes in the development process can have catastrophic
impacts in production. Even less dire mistakes can still
result in significant and costly inefficiencies in the
development process. The most effective way to manage the
risk of these mistakes is through the implementation of a
comprehensive Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) process.
More...
Online presence has been a requirement for corporate
marketing for many years. Most companies have moved from
brochureware to eCommerce. The next evolution of Web sites has
begun and it is the move to social commerce. With social
commerce, consumers have an unprecedented forum for
communicating with each other and corporate organizations about
their purchases and opinions about corporate organizations.
More...
BI is a key priority for many organizations, but most are
confused about where to start to get the greatest return on
their investment of time, energy and technology dollars. We
provide a structured approach to assessing your BI Readiness
and point you in the right direction. The good news is
typically you already have a lot of the tools that you’ll
need to quickly start turning your mountains of corporate
data into actionable insight.
More...
The need to deliver solutions in multiple languages is a
reality of today’s business world. However, there is the right
way and many wrong ways to design a software application to be
multi-language and multi-culture ready. In this article we show
you the right way and save you time and money in the process.
More...
As with any software migration, success is dependent on good
planning. In this article, our lead technical architect for
Enterprise Project Management solutions takes you step by step
through the issues that need to be addressed to make sure your
organization realizes the benefits of the upgrade as quickly as
possible. More...
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