Automation Centre, award-winning developer of TrackerSuite.Net (www.TrackerSuite.Net), received a "Promising" rating from Gartner Inc. in its recent report, "MarketScope for Project and Portfolio Management Applications".

Gartner Inc., a premier information technology research and advisory company that delivers technology related insight to CIOs and senior IT leadership, developed this MarketScope report based on the current Project Portfolio Management software market, and how solutions within it support various scenarios for PPM, including those experienced by IT departments.

This report is intended for use by prospective PPM and Project Office software users to review vendors supporting processes for managing projects, viewing project portfolios and resources. Its evaluation criteria included: customer experience, offering strategy, the product and/or services delivered, the organization's business model and history of innovation, market awareness and responsiveness, and finally the track record of the organization.

According to Gartner, "... Promising vendors are a mix of PPM vendors and products - older, more established vendors, as well as newcomers with innovative thinking, lighter PPM footprints, interesting development strategies, or simplified PPM process automation overlooked by more established vendors in the market."

"We are very pleased to receive a 'Promising' rating in this MarketScope report," said Steven Birchfield of Automation Centre. "The marketplace for Web based / SaaS solutions for Projects and IT has exploded over the last several years, and to be recognized by Gartner as one of fifteen 'Promising' contenders within such a competitive market is not only an accomplishment, but we also believe it is assurance that our company’s vision is correct and that our product development is moving in the right direction."

For interested parties, a free TrackerSuite.Net demonstration site is available for evaluation. Register here for immediate access.

About Automation Centre

Automation Centre (www.Acentre.com) is a leading provider of advanced Project and IT Service Management solutions for organizations of all sizes. Automation Centre's primary products include TrackerSuite.Net, Tracker Suite (www.TrackerSuite.com) for IBM Lotus Notes, and TrackerOffice (www.TrackerOffice.com) for Microsoft Outlook/Exchange. TrackerSuite.Net is a trademark of Automation Centre. Tracker Suite and TrackerOffice are registered trademarks of Automation Centre.

About the MarketScope

The MarketScope is copyrighted 2011 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The MarketScope is an evaluation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the MarketScope, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest rating. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

by Damian Giannunzio

While a ruler of ancient Greece would be perplexed by a smartphone, he still understands what is required to maintain a prosperous kingdom. King Midas of myth and the modern CIO share a number of fundamental desires: stability, consolidation, and service. These are essential values that transcend time and retain their luster after thousands of years. And whether you’re trying to run a kingdom, small-to-medium business, or enterprise-level company, you are often occupied with acquiring or maintaining them.

Midas prayed for the ability to transmute anything to gold at a touch… but gold is a heavy anchor, as he soon discovered. Implementing a business plan without being fully apprised of a value proposition’s associated costs can be ruinous—golden apples are pretty, but hardly edible. The Midas touch opportunity that is virtualization requires careful review and understanding by a CIO.

Talk of virtualization, private clouds, public clouds, and everything in between has become so commonplace that you’re the unpopular and unprincipled dilettante at the ball if you don’t have an interesting anecdote to share on the topic. While the confusion persists, you’re still looking for the bottom line: Is this the direction that my business needs to move in? The field is still changing and advancing so rapidly that it can be difficult to find your footing on the shifting ground. So where do you begin?

The old way 
Businesses and enterprises alike are plagued with inefficiencies, runaway resource distribution, and escalating costs. The contributing factors are numerous but can be quantified generally by underutilization and inflexibility. While server sprawl and workstation profusion escalate, storage administrators are still aware of the fact that these resources are not at full capacity. Licensing constraints and application purposing dictate the need for resource assignment, leading to a situation in which some servers have to pull triple time while others are barely active. Production floors are saturated with PCs at varying levels of hardware tier and HelpDesk inboxes overflow with upgrade requests or reports of malfunction. Many businesses are still ignoring performance issues such as file fragmentation.

The problem is that this sounds normal. Because we have always dealt with the tight coupling of software and hardware, the solution path has traditionally led towards more distribution. Building out the network reactively has been simple to cost in terms of the production demands of the moment: a drive died, a new server is required, we need X additional workstations, etc. Purchase orders pile up for additional software licensing, IT costs continue to break ever higher glass ceilings, and we convince ourselves that this is growth.

While there have been amazing advances in continuity, server outages due to poor load balancing persist. Tools enabling the automation of these services are typically proprietary, which means hundreds of IT hours annually spent in learning, implementation, and maintenance for potentially hardware-specific tools. The thought of migrating the business to a new architecture can paralyze a server administrator with fear, yet little choice remains when expansion is the only answer.

Solutions exist. Disk fragmentation prevention or correction for direct-attached storage and other utilities can increase system performance for current infrastructures and resolve some of the fundamental issues driving these larger problems. The advent of shared storage gave us an introduction to the massive opportunities available in consolidation. True scalability, though, remains out of reach. We’re still subject to the pitfalls of storage islands and their rising energy costs.

Gold as light as a cloud 
Virtualization actually predates distributed computing. More than 30 years ago, IBM first implemented virtualization in order to logically partition their mainframes into separate ‘virtual machines.’ And the rationale then still holds true today: They virtualized in order to fully leverage their resources.

To understand the principal benefits of virtualization, let’s review the core concept: abstraction and separation of application from hardware. When you tie specific use cases to server or workstation hardware, you tie the survival, investment, and productivity of the use cases to that hardware. It is little wonder, then, that IT purchasing has become so accepted that preapproved budgets in the hundreds of thousands or even millions get rubber stamped with minimal review. The very survival of mission-critical applications currently rests on these hardware expenses.

Introducing an internal virtual infrastructure, or ‘private cloud,’ is the first step toward escaping the current model. Separation of application permits the evaluation of hardware expense as a cost distinct from simply being able to do business, giving companies a choice. At the same time, a virtual administrator can now leverage dynamic control over the resources available to that virtualized application, since it is no longer tied to one set of physical resources.

Virtualization also opens the door to new conventions for performance and IT. Stepping away from the model of ‘one system, one application’ yields new pathways for measuring the advancement and growth of enterprise. Putting a price tag on server or workstation usability, enterprise management, and energy costs gives the purchase decision maker more granular control on proper spending. Long-frazzled system administrators who have spent countless hours tapping pencil to forehead while desperately trying to word their proposals for IT investments are now able to eloquently and effectively communicate the need for innovation because we can see the cost of performance.

‘Public cloud’ offerings are rapidly multiplying as well. These remote virtual services offer the benefits of virtualization with even greater scalability and the reliability of dedicated virtual resources that may exceed by leaps and bounds the infrastructure available at any given price point for private cloud. These encompass every form of virtualization possible, from individual applications and file stores to workstations and servers.

In contemplating a transition to private/public cloud or a hybrid implementation of the two, it’s necessary to quantify what the realized benefits to your business will be. Consolidation and increased life of hardware is not an abstract concept—it’s reduced cost. Improved business continuity expands on previously understood and accepted data security standards. Improved performance means greater service levels, internally and externally. All of these are positioned as the value proposition for virtualization, and rightly so. They also need to be weighed against the costs of new storage requirements, the IT investments associated with implementation, and the new obstacles that virtualization can present. With virtual provisioning over shared storage, an administrator needs to understand and monitor resources with a far keener eye than ever before. More than one resource suffers when bottlenecks occur, and optimizing your new or existing virtual platform must be a paramount concern.

In the case of medium business to large-scale enterprise, virtualization will be the norm in a matter of years. It’s important to get educated now and to begin understanding not only the benefits but also the unique challenges of virtualization. Know when to virtualize based on your existing physical infrastructure and application use, and monitor the benefits as virtualization is instituted. Look before you leap, and get all of the gold your kingdom can handle without the heavy burden.

Damian Giannunzio is the product manager at Diskeeper Corporation (Burbank, CA). www.diskeeper.com.  Reprinted with the permission of WestWorld Productions, Inc. (www.wwpi.com). Copyright 2011. All rights reserved.

By: Cassie Doubleday

As remote communication becomes the increasing norm for clients, co-workers, employees, and managers, we as the sender need to think twice about how we write, and the possible ways our emails could be interpreted. 

I have to ask myself and you: do we really need to check the tone of our emails? Has it really come to a point that we’re unable to understand what’s being said to us via our screen? Or is it true what they say, “Face-to-face” communication can never be replaced”? 

Last year, Lymbix launched ToneCheck. The free product claims to be the solution to one of the biggest problems when communicating with people via email – misinterpretation of what the email really means.  We all have run into this problem. We send an email about a meeting or suggest an edit on a project and the receiver of the email takes it too personally. The result? You have an irritated employee/co-worker who thinks you’re out to get them.

It’s interesting because I’ve been using this product via my outlook and am going to implement it in my Gmail (just for kicks). What it does, is read what you’re writing, and based on your word choice and sentence structure, it tells you what the receiver may think you’re saying.  It claims to analyze emotional insight too. I’m still not 100% sold on that, but it does make me think twice about what I am writing.

This is a benefit and also problem. It’s time consuming to mull over and rewrite emails. It’s also time consuming to constantly worry that you’re going to upset someone when in fact you’re just being direct. It’s even more time consuming and mentally draining to deal with virtual conflict. Wouldn’t you agree?

The more I think about ToneCheck the more I realize that it isn’t necessarily the way we write our emails but rather the way we work in a team. Sure, we sometimes send an email that comes off different than what we intended, but, if the person you’re writing to already knows how you communicate, shouldn’t they be able to recognize that there’s no harm in those words?

This makes me think that it’s not our tone, but rather our team building and co-operation skills that may be the problem. If you’re going to be working virtually with a team, you may not get the chance to meet in person, so make your virtual introduction count. It will set the ‘tone’ for communications later on.

Here are three ways do this virtually:

1.     Skype

If you can, before you work with anyone virtually set-up a Skype meeting to introduce yourself and your company.  This is the new face-to-face. It will give the receiver a sense of who you are and put a face to the name in the emails they’re going to be getting.  Doing this first will provide long term benefits, and even make the way you interact more credible.

2.     Video Introduction

Video introductions are simple and easy. You don’t have to overdo it, just send a quick minute and half video about yourself, what you do and what you’re looking forward to in regards to working with this team.  It’s more personal and again, puts a face to the name.

3.     Send a Picture

If Skype or video are not available solutions, why not send a picture? A picture gives the person a better idea of who they are talking to – the face of the message.  This simple addition will add more personality to your email and increase the comfort level for you and your team.

While ToneCheck could be a solution to potential day-to-day remote communication misunderstandings, it could also create unnecessary worry and uncertainty. This is why it’s still the team building that provides security within us, our co-workers and the project.  And why it’s important to make sure that you have a good project management software, like Sharepoint Hosting 2010, which allows everyone to work in sync – not just via email.

If you’re going to be virtually working with a team, a proper visual introduction will give everyone that extra confidence boost needed in order to successfully and comfortably work together.

There’s no reason not to hold at least one virtual face-to-face meeting and I’m not sure there’s a need for ToneCheck.

Cassie Doubleday is a Canadian based tech geek and blogger with over three years experience in online social media marketing and online communities. She’s a Gen Y with a background in Public Relations. She often checks her tone. 

Click to view the free webinar.

Enterprise CIOs are in a bind. On one hand, their organizations are being asked to become more agile and lean. On the other hand, they are being asked to reduce operational costs. Is your path to enhanced business agility and operational efficiency in the cloud?

In this highly informative video, VMware, Tier 3 and Equinix provide you insights into:

• Opportunities for creating business agility and reducing operational overhead with Hybrid Cloud
  
• How IT can extend the benefits of their existing VMware virtualized environment by leveraging the application migration benefits of VMware- based Hybrid Cloud solutions
  
• What essential requirements to look for in your Enteprise Grade Hybrid Cloud Service Provider
  
• What fast, secure connectivity solutions and cloud marketplace services to expect from your colo provider

Speakers are:

• Nic O’Donavan – Solutions Architect, VMware
  
• Bryan Thompson – VP of Services, Tier 3
  
• Lou Najdzin – Vertical Development Director, Global Cloud & IT Services, Equinix

Click to view the free webinar.

AUSTIN, TEXAS (September 16, 2011) – Journyx today announces the addition of new topics, speakers and dates to the 2011 Journyx Webinar Series, a line-up of live and on-demand content from skilled presenters with real world experience. The educational webinars will help professionals further their project management careers, as well as provide Professional Development Units (PDUs) completely free of charge.

New session titles include:

• Extending Microsoft Project and Project Server
• Top 10 Reasons to Outsource Your Finance and Accounting Operations
• Dynamic Project Planning: The Real Way to Execute Projects
• How to Win and Successfully Execute on Defense Contracts
• 5 Ways to Increase Profit with Time Management
• 3 Critical Components of Project Success

The full line-up of webinars along with registration information can be found at http://journyx.com/library/webinars. Journyx also offers a full archive of past webinars.  

About Journyx, Inc.

Journyx helps customers intelligently invest their time and resources to achieve per-person, per-project profitability. Customers include Crate&Barrel, Schlumberger, BP, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Callaway Golf and Honeywell.

Follow Journyx:

• Online: www.journyx.com
• Better Business Blog: http://journyx.com/blog
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/journyx
• LinkedIn: http://tinyurl.com/37hreuz  
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/journyxinc

Burbank, CA, September 14, 2011 – Diskeeper Corporation today announced the appointment of Jerry Baldwin as its new Chief Executive Officer.  Acquiring Mr. Baldwin’s 30-year expertise in the hi-tech industry signals a further expansion of Diskeeper Corporation into the storage performance market where it has maintained a leadership position for decades.

“Diskeeper has a very strong technology portfolio,” said Jerry. “It adds critically needed performance and efficiency improvements to the virtualization and data storage fields and because of this, it is in demand across all the channels – e-tailer, reseller, OEM and distribution. There is an upsurge in Diskeeper product demand at every enterprise level by CIOs desperate to drive cost efficiency down in their IT sectors. 

“We have OEM contracts with two of the largest manufacturers and more have been calling. You have to remember that Diskeeper products are famous for being bullet-proof -- 90% of the Fortune 500, 40 million licenses sold and yet only a handful of tech support calls! That’s unheard of in this business.” 

Jerry Baldwin comes to Diskeeper with a list of accomplishments, many in CXO leadership roles, including taking Fortune 500 companies to their next level. He has helped companies such as BPI/CA, CompUAdd, DEC, EDS and One eCommerce launch new products, build quality channel programs and accelerate sales.

Craig Jensen, Founder and Chairman, said, “We are thrilled to be able to secure someone with the experience and talent of Jerry. As we grow our product family, aggressively build our OEM business and expand our channel and global footprint, we are fortunate to have a leader who has succeeded in each of these areas.”

For more information about Diskeeper and their products, contact Colleen Toumayan by email at ctoumayan@diskeeper.com or by phone at 800-829-6468 ext. 5305.

In our current global economy, the search for qualified project team members expands outward to include the entire globe. A virtual team may be comprised of individuals located throughout the world working together to complete anything from simple to complex projects.

Modern collaboration tools ease the management of these virtual teams by addressing these three primary areas:

1) Collecting information from the team
2) Disseminating information out to the team
3) Facilitating sessions with the team (i.e., status meetings, planning sessions, etc.)

A good foundation, a place to store information that is easy to get to, is a key component of virtual team management. Microsoft’s Sharepoint has become a stable and productive tool for use on any size project. Sharepoint Hosting 2010 adds the convenience of residing on a hosted platform yet is still available to all members of the team. Maintaining the tool becomes the responsibility of the vendor, freeing up the team to focus on the project and deliverables.

Sharepoint provides a place for storing and indexing documents for quick retrieval. Multiple team members can work on the same documents allowing collaboration between people, groups or teams.

Workflow capabilities allow projects to move forward against a defined workplan. Members of the virtual team have a place to enter time worked and status information. Community boards give team members a place to ask questions and discuss project issues.

Another tool, Google Docs, is a relative newcomer to the collaboration toolset. It allows people to work together on various document types, save and organize them, and share them with other teams. With fewer features than Sharepoint but still a serious collaboration tool, Google Docs satisfies the needs of the budget-conscious project team.

For facilitated sessions, Skype and Microsoft Live Meeting allow people to come together from multiple locations and share information. Managing a virtual team still requires making a connection with the team members. These tools allow the project leaders to perform this critical function.

These tools support audio, video, file sharing and screen sharing, capabilities important in any team meeting. These are also very useful tools for training the team and creating presentations for executive members.

There are numerous other tools available online to help a manager coordinate the activities of a virtual team. Online calendar sharing (Google Calendar), scheduling (Tungle), task management (ToodleDo) are all functions available for little cost yet provide high value to the project.

The role of the project manager or team leader does not change when working with virtual teams. Only the tools that they use have changed and evolved. It is still vital for management to know who is doing what, when, how long it takes and the cost impact on the project.

Whether working with a full-featured collaboration platform or piecing together the needed components from various vendors, these tools allow the project manager to work with the virtual team as effectively as if they were all local resources.

(image source: nelsonbj.wordpress.com)

I've been asked by PMI (the Project Management Institute) to create an article for an upcoming series on basically this very concept.  Sort of a "What Would You Do" topic where I discuss an issue I came up against during a project, how I handled it, what the outcome was, and then I call for responses.  The idea is to generate a community discussion so we can all learn from each other's responses on how each of us handled a similar situation or how we might handle it if faced with something similar in the future.

So, I thought this might be a nice ongoing series that I present here as well.  I may or may not present something from my past experience or from a colleagues past experience - it may be real or made up.  And if any of you want a situation or incident discussed on here, just email me and I'll use it for an upcoming topic.

I'm not yet sure how often I'll do these - I'm thinking possible twice per week.  Today's installment is about requirements...a touchy subject for all, I'm sure.

Scenario:  You're starting a project, you have  schedule and price in place and you sit down with the customer and their team to review the detailed requirements that they say they have and that the schedule is built around.  What you find out, though, is that their detailed requirements are really very vague, high-level requirements that will require much more detail and thorough analysis before you have anything useable to build a solution from.

The impact, of course, is that you have the schedule and a price for the project that is based on the fact that you won't have to do this further detailed requirements planning and documentation with the client...they indicated they had detailed requirements as the deal was closed.  But they don't.  What do you do next?  Do you put the project on hold till they have the requirements?  Do you go back to the account manager and have them rework the deal?  Do you create a change order to cover the extra planning time?  Keep in mind - this is the first  PM-customer interaction and starting off with a change order or demand for more money may not sit well with them... it must be handled carefully.

Looking forward to your respones...thanks.

This is big news...wow...today is the day that Steve Jobs announced to the world that he is resigning from Apple as their CEO.  Sure, he's planning to stay on as the chairman of the board, but for all intents and purposes his run at Apple is over.  The reins are now turned over to his planned successor...former COO Tim Cook.

What does this mean for Apple?  Probably not a lot.  They're on the right track, Jobs has set the proper course for the organization...the innovation isn't going to just cease.  Cook & company will carry on.  But this is sad news.  Ever since I was wooed into the Apple family by my wife when I purchased my first - and only - Macbook (which I'm typing this on right now) back in March of 2009, I've been a full-fledged Apple believer.  An iPod followed, then an iPad, though this and the follow-up iPad2 purchase became purchases for my wife as I still am not sold on a tablet...too much in love with my Macbook.  Then there's the iPhone, God's gift to...well, to anyone smart enough to buy one.  Droid was good, but the iPhone is a new world.  Love it...love it...can't live without it.

Now I've gotten off track a little.  What are your thoughts on Apple's next steps?  Will they miss a beat without Jobs?  Will they remain the leader...the incredibly innovative money-making machine that they have been for so long?  Will I still find my happy place inside the Apple store at the Fashion Show mall on the Las Vegas strip?

And what about Jobs?  This won't be a Brett Favre thing.  I believe he's truly done this time.  This is more like Magic after his health situation.  Retired, back for the all-star game, and then off into the sunset.  Seriously, Jobs health is not good....and that's sad.  We all should be praying for him...I know I am.  And I wish him the best and I hope that Apple continues to stay on track without him.

IT Managers probably have mixed feelings about hardware refresh cycles. New hardware is great, but deployment can be challenging and even in the best of times, IT managers have to fight tooth-and-claw to justify replacement. While this has its benefits optimally you would also ensure that you are getting the full benefit of new and existing machines by employing practices like defrag to consolidate the randomly scattered incontiguous fragments of files and free space on the disk thereby increasing efficiency and reducing disk wear.

The benefits go far beyond just reducing hard drive wear as indicated in a survey of several hundred IT personnel where Windows® IT Pro concluded:

“The benefits of improved hardware reliability and system performance are clear; longer system life, more effective information delivery, improved user productivity. These are far beyond the benefits commonly associated with disk defragmentation and are the result of a comprehensive deployment of Diskeeper® data performance software.”

The survey noted "The majority of long-term Diskeeper users reported seeing the useful life of their hardware extended by up to two years" (See the full survey here)

Such reports are not surprising since consistent user complaints about system performance are the main catalysts behind hardware replacement. By using technology exclusive to Diskeeper 2011 such as IntelliWrite® fragmentation prevention technology you eliminate most fragmentation before it ever happens.

This approach curtails negative user experience so complaints are minimized while other features like automatic defrag reduce disk workload yielding less heat and energy consumption, further extending service life.

"Our Mechanical Engineers complained about computers only a year old and the best we could have purchased" explains Derik A. Hammond, IT Operations Supervisor, L-3 Communications/Photonics. "Programs were facing delays, engineers were having constant crashes and losing work; we were literally in a crisis. We deployed Diskeeper with excellent results. Bottom line - the machines we were being pushed to upgrade are still in use and they will actually make a 4-year life span thanks to Diskeeper.”

The survey also showed that databases and servers with Diskeeper ran faster and more reliably, satisfying their initial expectancy of improved system performance with longer hardware life as a welcome bonus.

A complete defrag solution as available exclusively in Diskeeper 2011 goes a long way in extending hardware life, giving IT managers more breathing room between site-wide refresh cycles.

For more information about Diskeeper and their products, contact Colleen Toumayan by email at ctoumayan@diskeeper.com or by phone at 800-829-6468 ext. 5305.