Clarizen, creators of the popular web-based project management software of the same name, is starting to wow the PM industry all over again with their newest release – which was just announced on October 20, 2011.  Clarizen InterAct, which is part of the Clarizen version 5.3 release, is a patent-pending email server that takes email from being a communication tool to being an execution engine. 

The capabilities InterAct adds in terms of project communication for project managers such as myself can really be a game changer.  Users can now customize mailboxes and build their own rules to perform just about any operation in the software including initiating or updating projects, logging issues, or performing time-tracking functions, to name a few.  InterAct improves how project teams collaborate, work assigned project tasks, and engage with their project managers and customers using something they already use throughout the workday – their email system.

InterAct features include:

• Gives users the ability to engage with Clarizen from any device using any email client.
• Allows users to send email directly to Clarizen, which in turn updates tasks and projects automatically, without needing to login.
• Includes predefined mailboxes that help utilize the most commonly used functionality within Clarizen, making it fast and easy to begin emailing Clarizen.
• Offers customization so emails can perform almost any action users are able to do within Clarizen when logged-in.
• Generates vCards for each mailbox in InterAct so users know which email address to use when sending messages for specific projects and tasks. 

Additional features new to Clarizen version 5.3 include:

• Stopwatch: Helps users understand who is working on what, empowering teams with a new level of visibility into projects and resources.
• Relations Summary Fields: Users can look up related objects and calculate formulas such as the sum, average, minimum and maximum of related entities’ fields.
• Single Sign On and LDAP Integration: Organizations can configure Clarizen to synchronize with their AD/LDAP system to enable single-sign-on and single logout to various applications depending on the connection to the corporate network.

To learn more about InterAct and Clarizen v5.3 visit Clarizen.com

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.