TECHNOLOGIES CHANGED THE WAY WE DO BUSINESS – WHICH WE NOW CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT
By Rick Mark
Service Area Manager
Remember when you first saw the iPhone? The first release was originally dismissed as a small player in the enterprise, especially compared to the BlackBerry, at that time. Now, just about every corporate executive, not to mention pre-teen, has one in his or her pocket, sometimes even in addition to a BlackBerry.
What other technology, gadgets and enterprise services have changed business in such a dramatic way? For most IT leaders, there’s a good chance a CRM tool or even a seemingly minor tool has. Here’s a list to think about:
The LAMP Stack – Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP – is a bundle of free open source tools for Web development and deployment that was groundbreaking because of its low deployment costs. Before LAMP, companies would have to hire a disparate group of engineers, many of them using the .NET Framework, and license technology from Oracle and Microsoft.
Salesforce.com had some serious competition when it debuted in 1999 from existing CRM systems running in on-premises data centers. In Q4 of 2011 alone, the site processed 45 billion customer transactions. There are now more than 100,000 customers worldwide. What’s the secret? The Cloud Rules…
Adobe PDF is taken for granted. There are now about 150 million PDF docs on the Web today, according to Adobe. They work on just about every computing platform and mobile device, and recent advances in e-signatures—namely, typing a password to protect documents—have made the standard viable in the banking and finance sectors.
Bluetooth has made a big impact across many industries and is still growing. Recent improvements, such as a low-power version that works with heart monitors and better audio quality in Bluetooth 4.0, mean this short-range wireless signal will be around for a while. The new trend – Bluetooth might even move into the financial sector. Intuit, for example, now makes a credit card reader that connects to your smartphone over Bluetooth.
Wi-Fi and VPN are two of the most important enterprise innovations of the past 20 years. Mobile users can now work remotely from anywhere, use Internet telephones, tap into wireless printers and, thanks to the emerging 802.11ac standard, exchange files over a network at Gigabit speeds.
The virtual private network is now a fixture of every data center. In the early days of computing, enterprise workers would tap in using unsecure lines from home. Then the corporate world started using firewalls to protect against criminal hacking. The biggest advantages are lower travel costs, more freedom to work at home, and even a way to have smaller corporate offices.
If you need help making decisions on strategic technology to move your company further along in these trying times, you need to email us at ITConsulting@SingerLewak.com.
Rick Mark | Service Area Manager | RMark@SingerLewak.com | 818.251.1323
