According to Nobby Akiha, senior vice president at business intelligence (BI) specialist Actuate, for business users to be fully productive they need answers now. And in a world powered by sophisticated analytics tools, theres no excuse for waiting for monthly management reports If there is one theme that sums up ... read more..

SharePoint The Business Collaboration Platform for the Enterprise and the Web, according to Microsoft - has enjoyed many years of steady growth. Its low cost, ease of use and almost endless applications make it an attractive proposition to IT departments, CEOs and project teams alike. Wikipedia lists some of SharePoints ... read more..

7 July 2011, The British Library, London Information governance and the management of data is no longer just the concern of the IT department but has become a key corporate and commercial issue. Never more has it been true to consider information as the lifeblood of the organisation. We ... read more..

There is now a significant weight of scientific opinion behind the argument that changes in the worlds climate are man-made and are attributable, at least in part, to increases in CO2 emissions over the last 100 years. ... read more..

The Mint Hotel, Manchester, 6 July 2011Pressures remain on IT budgets and will do so for the foreseeable future it is time for organisations to think more strategically about the role and impact of technology to deliver true business transformation with improvements to the bottom line the current steady ... read more..

In challenging economic times a low cost, low hassle service is very attractive to executive boards, especially as the most well known providers of cloud services, such as IBM, Microsoft, on the technology side and Amazon and Google on the service side, are also trusted household names. Their products and ... read more..

St Leonards Hall, Edinburgh University, Edinburgh, 14th June 2011 Agile project management practices are becoming a recognised standard in the software industry. Is this because agile techniques are so much better than the more traditional project management approaches or is it because the old project management methodologies dont work? The ... read more..

Andy Hopkirk reports from the May meeting of the Microsoft Interoperability Executive Customer Council (IEC)Mays Council was very much focused on cloud-related matters and interoperability, the impact of consumerisation of IT and the every growing diversity of end-user client devices, the state of play with HTML5 standards development and implementations ... read more..

NCC Members can ask relevant questions to the wider NCC membership, moderated by NCC. We collate the responses, where appropriate anonymise them, then publish the results on the website for the benefit of the wider Membership. Can you help? A public sector organisation is commissioning a project to enable services ... read more..

NCC Guidelines Volume 1 Number 1, June 2011 ... read more..

The Evolution Before we explore the differences between .NET and Java, lets first find out why they exist at all. If we cast our mind back to the early days of computing, programming was a very difficult task. There were many different computers with wildly different architectures. (Soviet computer Сетунь ... read more..

Mint Hotel, Manchester, 30th March 2011 The question was. has vendor hype devalued the promise of unified communications and caused confusion with the move to cloud computing? The conference had a good mix of delegates across the sectoral divide approx 35% public sector and 65% across all verticals of ... read more..

Early signs for 2011 are of a recovering economy, however cost cutting for many and cost containment for all are still very firmly driving our strategic thinking in IT terms. It does feel cautiously like the worst is over, certainly in the private sector, however, theres probably still some way ... read more..

Mint Hotel, Manchester, 26th January 2011The Lansdowne Club, Mayfair, London, 9th February 2011 In the current economic climate, Agiles iterative steps where chunks of work form stepping stones, allow for tangible hands-on ownership by the business as the software is built. This visibility to the business ensures deliverables are on ... read more..

One of the few remaining ways to realising cost efficiencies Software Asset Management (SAM) is the most efficient way for organisations to gain control of their software estate from both a licence compliance and financial perspective. The most effective SAM licence management and optimization strategy will enable organisations to achieve ... read more..

Information Assurance for SMEs The launch of a right sized security standard for smaller businesses Small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) which comprise half of the private sector turnover in the UK1 are expected to protect their business information, your private data, and satisfy the regulatory authorities and their supply chain partners. ... read more..

You will be aware that the NCC participates in the Microsoft Interoperability Executive Customer Council, representing your interests and concerns in that forum. One area we are currently pressing for action in is in the overlap between cloud computing technologies and interoperability issues in the broadest sense: e.g. between public/ ... read more..

Dr Andy Hopkirk 17 November 2010 Sometimes its hard to see the wood from the trees, so any contribution that helps NCC members do so is generally to be welcomed. And so it is with the Microsoft Press, 2nd edition of Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions from the Desktop to the ... read more..

From NCCs Dr. Andy HopkirkHaving just got back from a two day meeting of Microsofts Interoperability Executive Customer Council (IECC), Im thinking, Theres a lot going on! We can all see that the market is, right now, experiencing an explosion of internet-enabled Cloud services-oriented ICT innovation and diversification. New service ... read more..

IT vendors do themselves no favors by delivering underwhelming presentations at conferences and events. Sponsoring the event may seem to confer the right to deliver a marketing pitch, but this still needs to be informative and relevant to the attendees to leave the right impression.OH NO, ITS THE VENDOR PRESENTATION...:Enterprise ... read more..

Agile project management practices are becoming the standard in the software industry. is this because agile techniques are so much better than the more traditional project management approaches or is it because the old project management methodologies dont work? The reality is probably a combination of the two.The status quoBefore ... read more..

Back to school for the UK today but amidst the 2010 GCSE results we see a worrying trend emerging for IT Whilst, the number of pupils taking single sciences has surged, the overall pass rate rose again to a record 69.1%. Against a backdrop of increased pressure on university places ... read more..

The results of a new survey from the National Computing Centre (NCC) paint a challenging picture for the UK IT management community. When asked what was their most pressing issue in the current economic climate, most cited maintaining service levels with reduced budgets, this was closely followed by the challenge ... read more..

NCCs Head of Programmes and Projects, Dr Andy Hopkirk, recently participated in the 8th half-yearly meeting of Microsofts Interoperability Executive Customer Council meeting in Redmond, Washington USA (25th-26th May 25th, 2010).A total of nineteen council members from sixteen end user organisations participated in the meeting, representing multinational businesses, e-government and ... read more..

Defining the Problem be clear about what youre trying to achieve So you have an intrusion prevention system (IPS) project... It stands to reason that unless you really understand what an IPS can do for you, you may struggle to extract maximum value from it. Therefore, the ... read more..

Members can download the full PDF of Guideline 337 Over 20 years with IT at the heart of business, organisations have consolidated around large, fixed facilities where functions and business processes could be co-located. This model, predicated on the efficiency of centralised controls is now being rendered obsolete by ... read more..

Ahead of the Budget, George Osbourne will today announce details of plans to cut public spending by over 6.2bn, saying that action needs to be taken now to resolve serious long term issues in public finance. Budgets for IT, property, advertising and recruitment are expected to be cut and whilst ... read more..

According to the latest Security Breaches report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a new wave of security breaches is hitting UK businesses potentially costing them billions. Technology adoption has continued to evolve rapidly through virtualisation, cloud computing and social networks, and despite an apparent increased level of awareness of security risks and ... read more..

John Lovelock, Chief Executive of FAST IiS (the Federation Against Software Theft and Investors in Software), discusses possible threats to the digital economy. The digital economy has received much publicity over the last year, and especially the last few weeks. The Governments Digital Britain Report has led to the Digital ... read more..

25th February 2010 Download Think Tank Research Report: The Future of the IT Department. (346 KB pdf) Background The NCC Think Tank on The Future of Software Services Delivery in November 2009, and subsequent discussions at the NCC Members Advisory Board and Corporate Engagement ... read more..