In Depth

In Depth

Collaboration software and productivity software

• SD-WAN keeps Darling Ingredients on the table through Covid-19 pandemic

  For some businesses, the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting need to support mass remote working will have accelerated something they began working on some time ago. Darling Ingredients is one such firm, whose SD-WAN roll-out puts it in good stead ...  Continue Reading

• How the supply chain is handling Covid-19

  Cost-cutting habits have left supply chains chasing their tails in the wake of the pandemic. We take a look at how they’re coping  Continue Reading

• Covid crisis shifts supply chain management from efficiency to resilience

  Supply chain management seems to be changing profoundly as the coronavirus pandemic unfolds, possibly shifting from an economy of efficiency to resilience, harnessing trading networks, machine learning and robotic process automation  Continue Reading

• Collaboration technology is breeding burnout – keep it real

  The Covid-19 pandemic has inevitably caused the use of collaboration platforms to spike. But as fatigue sets in, organisations try to keep their use cases focused  Continue Reading

• Constructing the future for engineering – finding the right model where one size does not fit all

  Design and engineering has rapidly evolved to be all about interconnected devices. We see how one of the leading manufacturing software suppliers is meeting the challenge  Continue Reading

• Coronavirus: Retailers reach for tech to keep staff connected in the crisis

  From fast-tracking home-working strategy, to conducting training and board meetings virtually, read about how retailers are keeping staff connected during the Covid-19 coronavirus crisis  Continue Reading

• Australian firms soldier on amid Covid-19 outbreak

  From the largest financial institutions to small companies, Aussie firms have been dialling up their use of technology tools to keep their businesses humming during the coronavirus pandemic  Continue Reading

• How APAC firms are coping with the Covid-19 outbreak

  The air of change looms large in companies operating in the Asia-Pacific region, with some doing better than others in keeping the lights on amid the coronavirus pandemic  Continue Reading

• Coronavirus: How app developers large and small are working to help fight Covid-19

  Computer Weekly looks at how a range of actors are using technology to help mitigate the various impacts caused by the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak  Continue Reading

• How to optimise remote workforces while tackling loneliness

  Remote working is very common in tech companies and IT departments. How can it be managed to optimise productivity and keep employees socially connected to their companies?  Continue Reading

• Choose tools to prevent communication overload

  Social media platforms can improve collaboration, but organisations need to be careful not to swamp staff with messages  Continue Reading

• Rise of the machines: How AI is changing unified communications

  Artificial intelligence is now moving into live UC environments at scale. We look at the impact it will have and what lies ahead  Continue Reading

• The changing face of enterprise collaboration

  Enterprises are turning to social platforms to optimise communication among their workforces. Computer Weekly looks at some examples  Continue Reading

• Exploring UCaaS: The main benefits for enterprises

  Getting unified communications-as-a-service right can mean more agility, higher productivity, and cost control  Continue Reading

• Cutting employees some Slack: The rise of messaging apps in retail

  Slack’s 2019 stock market debut raises the profile of enterprise collaboration software, but what options do retailers have in this space and how are they using the technology?  Continue Reading

• Software requirements for international aid go beyond cloud and apps

  Aid workers in extreme situations don’t always have stable access to the software they need over the cloud. Find out how they work around this  Continue Reading

• Chromebooks and G Suite: a good working alternative

  We look at Chromebooks as collaboration clients, both in Google-oriented and mixed-platform environments  Continue Reading

• Focus on content collaboration strategies

  Content collaboration platforms can enable businesses to create an agile and modern digital workplace  Continue Reading

• Has collaboration software wrought perilous communication overload?

  A new generation of collaborative software, such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, could prove a knowledge management boon. But does it have a dark side of communication overload?  Continue Reading

• How Australian enterprises are unifying business communications

  Business leaders and experts in rolling out unified communications tools in Australia stress the importance of change management and employee consultation to avoid digital white elephants  Continue Reading

• ASEAN’s growing appetite for unified communications

  Led by enterprises in Singapore and Malaysia, adoption of unified communications tools is expected to grow with the surge in demand for cloud-based and hosted offerings  Continue Reading

• In the know: how a digital workspace can drive innovation

  In a digital world, engaged employees can support innovation using a new generation of tools that leverage behavioural science and more  Continue Reading

• The death of the mainframe is greatly exaggerated, says CA

  With mainframe software tools forming a key part of its overall growth strategy, CA Technologies remains proud of its mainframe heritage  Continue Reading

• ASEAN firms warming up to enterprise mobility amid roadblocks

  From startups to postal companies, organisations across the ASEAN region see mobility as strategic to their businesses, even as they face headwinds such as security and talent shortages  Continue Reading

• Making sense of data with cloud-based BI

  An Australian non-profit group has turned to business intelligence and analytics to simplify reporting requirements, even as adoption of such tools vary across the Asia-Pacific region  Continue Reading

• How going cloud native can increase app agility

  We look at how cloud-native applications can deliver far more dynamic support to meet an organisation’s needs  Continue Reading

• Can cloud-based ERP buy you business agility?

  Enterprise applications has evolved into silos of software systems. The cloud is now offering a different approach to ERP  Continue Reading

• Office 365 at your service

  An overview of Microsoft’s subscription-based software offering  Continue Reading

• How to improve security against email attacks and for GDPR compliance

  About 200 billion emails are sent every day, but because of its importance email is constantly exploited by attackers, and yet is often overlooked in cyber security strategies  Continue Reading

• CIO interview: Alan Crawford, City & Guilds Group

  Four months into his role as CIO of City & Guilds, Alan Crawford opens up about the challenges of tending to the needs of a company that has hit the acquisition trail with aplomb in recent years  Continue Reading

• CW@50: Spreadsheets and ERP – 50 years of software coding business

  Business software has been a rich field for IT professionals over the past five decades, and we are on the cusp of a new era of customers rolling their own for competitive advantage  Continue Reading

• Skype for Business: One year on, so what are the results?

  It’s now a year since Microsoft transitioned the Lync unified communications suite into Skype for Business, but has the enterprise embraced or shunned it?  Continue Reading

• How to free your business and staff with self-service

  Introducing self-service IT can improve efficiency and hand control to the employee – so long as it’s done right  Continue Reading

• Next‑generation CIOs: The changing role of IT leaders

  The position of CIO is changing and there are more people in the role from less technical backgrounds than in the past  Continue Reading

• Case study: Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT

  Dutch technology giant talks up the success of its attempts to embrace agile IT delivery methods, and how it's shaping future customer engagements  Continue Reading

• The API economy – or the API Tower of Babel?

  Application programming interfaces promise to open up back-office systems to the business and third parties. We assess the impact  Continue Reading

• Case study: City & Guilds skills up on Microsoft cloud to unite global workforce

  Vocational training organisation City & Guilds uses Microsoft's collaboration, video conferencing and productivity tools to keep its global workforce connected  Continue Reading

• Email overload is killing the UK's economic productivity

  Mounting evidence suggests email is a blight on the UK’s economic productivity – but services outsourcing firm Atos has found a way to stem the tide  Continue Reading

• Five critical actions CIOs should take to improve the customer experience

  Actions include upgrading IT roles, amending measurements, structural changes and a cultural shift from internal to external  Continue Reading

• Digital customer experience: Beyond the website

  Organisations are faced with the challenge of delivering their customers with an online experience that goes far beyond just a website  Continue Reading

• Benchmarking social business and collaboration tools

  A complete social business strategy requires more than publishing social media guidelines for employees. CIOs need to rethink the enterprise as a social ecosystem  Continue Reading

• Bring your own collaboration

  Following the rise of BYOD, IT departments face a new challenge in controlling their organisation’s digital assets  Continue Reading

• Is it time to jump off the Windows bandwagon?

  The growth of user power has forced organisations to re-think IT strategies as employees demand mobility, collaboration and the latest technology  Continue Reading

• SAP bets future on cloud in central and eastern Europe

  SAP’s turn to cloud services for the delivery of its business applications seems especially energetic in central and eastern Europe  Continue Reading

• Review 2014: Top 10 business applications stories of 2014

  This year’s top 10 business applications stories show an increasing corporate IT appetite for better collaboration between organisations  Continue Reading

• Inside the Digital Catapult, six startups at the forefront of data innovation

  The recently opened Digital Catapult in London’s Kings Cross is home to ambitious technology startups innovating around big data  Continue Reading

• Unlock the business benefits of digitisation

  Analytics technology can help to transform the customer experience, but to achieve its full potential, IT and marketing must work together  Continue Reading

• Social media for communication inside the enterprise

  Companies have long used social media technology such as Facebook and Twitter to reach more customers – but how are businesses using it internally?  Continue Reading

• Choice and ease of use: key elements of a good app store

  Companies need to focus on individual user requirements and make sure their app store delivers the right tools for the right job  Continue Reading

• CIO Interview: Gary Steen, CTO, TalkTalk

  Gary Steen, CTO at ISP TalkTalk, says transforming internal IT will help him meet growing demands for superfast data connectivity  Continue Reading

• IT governance in the era of shadow IT

  The latest CW500 Club invited IT leaders to discuss the challenges of governance with the rise of 'shadow IT' outside the IT team  Continue Reading

• Belt and braces: covering all the endpoint security angles

  Given users have skipped beyond the safe confines of wholly owned and heavily guarded corporate networks, how do you keep data safe?  Continue Reading

• Microsoft Lync opens up unified communications market

  Microsoft's Lync could shake up a unified communications market that has historically been dominated by an elite group of vendors  Continue Reading

• The new world of automation

  Business process automation addresses the pace of change in the market by removing human entities wherever possible.  Continue Reading

• Keeping your corporate data in sync

  For collaboration to thrive, the appropriate tools need to be in place, and perhaps the most important is data synchronisation  Continue Reading

• The changing course of collaboration software

  There has been a major shake-up in the collaboration software market, with revenue up 12% year on year in 2013.  Continue Reading

• Collaboration: Building Yammer into a SharePoint world

  With market penetration of well over 100 million seats, SharePoint is a strategic investment for many organisations. Where does Yammer fit?  Continue Reading

• Collaborative conversation in the post-email enterprise

  Email is no longer an effective means of collaboration and some companies have even banned it - but what is the alternative?  Continue Reading

• No more email? Why companies are turning to collaboration technology

  Collaboration technologies are helping companies improve their employees' work-life balance  Continue Reading

• What does 2014 hold for HR technology?

  A look at the key battlegrounds in HR technology in 2014  Continue Reading

• Closing technology gaps for human resource departments

  A gap is appearing between the promise of cloud-based talent management technologies and the value those technologies deliver.  Continue Reading

• The perfect storm comes to talent management

  It is one of the most important areas of business, but talent management has been largely ignored by the IT industry – until now  Continue Reading

• A guide to WebRTC

  Real-time communications standards aim to help more users speak with ease over the internet. Computer Weekly looks at how the systems work  Continue Reading

• Big data journalism exposes offshore tax dodgers

  How journalists harnessed big data to challenge offshore financial secrecy  Continue Reading

• CIO interview: Mark Austin, Bedford Hospital

  A CIO with 18 years' NHS experience, on whether paperless can be achieved by 2018 and how wireless technology is helping his Trust  Continue Reading

• Using software to support your firm’s creative stock

  How can human capital management systems unlock your company’s most valuable assets?  Continue Reading

• How improved user experience yields returns on investment

  The consequences of poor customer experience are widely acknowledged but resolving such issues still divides opinion in businesses.  Continue Reading

• The dark side of software-defined datacentres

  As different suppliers have different strategies for software-defined datacentres, is the lack of standards leading to chaos?  Continue Reading

• Do businesses need to pay for VoIP?

  Free services offer VoIP to the masses, but are they reliable enough to use in enterprises or do they need pricey unified communications?  Continue Reading

• Standards key to realising the benefits of connectivity

  A network of smart appliances could revolutionise energy efficiency but suppliers must agree on common specifications.  Continue Reading

• CW500: Five technology forces that will change businesses forever

  CIOs have a unique opportunity to take the lead in innovation as disruptive technologies overturn traditional business models  Continue Reading

• Consult experts to get the most out of a SaaS roll-out

  Businesses often lack in-house expertise and services providers can help them with the project planning, design and up-to-date practices.  Continue Reading

• Extreme teleworking from Everest Base Camp

  Technical project manager Astrid Byro is planning to work remotely from 5000m above sea-level in the Himalayas using a Kindle Fire  Continue Reading

• Top 10 public sector IT stories of 2012

  There were big moves to reform government IT this year, but despite an appetite for change there are also signs that old habits do not die easily  Continue Reading

• M2M technology ushers in the age of total connection

  Machine-to-machine (M2M) communications is transforming the world into one where everything and everyone is networked.  Continue Reading

• Will video conferencing find its business market in 2012?

  As networks expand and mobile consumerisation familiarises the technology, video collaboration looks poised to enter the business.  Continue Reading

• Data's role in customer engagement

  A combination of traditional business intelligence and big data can help businesses manage information overload  Continue Reading

• Taking the tablets to boost healthcare efficiency

  Mobility is one of the big drivers in the NHS. We look at how consumerisation trends are improving healthcare.  Continue Reading

• CW500: The business case for social media

  BT, the Met Office and the Department of Work and Pensions reveal how they are using social media to interact with staff and customers  Continue Reading

• Computer Weekly / TechTarget IT priorities survey 2012

  Learn which IT priorities are at the top of UK IT managers lists for 2012. Coverage from across our network includes cloud, budget cuts, networking, security, disaster recovery and more.  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: What is the most important nut for infosec to crack in 2012?

  What is the most important nut for infosec to crack in 2012?  Continue Reading

• RightNow: Oracle and next-generation CRM

  In his opening keynote presentation at the RightNow Summit 2011 in Newport, Greg Gianforte, RightNow founder and chief executive officer, presented his view of device-aware CRM.  Continue Reading

• Review: Microsoft Office 365 versus Google Apps for Business

  With the launch of Microsoft's cloud offering, Office 365, the race for corporate adoption is truly on. Adrian Bridgwater looks at the pros and cons of Office 365 and how its features compare with those of Google Apps to see which provider is best ...  Continue Reading

• Case study: FA uses Sharepoint 2010 for fast-track dispute resolution

  The Football Association, the governing body for English football, is using Microsoft Sharepoint 2010 to test drive a fast-track system for resolving disputes when players face allegations of misconduct on the pitch.  Continue Reading

• Office 2010: Who needs an upgrade?

  Microsoft Office dominates the business world, but the company still faces tough competition when releasing a new version. What does Office 2010 offer to help it stand out from the crowd?  Continue Reading

• Microsoft loses US Office Open XML vote

  Microsoft has lost a key vote for its Office Open XML (OOXML) to be accepted as an alternative to the OpenDocument format.  Continue Reading

• Microsoft: after Bill Gates

  Microsoft is in a busy period of software updates following the release of Vista, the latest version of the Windows desktop operating system, Office 2007 and the Longhorn server technology  Continue Reading

• Free .docx converter available

  Users can overcome incompatibility between Office 2007 and older versions with a free download of .docx converter.  Continue Reading

• Music firm first with Sharepoint 2007

  Music label Hed Kandi has become the first UK business to use Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007.  Continue Reading

• Council plans early Duet move in SAP consolidation

  Staffordshire County Council is to roll out SAP Duet, the system that enables users to access core SAP functions through Microsoft Office applications. It is one of the first major UK organisation to announce plans to deploy the software.  Continue Reading

• Pitney Bowes puts ERP in field with mobile roll-out

  Office equipment manufacturer Pitney Bowes has reached the half way point of a European roll-out of mobile SAP and Siebel applications to 900 field engineers.  Continue Reading

• What type of e-mail users do you have?

  Book review: Managing in the E-mail Office, by Monica Seeley and Gerard Hargreaves  Continue Reading

• Microsoft SharePoint products and technologies: Unravelling the confusion

  Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services have caused a real confusion for...  Continue Reading

• XML forms are key to Office 2003 development platform aspirations

  With the launch of Office 2003 System today (21 October), Microsoft has shifted the focus of the software package from office...  Continue Reading

• Is Open Office a star?

  Could an open source package genuinely be good enough to challenge Microsoft Office?  Continue Reading

• Stand & deliver

  Consignia, the former Post Office, is determined to play a key role in the Internet home shopping revolution.  Continue Reading

• Staroffice 6 will feature MS Office XP compatibility

  The next version of Staroffice, Sun's open source application suite, to be released later this year, will be file-compatible with...  Continue Reading

• Ferris report warns of Sharepoint Server 2001 integration problems

  Users considering implementation of Microsoft's Sharepoint Portal Server 2001 collaboration tools should consider possible...  Continue Reading

• Post Office fights off competition with Internet automation

  The Post Office has signed an agreement to invest in software infrastructure services to automate its entire Internet operations...  Continue Reading

• ASP sector steers clear of MS Office

  The group marketing director of Microsoft UK has admitted that the ASP version of Office has failed to live up to expectations.  Continue Reading