Ray DePena

Cloud Computing on Ulitzer Yesterday I had the opportunity to pay a visit to a few vendors at the virtual VoiceCon event.  I enjoyed a chat with an Alcatel-Lucent representative, learned a bit about Avaya's Aura Unified Communications (UC) platform, and viewed an IBM Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony demo.  Virtual attendance at the event during the time that I joined was under 300 participants. Other companies participating included Siemens, Sprint, and Acme Packet. As you can imagine given the ongoing economic challenges, and the demand for green technologies, businesses are seeking all viable means to cut expenses, including travel, while still conducting their business face to face; and cloud computing coupled with converged communications provides a way to meet that ... (more)

Einstein, Sharks and Clouds

Cloud Expo on Ulitzer What can these things possibly have in common?  In a word – relativity. I’m reminded of the old joke, two guys are swimming in the ocean when they notice a shark and one guy takes off swimming towards the boat, while the other says, “What are you doing?  We can’t swim faster than a shark”, the other replies, “I don’t need to swim faster than a shark, just faster tha... (more)

Einstein, Sharks and Clouds: IT Security in the Cloud

What can these things possibly have in common?  In a word - relativity.  I'm reminded of the old joke, two guys are swimming in the ocean when they notice a shark and one guy takes off swimming towards the boat, while the other says, "What are you doing?  We can't swim faster than a shark", the other replies, "I don't need to swim faster than a shark, just faster than you." Lately there ha... (more)

Cloud Talk with Peter Coffee: What's Next for the Cloud?

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with Peter Coffee, of eWeek fame.  Peter, as industry veterans may be aware, was eWeek's Technology Editor, and is now Director of Platform Research for Salesforce.com, a leader in cloud computing. Our conversation began with my blatant attempt at gaining insight about Salesforce's strategic roadmap, knowing full well only the CEO can answer those... (more)

Dell's Jiu-Jitsu. Strategic Genius?

While I was off enjoying some brain candy by way of obtaining PMI's PMP (Project Management Professional) certification last week, the IT landscape was busy reconfiguring itself. I enjoyed reading Jeffrey Kaplan's analysis of the Perot acquisition by Dell, and Information Week's perspective.  At this early juncture I probably have more questions than answers, but also viewed the acquisiti... (more)