Favorite Links 12/9/2012

Here's this week's favorite links that are from a wide variety of subjects.

• Leadership Reading List: 20 books you might not have read - but should: http://t.co/F6S827LN
• ECIOForum: My Top Six `Top Ten' 2012 prediction lists http://t.co/YOfUIXWY
• CIOsConnect: Citrix: Desktop virtualization makes good security sense http://t.co/DyyDNsla
• Google introduces Google Currents news app [video] http://t.co/4sEsMp5V
• TheLeaderLab: How Can Games Drive Employee Engagement? http://t.co/bsAGWodE

Quote of the week.

• The most successful people see an opportunity in every problem. via@LeadToday

My Favorite Links for 12/2/2011 - An Ode @EricDBrown

For a while now, I have been following Eric Brown via RSS and Twitter (@EricDBrown) for a while now.  One of the things I have always enjoyed from Eric is his weekly publication of links.  Based upon enjoying these links, I have decided to publish my weekly links not only to share but for me to track what I found interesting over time.  Most of these will links will be technical in subject but every once in a while there will be an odd-ball or running related link.

So here's the first week's links.

• A strong BYOD policy should be SOP http://goo.gl/fb/sf3Tp
• The President of CIO magazine shares his Top Ten Tech Predictions for 2012 http://bit.ly/rwtUud 
• iPads in the enterprise: CEO ego is driving adoption: iPads have taken over the boardroom, and corporate CEOs an...http://bit.ly/sLk0PS
• CIO says supporting iPhone and iPad led to 92% reduction in broken devices: After switching to support Apple mo...http://bit.ly/vGDN7k
• Google's latest research digs into how #tablets are used. Interesting takeaway: multitasking is huge http://tabtim.es/7i 

Odd - Ball of the Week

• Who new that "calc" was this powerful.  Get the most out of calculator - calculate fuel economy, lease payments, and mortgage payments http://bit.ly/uqktit

My Visit to Ball State's CICS Program

On November 12th I was invited to speak at Ball State's CICS Placement Seminar for it's graduate students.  The goal of this seminar is to prepare the students for their upcoming entrance into the IT work environment.  It was an honor to share the platform with the individuals listed below and I was amazed that all of our presentations intertwined although we had never talked beforehand.  My talk, titled "After CICS Begins Now", focused on making sure the students are taking time now to think about what they want to do after graduation.  I focused a portion of this presentation on building your career brand via social media.



Beau King of ATT presented on personal Salesmanship
Branden Bute of Ball State presented on Job Mining
Todd Hollowell & Amy Reid presented on Resume Building

Good luck to all the students upon their completion of CICS.

Beyond the EMR: Improving Patient Care - Microsoft Healthcare Briefing

Rich Nero - Healthcare Solutions Group presents Beyond the EMR with a focus on Amalga. Provided below are some high level notes from his presentation

To date, Microsoft has spent 1 Billion on Healthcare Solutions Group.

Microsoft's goal is to fill the gap to provide useful information that is stored in clinical systems and data warehouses, this gap is filled by Microsoft's Amalga solution.

Amalga's goal is to the streamline operations, coordinate care, and engage patients.

5 Areas where Microsoft believes Amalga can provide value:

• Improve Patient Safety & Quality
• Readmissions - solution is Readmission Manager
• Early Warning Score
• Revenue & Cost Optimization
• Compliance Tracking and Reporting
• Coordinating Care Across Providers
• Engaging Patients In Care
• Care Transitions
• Chronic Disease Management

Items in BOLD are their primary focus today and where Microsoft has use cases.

Essentially Amalga is a Business Intelligence solution that Healthcare focused.  Its advantage is that it is a platform versus a bunch of individual solutions.  The challenge they have is that some of their solutions are already built into clinical systems.

Why Enterprise's Should Stay with BlackBerry for Now

In a recent Forbes article, BlackBerry Owners Flock to iPhone 4s in Record Numbers, the author insinuates that this this is the beginning of the end for BlackBerry because of their recent service issues and unclear roadmap.  This may be the case for BlackBerry's consumer market but I challenge that there is a clear cut reason for companies to jump ship to the iPhone.  An enterprise that has a sizeable investment in BlackBerry should consider the following before swapping out their BlackBerry devices for the iphone.

• Primary use of smartphones in your company is still email, calendar, contacts and phones
• No industry or company specific applications that are only available on the iPhone
• Poor support model for iPhone replacement (requires going to the local Apple store)
• Cost of iPhone versus BlackBerry when procuring through major wireless vendors.  In most cases, a BlackBerry device can be procured for next to nothing while an iPhone4 is $99.
• Immaturity of management tools for the iPhone.  Yes, there are MDM solutions for the iPhone but very few of them are to the maturity of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES).

The debate on whether enterprise companies should migrate away from BlackBerry will continue to get traction if the company doesn't find away to rectify its recent mis-steps.  However, for now I contend that the BlackBerry solution for the companies is a solid for those that already have the investment.

Why I decided to get Apple Certified

For years, I have absolutely despised technical certifications as I have worked with certified professionals that only excelled at reading books and failed in application of their knowledge.  Based upon this I put off working on my Apple certification for my current job.   However, this week I decided to change my mind and obtained my certification as an Apple Certified Associated - 10.7 Lion Integration.  I know this is just an entry level certification from Apple but it is the beginning to become an Apple Certified Technician.

Not to sound cliche after the passing of Steve Jobs, but after listening to his 2005 Stanford speech several times I got motivated to learn something new to move my career forward.  I am hoping this motivation will see me through the next certification level that I hoping to achieve by the end of the year.