Biographical Information

Articles by Mary Leigh Mackie

Finding Your Safety Net in the Cloud

It's clear that cloud computing is now much more than a fad or a buzzword; it's a business reality that is backed up by cold, hard cash. In fact, in a recent study released by IDC, the research firm found that public IT cloud services spending will reach $98 billion in 2016, with a compound annual growth rate five times the growth of the IT industry overall. This is especially true of emerging markets and early-stage companies. According to the IDC study, emerging markets will grow their cloud services spending by 44% through 2016, and will account for almost 30% of net-new public IT cloud services spending overall. Early-stage companies (defined as being in business for less than five years), plan to increase their spending on public cloud. . . .

Today's Collaboration Initiatives

Enterprises face unprecedented challenges in an ever-changing regulatory and competitive environment. In many areas, there is still human capital churn, drastic cost cutting and disruptive technology trends—including bring your own device, enterprise social, cloud and big data access—that must be addressed by IT departments. How can they rise to the challenge of providing the right level of infrastructure and strategic systems to enable businesses to be self-sustaining?

There are myriad solutions on the market today for structuring data management—including but certainly not limited to data quality. . . .

Proven Practices for Content Management

The goals of any enterprise content management (ECM) system are to connect an organization's knowledge workers, streamline its business processes, and manage and store its information. Microsoft SharePoint has taken hold as the leading content management system in today's hyper-connected and hyper-competitive business landscape as organizations look to foster information transparency and collaboration—by providing efficient capture, storage, preservation, management and delivery of content to end users.

A recent study by the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) found that 53% of organizations currently utilize SharePoint for ECM.

Enabling Enterprise Content Management with Confidence

"Many organizations worldwide have their C-level executives sitting in the boardroom, hemming and hawing over which strategies they must adopt in order to maintain a competitive advantage. There are plenty of business needs scattered throughout the enterprise—improving business processes, fostering collaboration among knowledge workers, providing access to all company-wide information, making better business decisions faster. . . . "

Discovering the Cloud's Silver Lining

"In a business landscape overrun with buzzwords and catchphrases, "cloud" is undoubtedly one of the leaders in the last several years. Just as with other popular phrases of the day, there are myriad definitions varying widely depending upon whom you ask. Gartner Research defines it as a "...style of computing where scalable and elastic IT capabilities are provided as a service to multiple customers using Internet technologies." Wikipedia identifies it as the use of computing resources, both hardware and software, delivered as a service over a network. . . ."

Delivering True Enterprise Content Management with SharePoint

Many organizations worldwide have their C-level executives sitting at the boardroom, hemming and hewing over which strategies they must adopt in order to maintain a competitive advantage. There are plenty of business needs. . . .