October 31st, 2008 by informationconsultant

The BBC interviewed information technology specialist Rob Endley at the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. What the tactips.com team has learned is that the information technology specialist reviewed the forthcoming Windows 7, which is in preview form and gave an assessment of what we can expect.

Whilst the initial response to Vista has been lacklustre, Microsoft have adopted an aggressive stance in its marketing, which has effectively made it difficult to buy anything else. Try buying a system with only Windows NT installed and you will find that most vendors will try to persuade you otherwise, or charge a premium for the privilege.

Microsoft will, of course, claim that its emerging operating system has been wildly successful, but at grass root level the word is that it has serious performance issues on all but the highest specification platform, and is all but useless on early adopters systems.

The tactips.com information technology specialist takes a broader view on Windows 7, which in true Microsoft style sets out to address the hoard of problems that users have complained about. Historically, this is the path that they have taken, by using the general public as a testing ground for their product before delivering something that is nearer to the mark.

October 31st, 2008 by nichebusinessconsultant

In business, technology uncertainties have held the average business back from fully embracing Windows Vista. Specialists at tactips.com have seen that these business technology uncertainties have manifest themselves by observing consumers as the guinea pigs for this new operating system. Vista has been seen to demand hardware that is not backward compatible with the veteran Windows XP leaving the average enterprise with no fallback strategy should they upgrade.

Although some suppliers have offered a dual XP/Vista package it comes at a price that the typical enterprise cannot justify, especially in these troubled financial times. Each organisation has to ask themselves the question ‘what benefit to I get from it’, and the answer so far has been ‘very little’.

Whilst it is clear that the user experience in Vista tries to take the game forward, that gain is at a huge cost in processing power and storage resources, and the normal enterprise just can’t see why they should need to change, when the equipment they already have is still performing.

It certainly seems from the industry viewpoint that there is nothing to gain in the server market. Why would anyone want to upgrade to something that doesn’t fix their business technology uncertainties.

October 30th, 2008 by informationconsultant

Learning has evolved with the technology on which it relies and software consultancies like tactips.com have exploited its advantages. Not only do software consultancies pass on the benefits of e learning, but also they provide feedback to make the experience more effective.

As the Web has become a more effective, safe and secure method of delivering learning programs so the courses have had to overcome new barriers that have the potential to devalue the outcome. When a group of people attend a training course with a live trainer they are placed in an environment where the trainer can be assessed as well as the students.

Trainers become compelled to mould the content to the level of expertise of their class and to ensure that their delivery is engaging and valuable.

Software consultancies have found that the Internet learning environments are difficult to adapt to a user’s abilities. Web page readers generally scan the content making it much more difficult to make sure they are engaged in the experience.

Content must be written that scans easily and which highlights the key facts without taxing the reader. A metric of 3 pages in 5 minutes is a broad rule of thumb for page content.

October 30th, 2008 by informationconsultant

The introduction of the sobig virus caught commercial business consulting firms on the hop in around 2003. tactips.com believes it was tested earlier but in any event commercial business consulting firms have heralded it as the turning point in viral development.

With the advent of widespread home Internet and the early adoption of broadband networks it was an ideal time to attack the vulnerable and uneducated PC user. For users other than experts, the email that it sent inviting the user’s participation was clearly compelling enough to get thousands of people’s attention.

Once installed, Sobig was quite ruthless at establishing itself on the host and taking instructions from its controller. Commercial business consulting organisations were caught almost as comprehensively as the wider public, because many employees were innocently duped into the subterfuge.

For the exploiting enterprise it became an ideal opportunity to install a small application that would serve up paid content on behalf of the hijacker, who remains anonymous.

The real benefit in terms of bandwidth and anonymity allowed the delivery of unacceptable web content in relative safety for the exploiting agent. Innocent home users have progressively become the target for commercial exploitation.

October 29th, 2008 by technicalconsultant

Sobig was a pivotal point in the development of virus software. Until its introduction in 2003 virus software attacks against the home computer were mainly malicious and tactips.com has found that they were aimed at boot sectors and key components that were easy to protect against.

It doesn’t seem obvious why virus software would be an attractive use of anyone’s effort, because there is little doubt that the virus writers are not going to make any money just by writing them. Although there may be a very niche market that calls for secure systems to be tested against specialist viral systems, it’s not obvious why anyone would formulate an attack of this form.
In the early days, it is quite likely that programmers would write these small programs more as a technical challenge than for financial reward. There is anecdotal evidence that some may have been written specifically to air a grudge against a software manufacturer or to demonstrate the vulnerabilities in commercial systems.

However, in the early days of viruses the main problem with viruses was the mass distribution of the payload. Whilst a floppy disc or CD-Rom could deliver one, both of these environments were much more easily policed.

October 29th, 2008 by nichebusinessconsultant

Excellence in niche management solutions was Accenture’s aim when it opened its Singapore offshoot in 1995. Having won niche management solution award for operations in 1996 the offices have gone from strength to strength in applying their unique consulting style to the Asian market.

It’s not surprising, that as a result of carefully nurturing their infant over a decade, the time has now arrived for the status of that operation to be revised. Niche management solutions in Asia have evolved to a point at which there is an opportunity to create a hub of innovation for that market.

With their fanfare announcement on 27th October 2008 they have taken a significant step towards further global penetration in the face of huge economic uncertainty around the world. It may be that they are choosing their countries wisely. With the traditional safe bastions in turmoil, this is not a time for reactive leadership, and that is in evidence I spades by this move.

It heralds a note of aggressive positioning in a weakened world market to consolidate the organisation’ position as the recession comes to an end. tactips.com recommends the three Ps; positive proactive positions.

October 28th, 2008 by smallbusinessconsultant

Whilst an expansion in the global consulting business is not an obvious area in which growth would be expected tactips.com has detected a trend in the expatriate consulting business where organisations employ their best talent when executing their global interests overseas.

Organisations who wish to increase their global presence need not only to penetrate new markets but also to deliver the product or service they are contracted for. It might seem tempting to exploit the local workforce, but in many cases the native workers will have a different culture to that of the parent enterprise.

In overcoming this, the enterprise turns to its own key workers to provide the balance between the two extremes. An individual who has already embraced a particular culture will feel rewarded as part of the expatriate consulting business and, together with the tax concessions that are available to non domiciled citizens, the deal can be attractive to both sides.

The popularity of 1-5 year assignments by specialists who are prepared to work overseas has increased in the past 18 months to such an extend that many have become technology nomads who spread themselves across the world’s continents.

October 28th, 2008 by businessconsultant

As enterprise stock goes down, it might seem surprising to think of business leadership consulting from tactips.com as a wise investment. In fact business leadership consulting can make the difference between transforming your enterprise into a winning formula rather than one that struggle to survive.

When times are good, it easy for a leader to be reactive, allowing them to capitalise on trends as they evolve. As gaps in your business strategy appear so the management team can assess and react to the situation taking the resources at their disposal to plug and seal as they go. With a little intuition, even an average leader can anticipate the flow of their market and position their resources to best effect.

However this same behaviour can have a negative effect when the market changes. A passive, reactive leader will wait cautiously to see how their strategy develops, but in a worsening climate this will mean that their position will deteriorate in the time it takes to react.

Business leadership consulting has led the tweed mills in Scotland and motor manufacturers in England to pre-empted the poor business climate by agreeing a three-day week with their employees.

October 27th, 2008 by informationconsultant

When it comes to java technology consultant tactips.com has expertise that tracks back to its origins. From the early years of the 90s our java technology consultant was evaluating and implementing some of the earliest examples of design and code. The tools were primitive by today’s standards, and an early example of Rational Rose was used at the research establishment at which he was working during these evaluations.

It was evident at an early stage that Java had much to offer, not least from the ease with which relatively bug free code could be produced. This was at a time when 3G languages provided great programming power but little control over the programmers who used them. A Java technology consultant could outstrip earlier programming methodologies just by writing code that was less bug prone and without the difficult problems that pointers generated in the C language.

There is no doubt that the efficiency of C and its derivatives have ensured its continued popularity in niche specialities and this shows no sign of abating.
Despite the large rise in processing power and resources the operating system infrastructure continues to absorb a disproportionate share. Evolving Java solutions offer the mainstream enterprise development workhorse.

October 27th, 2008 by marketingconsultant

In the java market consulting has grown with its ethos, to generate a healthy symbiosis between the enterprise and its suppliers. Why is it that in the Java market consulting services has become so important?

A number of factors have contributed to this phenomenon, compared to the early days of the software industry. At one time development projects were much more haphazard in their progress and its organisation was less structures. Many early attempts at applying structure to development programmes were thwarted because there was little knowledge about the effects of inter-dependencies between modules and sub-systems.

More emphasis has been placed in recent years on the way in which code is organised to avoid these effects and to provide truly independent modules that can be re-used globally. This has bred specialities such as Iterative development and eXtreme programming which demand specialist Java market consulting skills to make user that the desired product is delivered.

With specialist knowledge evolving all the time, Universities are delivering newer more effective ways of solving software development issues, so that more successful applications are delivered than ever before. The software development crisis of the 90s is history and need not be repeated again.