The saying goes something like this: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The statement is, of course, embraced as dogma by those fearful of change and by automobile owners praying for a reasonable bill of charge while waiting at the mechanic’s garage.

But many of today’s CIOs must see something broken inside their IT departments. According to a new Forrester Research report, more than half of the 178 IT executives surveyed are hatching plans to upend the status quo and institute a new IT model within three years.

The ultimate goal, these CIOs say, is to improve services, reduce costs and increase consistency of business processes and IT systems. “The appetite for restructuring is obviously high,” writes Forrester principal analyst Marc Cecere. The area with greatest priority: the applications organization.

Several New Normal macroeconomic factors—not under the control of CIOs—are driving this desire for change. “The uncertainty caused by a stubborn unemployment rate, the stock market yo-yo-ing, new financial regulations and high government spending provides a push for changing the model of IT,” writes Cecere.

Advances in core IT systems and software manager are also inciting change. Cecere adds: “New services and innovative new technologies and techniques provide a pull toward models that can exploit their advantages.”

For some IT shops, an upheaval will come much sooner: Nearly one-third of IT chiefs surveyed stated that there was either a “high probability” or “certainty” that they would restructure within one year.

The most critical need for IT shops is to improve their services: More than three-quarters of respondents said this was a high or highest priority. To Cecere, however, that number should have been higher. “Improving services is such an obvious choice that you have to wonder about the smug bastards who didn’t choose this,” he writes. “The frustration among senior business leaders that there must be a different way to run IT to get the flexibility and innovation they want while not going back to the pre-recession spending levels is a dilemma that fuels the interest in new models for IT.”

According to the survey respondents, the applications group is “most likely to be restructured.” Why? Cecere writes:

The importance of cost reduction, increased consistency of processes and systems, and innovation are driving the need to restructure apps groups. They are the most fragmented and have the greatest potential for cost savings through rationalization or outsourcing. Most large shops, in particular, have federated apps organizations, where decisions about systems, tools, and methodologies are made independently from other apps groups. As a result, they’ve created multiple groups that have little ability to leverage people. In addition, many of the innovations in business analytics, mobile apps and other areas will come from apps groups. These innovations need to scale in terms of numbers of users, security, and reliability. Fragmented apps groups often don’t have the capacity, the need or the expertise to scale these innovations past their own business unit.

So just what kinds of new organizational models are CIOs considering? The report highlights (and offers explanations for) several, including: business-process-based, demand-supply (DS), and plan-build-run (PBR). But, Cecere adds, the “verdict is still out” on what models will be deemed most appropriate for individual IT shops.

“Currently, we are only seeing the train’s headlight in terms of the impact of these new organizational models,” Cecere writes. “Understanding them will require time in order to cut through the fog of hype and the hopefulness from early benefits.”

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Two top pressures drive the need for video in the workplace: the need to support remote and distributed employees and the need to reduce corporate travel. As videoconferencing has evolved into telepresence and other immersive collaboration solutions, new business video solutions must be chosen based on their value to the organization and not simply based on cost or current technology adoption.

As the enterprise progresses toward the goal of proving fully immersive and collaborative capabilities to remote individuals, it is important to realize the value of video not only as a technological achievement, but as a practical business enhancement.

By presenting the strategic value of the various forms of video in the enterprise, this document serves as a guide for the CIO to better understand the strategic pressures and strategies that lead to quantitative business value.

Challenges to Using Business Video

One of the keys to this multi-departmental usage is to be aware of the strategic challenges faced by organizations moving into a line-of-business-driven video 2.0 world. Although cost and technological complexity are still significant concerns, they are not the sole concerns of companies seeking better video solutions.

Currently, the top challenge for business video is the lack of an organized strategy for integrating video into the business. Although a number of organizations struggle with lack of adoption or the difficulty to use video endpoints, the struggle has shifted from technology use to making a proper business case for video.

As videoconferencing has evolved into telepresence and other immersive collaboration solutions, and streaming video is quickly transforming into a combination of content management and social feedback, new business video solutions must be chosen based on their value to the organization and not simply based on cost or current technology adoption.

These strategies speak to the need for B2B collaboration, internal cost and procurement control, and internal collaboration and critical paths. Each of these strategies affects corporate departments differently.

The top two pressures described in Figure 3 are indicative of the Video 1.0 world that has been illustrated. Although these are the dominant pressures associated with video, they focus on current operational challenges and cost reduction rather than on the value-added experiences that video can provide. These two pressures ended up being the top pressures both for all respondents and specifically for Best-in-Class companies, so the choice of pressures was not a significant differentiator to achieving success. However, their execution on secondary pressures was vital to meeting business demands of the organization.

The secondary pressures each demonstrate new value propositions that are emerging from various areas of the enterprise. As video becomes a part of the marketing, learning and development, sales, and product innovation environments, it has started to become a necessary tool to drive innovation and differentiation. To do so, these video solutions must progress past Video 1.0 to an integrated strategy of Video 2.0.

Video 2.0 treats videoconferencing not only as a means of communication, but also as a collaboration channel associated with content-sharing, unified communications and recorded assets that can be accessed by all employees. Video content and usage need to become assets stored in content management systems and delivered via content delivery networks that provide and reuse timely information in a dependable manner. Remote and distributed employees need video content to make resources and services in headquartered locations available.

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Take a look at what the crew at Willow Garage, a company that aims “to lay the groundwork for the use of personal robotics applications in everyday life” has done to make their work time more productive.

Percento Technologies

Percento Technologies

Seems you can’t set foot on the Internet this week without hearing something about the infamous iPhone 4 reception problems. But why spread yourself thin by trying to keep up to date with all the he saids and she saids when you can grab a concentrated dose right here?

By the end of this whole ordeal, there’s going to be plenty of regret to go around, and Consumer Reports may very well be helping itself to a heaping slice. After the publication said it would not recommend the iPhone 4 because of the reception problem—despite giving the device its top rating—the company found itself under fire from critics of its testing process.

Bob Egan, Global Head of Research and Chief Analyst at The Tower Group, penned a piece on his personal blog describing what he sees as failings in the publication’s testing process, saying “From what I can see in the reports, Consumer Reports replicated the same uncontrolled, unscientific experiments that many of the blogging sites have done.”

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington followed up by criticizing Consumer Reports’s waffling stance on whether or not the antenna problem was a real issue.

Of course, Consumer Reports could address much of this criticism simply by providing the detailed methodology for the tests it’s performed. Thus far, however, the publication has remained mum, other than saying that Apple’s bumper does apparently fix the issue, as many Internet users have reported.

On Wednesday, I half-jokingly predicted that a congressional investigation into the iPhone would be launched before the month is out. While Congress has not officially gotten involved, AppleInsider reports that Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) has written an open letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, urging him to address the issue. The senator references both Consumer Reports’s testing and Apple’s statement that the problem was related to the display of cell phone signal strength.

Writes Schumer:

Given the discrepancy between Consumer Reports’ explanation of the reception problem and the explanation provided by Apple in its July 2 letter to customers, I am concerned that the nearly two million purchasers of the iPhone 4 may not have complete information about the quality of the product they have purchased.

The senator goes on to ask Apple to commit an explanation to paper and promise to provide a free fix to affected consumers as well. Apple, for its part, has scheduled a press conference for this Friday that it says is about the iPhone 4, though the company gave no further details.

Depending on what Apple says on Friday, the potential for an investigation may still be on the table. Should Apple say that the phone’s hardware is indeed flawed, there could potentially be a question of who knew what and when they knew it. Speaking of which…

Though you probably haven’t heard his name before, Ruben Caballero is a senior engineer and antenna expert at Apple. According to a report by Bloomberg that cites an unnamed source, Caballero told Apple executives last year that the iPhone 4’s design could cause reception problems. The report also says that a carrier partner also voiced its worries on the matter. Somehow, though, none of that information made it to the public before now.

If true, Apple’s management could find itself in a sticky position. While there may or may not have been legal wrongdoing, there’s still a good chance that the company’s reputation could take a blow from the revelation that it knowingly put the iPhone on sale despite its flaws.

And so the ball is once again in Apple’s court. There’s been a variety of speculation as to what the company will say to the press on Friday, with theories ranging from a mea culpa and free bumpers for everyone, to a product recall, to nothing more than a reaffirmation of the company’s current position that this is all simply a result of buggy software.

Of course, much will also depend on Apple’s still forthcoming software update and whether or not it actually fixes the problem. Either way, one thing’s for certain: for many of us, this whole ruckus can’t be over soon enough.

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Ten years ago, the next big thing in tech was supposed to be the Internet appliance: a device that offered tech newbies a simpler and cheaper way to get onto the Internet.

Within the span of only a few months a host of such devices hit the market–products such as 3Com’s Audrey, Netpliance’s I-opener along with machines from Sony, Gateway, and Compaq. They were all aimed at trying to offer the Web without the cost and complexity of a full-fledged computer.

Around the same time, makers of other products like the Kerbango Internet radio saw an opportunity for products that tapped the power of the Internet for a single purpose. Some predicted that the industry was poised for rapid and dramatic growth.

Unfortunately, the products ended up being either too limited or far slower than a PC and nearly as costly, and the category disappeared as quickly as it had emerged.

Still, it was a nice idea. And, the funny thing is, now people are actually buying these things.

Devices like the iPad and the Kindle, along with game consoles and Net-connected televisions have shown that there is a market for both devices that are simpler than a PC as well as for products that connect to the Internet for a single purpose.

The notion that prompted the Internet appliance category–that the Web is a powerful tool and there should be many types of on-ramps–was a good one. Unfortunately for the Audrey and her sisters, the timing was all wrong.

First of all, the devices arrived while most people still used dial-up to get on the Internet and few people had a home network. That meant that such devices needed to replace, rather than augment a Web-connected PC. Also, computers were coming down in price thanks to aggressive cost-cutting by Intel and rapidly falling component prices, while the economics of trying to start a new category meant that Net appliances couldn’t be sold for less than several hundred dollars.

Today, meanwhile, the Internet flourishes, connectivity abounds, and the cost of building Wi-Fi into a device means that it is possible to sell Net-connected devices for well under $200.

Although born of a completely different heritage, one of the devices that best represents the completion of the Internet appliance vision is Apple’s iPad. Press a button and the device is instantly on and with one more push of a finger one is on the Web in seconds.

The Kindle, meanwhile, shows how the Internet can be used, almost invisibly, for a single purpose, such as buying and reading books.

Other devices that one might not think of as Internet appliances nonetheless can also trace their lineage to those clunky devices of old.

Game consoles like the Wii, Xbox 360, and Sony PlayStation all can take advantage of the Internet to a greater or lesser degree to allow for things like Netflix and online gaming. Net-connected televisions using widgets from Yahoo or Google’s upcoming Google TV are also borrowing some of the same notions that powered early devices, including WebTV.

There are also a few companies pursuing modern adaptations of those Internet appliances of yore, though this category still has yet to prove it can produce a mass market success.

Chumby, for example, sells devices that cost a little over $100 and offer a quick glance at any number of personalized Web channels–a vision not unlike the Audrey, which downloaded Internet content overnight (it was still a dial-up world) so that it could offer an instant take on news, sports, and weather.

“There’s some really great old ideas that just were at the wrong time,” said Stephen Tomlin, CEO of Chumby Industries.

Naturally, though, Tomlin likes to distance himself from the devices of old (though he admits to going out and buying an Audrey to see what made it tick.)

“It’s about doing things differently and offering more, not less,” Tomlin said. “With Chumby the ‘more’ is that you can get your favorite parts of the Internet streamed to you at a glance, without constantly pecking at icons and launching programs, and you can place this capability inexpensively in any part of your house.”

Chumby’s success has been modest so far, with several tens of thousands of devices having been sold since its debut in 2008.

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Although still early in the process, newly leaked documents about Windows 8 offer some keen insight into where Microsoft wants to head with the next version of the operating system.

One thing that is made abundantly clear is that Microsoft has been paying attention to Apple. In the documents, which appear to come from an April meeting with computer makers, Microsoft discusses its Cupertino, Calif.-based rival and outlines plans to offer a Windows Store similar to the way Apple distributes software on its iPhone. The documents, which Microsoft has declined to comment on or authenticate, also talk about plans to give Windows a more iPad-like response time through new power management settings.

In particular, one slide titled “How Apple Does It: A Virtuous Cycle,” talks about the need for simplicity in design. “Apple brand is known for high quality, uncomplicated, ‘it just works,’” the slide says, adding that “This is something people will pay for!”

Other slides don’t directly reference Apple, but talk about the need for a number of features popularized by its products, including the App Store, as well as a more instant-on feel.

Although Windows has continued to dominate the PC market, still holding roughly 95 percent of global market share, it faces a significant threat from mobile operating systems looking to encroach on the low end of the computer market, including the iPad and Android-based devices.

Hewlett-Packard, which originally talked about plans for a Windows 7-based slate PC in January, now refuses to say whether it will build that product and has since announced plans to buy Palm in a deal expected to close shortly. Microsoft has been working on tablets for nearly a decade and, as early as 2005, outlined the hardware trends that would enable a device like the iPad. Thus far, however, only Apple has been able to create a hit with consumers.

Among the goals outlined for Windows 8 are some features that would appear to be aimed at making Windows more competitive in this market, including improved simplicity, better support of touch and gestures, as well as support for smaller-size screens.

Although the iPad is not referenced directly, the presentation does refer to the slate form factor as a “center of gravity,” alongside laptops and all-in-ones.

To achieve quicker boot-up, Microsoft is looking at several things, including a new combination of logging off and hibernating a machine that would offer a faster boot-up than a full restart. That combination would become the default on-off behavior, though just what to name the setting is still a question mark, according to the documents. The company is also looking to resume from sleep in less than a second, according to the documents.

“Windows 8 PCs turn on fast, nearly instantly in some cases, and are ready to work without any long or unexpected delays,” reads one of dozens of slides posted to enthusiast site Microsoft Kitchen, among other places.

Of course, the goal of instant-on PCs is a long held, but as yet unrealized aspiration. Microsoft significantly improved its boot-up, resume, and shut-down times with Windows 7, but they all pale when compared to the nearly instantaneous response one gets from a mobile device such as the iPhone or iPad.

As for the store, Microsoft apparently plans to let each computer maker brand the store under their own name. Among the benefits to consumers would be the ability to access those applications on any PC they own. It is also outlined as an opportunity for partners to make money after the PC sale, though it is described as “revenue neutral” for Windows, suggesting that perhaps Microsoft is not planning to take a cut of sales.

One slide suggests that, in an earlier forum with hardware makers, Microsoft heard that such a store is seen as needed as soon as possible, though this is clearly a tricky undertaking with Microsoft having to balance the needs of software creators, consumers, partners, resellers, and the PC makers–not to mention Microsoft itself.

The slides also offer up a time frame for Internet Explorer 9, suggesting a beta of the new browser is expected by August. Microsoft has had developer platform previews of IE9, but those have lacked a significant user interface and other features. The beta, according to the slides, will be the “first release of full IE functionality.”

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