Xbox Music updated with volume control, cloud sync options, and performance improvements

Hot on the feels of a significant Windows 8 Mail app update, Microsoft's Xbox team is releasing a new version of Xbox Music. The update brings performance improvements on the RT side, making it a lot more usable on devices like the Surface RT. Speed aside, Microsoft has also added in independent volume control for Xbox Music, meaning you can let the app play quietly in the background while the system volume remains louder.

The latest Xbox Music update also simplifies control over music in the cloud. The preferences panel lets you add songs from your collection and have them replicated on other Xbox Music devices, and there's also an option to automatically add matched songs from PCs into music in the cloud. Other minor tweaks include a...

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Heavy weather: why we need supercomputers to teach us how clouds and climate change work

There's a dark cloud hanging over the science of climate change, quite literally. Scientists today have access to supercomputers capable of running advanced simulations of Earth's climate hundreds of years into the future, accounting for millions of tiny variables. But even with all that equipment and training, they still can't quite figure out how clouds work.

That mystery is actually the source of their greatest uncertainty when it comes to accurately predicting how much our planet's temperature will increase, scientists say. "How much the climate would warm largely depends on how clouds would change in the future," said Yen-Ting Hwang, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, in an email to The Verge, noting "clouds...

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Hyperkin's Retron 5 gaming console can play almost any cartridge known to man

Good news for fans of old video games — accessories maker Hyperkin is unveiling a retro console that will play almost any cartridge you can throw at it, reports Slashdot . Named the Retron 5 for its five slots, the machine will handle the same trio of NES, SNES, and Genesis cartridges as its predecessor, the Retron 3, as well as Famicom and Game Boy Advance games — not to mention Mega Drive, Super Famicom, Game Boy Color, and original Game Boy titles. HDMI out means you’ll get a clear, digital signal to your HDTV, and Hyperkin says that it will upscale your games to 720p. There are a bunch of built-in niceties, like the ability to save and resume at any point in the game, overclocking to speed through slow parts, and a PS3-like...

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How The @ Reply Killed Google Alerts

The once-reliable method for tracking your online footprint is falling into disrepair . And, coincidentally, irrelevance.

Vanity seeps into all worlds, but on the Internet it thrives. There's never been a greater need — or, at least, desire — to know what's being said about you than among the internet's ceaseless torrent of content.

For a long time that need was filled by Google Alerts, a remarkably simple tool that crawls the Internet mentions of a specific keywords, and sends back a quick email digest of its results once per day, week, or in real time. Its uses were manifold: reporters used it to keep up with beats, brands used it to keep up with mentions (and to keep tabs on bad press), and publications used it to watch their stories spread.

However, Google Alerts' prevailing use was as a safety net for one's online persona. After a simple setup, one could be sure to catch any mention of themselves across all corners of the Web — be it curiosity, vanity, or paranoia. "I definitely still have a Google Alert for my name, and anyone who says they don't is lying," New York Magazine's Stefan Becket told BuzzFeed. In 2009, Kashmir Hill at Forbes told readers, "[p]lease, I beg you, put a Google alert on your name." It became a valuable, if slightly unseemly, part of the culture of living and working online.

In recent months, Google Alerts' reliability seems to has dropped off noticeably, prompting groans from faithful users across the Internet. As far back as last April, message boards and blog posts have noted Alerts' failure to deliver. In February, Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan blogged that the service was returning meager results well below its normal output. Google responded off the record, saying the issues should be fixed but recent posts like The Financial Brand's open letter to Google, which claims an 80 percent decrease in alerts volume, show that the problem persists. Becket also admits that, at this point, they're "pretty useless."

Perhaps most revealing is a comparison of Google Alerts results with Google Search: a simple, time-limited search on Google News often retrieves far more results on a given name or topic over a set stretch of time than Alerts' custom emails dredge up. The mentions are out there, but Google Alerts can't seem to find them, suggesting a possible problem with the algorithm (or, perhaps, a simple lack of upkeep).

Yet while some are lamenting what seems to be the loss of another dependable Google tool (R.I.P., Reader), the truth is that as quickly as alerts have fallen into disrepair, they've been replaced.

Today, it's the @ reply — or the Facebook status comment — that's the most reliable indicator of one's internet footprint. Entire careers are now devoted to the task of monitoring interactions across Twitter and the social web, as social media managers have sprung up for most brands and newsrooms. Vanity searching on Google still serves a purpose, but it's increasingly a supplementary one — a way to pick up the scraps.

"My 'mentions' column is a helpful way to track the reach of my articles as well as the conversation which they generate," Mashable reporter Alex Fitzpatrick said. "If a piece generates a particularly high amount of engagement or discussion on Twitter, that's an indication I should consider a follow-up — ideas for which are often generated by engaging with the people who are popping up in my Mentions column."

For others, custom Tweetdeck or Hootsuite columns can protect against Twitter's complex and nuanced world of subtweeting, or the act of tweeting without mentioning one's handle. "I do confess to doing the occasional Twitter search for my name," Becket said. "But most subtweets don't include the person's name anyway, so you'll probably miss some even with a search."

Not all is lost for Google Alerts, though. For those in the highest echelon of fame and the few that enjoy rabid Internet followings, Google Alerts still unearth a fair share of news. Kim Kardashian is an avid user, for example. And this alert for Justin Bieber, which I let run for 24 hours, sent seven different email alerts and surfaced over 60 news hits.

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Microsoft Reveals Law Enforcement Interactions For First Time

Microsoft has joined the handful of companies attempting to provide some level of transparency regarding requests from law enforcement agencies. For the first time, Microsoft has released information on the level of cooperation it had with law enforcement about users of its online services.

According to information released by Microsoft today, the company received a total of 75,378 requests for information from law enforcement in 2012. 70,665 were for user accounts associated with services such as Hotmail, Outlook.com, SkyDrive and Xbox Live, with the remaining 4,713 requests about Skype user accounts.

Microsoft broke out the Skype data, it said, because Skype is a Luxembourg-based division and therefore subject to separate privacy laws in that nation and the European Union.

Combined, the requests for information affected 137,424 accounts, most of it for information about an account holder's name, email, gender, or address information. 137,424 revealed accounts sounds like a lot, but according to Microsoft that's a pittance of the total accounts it manages.

"To give you a sense of proportion, we estimate that less than two one-hundredths of one percent (or 0.02 percent, to put it another way) were potentially affected by law enforcement requests," wrote Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith.

In only 2.2% of the cases did Microsoft provide content data to law enforcement - and none of that was Skype content, since Microsoft does not archive Skype data.

A vast majority of the 1,558 instances where Microsoft did supply user content happened in the United States, where Microsoft supplied content data 1,544 times in 2012. Brazil received data seven times, Ireland five times, and New Zealand and Canada each getting user data once.

You might expect that the U.S. would be the top requester of all the nations in Microsoft's report for customer information, but in actuality, counting requests for account information and content, it was Turkey that took the top spot for most law enforcement requests complied with in 2012.

The top five nations that Microsoft complied with law enforcement requests were:

1. Turkey (8,997)


2. United States (8,740)


3. France (7,377)


4. Germany (7,088)


5. United Kingdom (7,057)

Microsoft's report also broke down when requests for data were rejected, either because there was no customer information to be found or the requests did not meet legal requirements.

Check out the report information (in PDF and Excel format) for yourself to see how much your home country's authorities interacted with Microsoft.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Verizon takes on SMS challengers with cross-platform Messages service

As non-traditional messaging services like Google Voice, iMessage, and WhatsApp continue to displace lucrative SMS services, carriers are looking for ways to hold on to what they have. Today, Verizon is announcing an update that brings its Verizon Messages (formerly VZ Messages) SMS service cross-platform, letting you send and receive SMS messages from your computer’s browser as well as your iPad or Android device — phone or tablet. Messages that you send are stored on Verizon’s cloud service for 90 days unless you delete them, and can be saved permanently on an SD card if you want to keep them around longer.

Can be set to send an automated reply when you're busy

Like iMessage’s Do Not Disturb feature, Verizon Messages can be...

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Catching Up With The Original King Of Twitter

Six years ago, Austin blogger Paul Terry Walhus was anointed by Slate , the New York Times and Salon as the most popular man on Twitter. A look back with the former king.

Via: walhus

Among the dozens of articles introducing the world to a new microblogging service called Twitter, Slate's, published in April of 2007, was one of the best. "Twitter is not a mere procrastination tool," wrote Michael Agger. "It acts as a mental escape hatch." Prescient!

The piece introduced us to a man named Paul Terry Walhus, a "gray-haired Austin coffee-shop blogger" who, with "8,789 friends and 1,722 followers", was the "most popular person on the site."

By the standards of 2007-era Twitter — the site was founded today in 2006 — Walhus was a celebrity. Writing later in the New York Times, Jason Pontin described the "gray-haired blogger" (again) as "one of the best-loved twitterers." He was, in effect, Twitter's first celebrity – the @justinbieber of 2007.

Walhus still tweets from the same handle, @springnet, and in largely the same style: short, functional posts, many intended to network with others or update you on what he's doing. He's got almost ten times as many followers as he did in 2007, with over 13,000. By 2013 Twitter standards, however, this makes him a power user, not a celebrity.

"I got started at South By Southwest," Walhus told BuzzFeed. "A lot of my friends who went there from Austin discovered Twitter. We all got on and started using it to communicate mostly about what was going on at SouthBy."

SXSW 2007 is often pinpointed as the moment Twitter first caught on — the "Twitter Board," a TV that displayed tweets from around Austin, is what most attendees remember. Walhus, an Austinite with a preexisting web presence as a blogger, simply rode Twitter's first big wave. "I tweeted a lot during SouthBy," he says.

Via: darowskidotcom

Reports that he was the most "popular" user on Twitter are questionable, he says — the site that the Times and Slate used for reference combined "friends" (effectively "people you follow") with "followers" in a way that has fallen out of favor. He doesn't remember climbing past the second-place spot, anyway. "There may have been one person ahead of me," he says. Nonetheless, to be on Twitter in early 2007 was to know his handle. "I had more friends than Jon Edwards," says Walhus. "I probably still do," he jokes.

Back then, Walhus, in addition to blogging, worked in IT for the trendy San Jose Hotel, just south of downtown Austin. He also worked as a web developer and Unix administrator. Many of his early tweets, he says, were send from the Unix command line. "It kind of lent itself to typing on the command line," he says. It reminded him a bit of Unix messaging services.

Today, like many Twitter users, Walhus tweets from his phone — either his Android handset or his iPhone — or through the site's web interface. He still blogs and works in web development, but does some social media consulting on the side. Twitter, he says, has changed. "It's become more one social network niche out of many — you've got all the others now," he says. Though he still gets a lot of use out of it: "It's become the place where you can very quickly find and have a dialog with someone. It's very instantaneous."

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Are You That Person Who Clicks On Ads?

Admit it: you're that person. You're the one who spends over 23 hours watching online video every month. You're the one that is driving the online video market to $37 billion by 2017. You are the 83.3%.

Are you the same person who clicks on ads? The same person who is clicking the online advertising market into $100 billion territory in 2013?

Come on: is it you?

There's some evidence to suggest that the two go together. Most online video isn't the BBC soccer news stream that !%!%!% auto-plays whenever I visit a soccer news site (which, I will admit, is every 3.2 seconds - hey, someone needs to keep tabs on just how bad my Arsenal is). As a recent comScore report showcases, it's entertainment-oriented video on YouTube and Facebook, primarily, that people watch:

Credit: comScore, February 2013

What about online advertising? According to a 2011 WebTrends report on Facebook advertising, click-through rates (CTRs) are puny for things like healthcare and financial services ads, but for media and entertainment or tabloids? Lots of clicks:

Credit: Webtrends

Admit it: you're "that guy" who sends around the funny cat videos. You're the one watching the blurb on LIndsay Lohan being in rehab (again).

It's you!

Or maybe it's your parents, as Facebook ad click-throughs skew to the 50+ crowd. Which is interesting, since the online video generation definitely trends younger. Perhaps those who watch a lot of video aren't the same people who click on all the ads, but rather a devoted group of clickers?

There's some evidence that this is the case. While comScore finds that 83.3% of all Americans watch online video, Criteo reports that just 20% of online browsers account for 50% of click-throughs:

Source: Criteo 2012

Nor do such people stop with innocent clicking. Once they click, they buy. A lot. According to Criteo, they're 3 times more likely to buy than non-clickers. My hunch? It's the Boomer demographic, which controls 70% of U.S. wealth, that clicks on all those ads. This is a bit frightening, as it may mean that the Internet is being subsidized by a fading group. Presumably, clever advertisers will figure out how to get the young'uns to click and buy, too.

Or maybe they'll just get older and click more.

Personally, I don't think I've ever clicked on an online ad (Adblock Plus keeps me from even seeing them anymore, bless its soul), but I'm grateful that someone does, whatever their age. My walk down memory lane, watching old Duran Duran videos? You or perhaps someone older paid for it with their clicks. That Facebook service my friends still frequent? Others pay for that, too. Others' click-and-buy mentality keeps the Internet running.

So, thank you, whoever you are. Please click more.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Google Spring Cleaning Shows How Far You Should Trust The Cloud

Google has gotten to be pretty good at introducing cross-platform services that bring productivity and efficiency into our daily lives. But increasingly one has to wonder: why the hell should we care about services that, like every other in the cloud, could disappear at any given moment?

This week alone, rumors were out about Google Babble, a new effort to combine the different communication services (like Talk, Hangout and Chat) into one client/platform.

Then there were the confirmed efforts to hook third-party apps into using Google Drive, which would enable Google to act as the repository for application generated data.

Finally, just yesterday, the new Google Keep app for Android debuted, a service that, if it gets more features and maturity, could give Evernote a run for its money. But I have to ask myself, why in the world would I want to use a service like this from Google when they could, with two magic words, arbitrarily decide to drop the service if it doesn't work out for them?

Those words? "Spring Cleaning." (Or, "Fall Cleaning," depending on the date.)

Now, in full disclosure, I am very unlikely to use Google Keep anyway, since I still - still! - can't seem to integrate Evernote into my life.

But even if I were inclined to use Keep, "spring cleaning" comes back to remind me that putting my trust in Google services is becoming a bad idea.

It's Always About The Money

Let me be blunt: spring (or fall) cleaning for Google is really a breezy little marketing term for "we can't figure out how to monetize this, so it's gone." Looking at the most recent spring cleaning blog from Google, which lists the closures of APIs and services that Google will no longer support, that certainly seems to be the case. That, or they're changing things up in order to get increased revenue from existing services.

Google Reader, of course, was the service that got the most attention in this latest round of spring cleaning, with good reason: a service that's been around since 2005, has tens if not hundreds of thousands of users, and Google just up and decides to ax it. It is particularly irksome for me, since I use Reader as the main service provider for my Reeder app on iOS and OS X. I'll do the manual extract and import using Google Takeout, so in the long run, I'm only out an hour of work time.

But here's the thing: what other services does Google have that could get spring cleaning treatment someday?

I notice, for instance, Google News doesn't have ads, nor will it in the near future, because the only thing that keeps most publishers from suing Google is that Google doesn't generate direct revenue from Google News. (And even that doesn't stop some publishers.) At what point does Google look at the amount of effort they put into News and see they're not getting the expected returns?

Google Voice, which provides voice-over-IP, voice mail and transcription services users, does have a Skype-like freemium model, where the voicemail and Google-provided phone number is free, but making outbound international calls from the U.S. costs something. With a little revenue coming in, hopefully Voice won't be on the chopping block.

There are other ways to get revenue than ads, of course. Google + doesn't have ads (now), but Google has been pushing +1 functionality on ads in their Display Network for quite some time, so there's revenue being generated in there.

My fixation on ads is unfortunate, since an ad-free world would be nice. But nothing in life is free, and without some way to generate money for a given service, eventually that service will have to be shuttered or changed into something that can pull in the revenue - something I might not like.

Google has gotten to the point where, try as they might, they can no longer afford to keep services sans revenue going indefinitely. As a publicly traded company, they can't. Google has to demonstrate to shareholders at the end of the day that they are doing everything possible to generate more revenue.

Am I saying that it is never okay to trust Google? That's going to depend on your level of trust. As a consumer, my personal comfort zone is becoming seriously encroached. I look around at all of the Google-based services I use (Gmail, Calendar, Maps, Voice, News) for work and personal use and wonder if this road I have traveled with good intentions isn't leading me to a very troublesome spot.

Beyond Google

The fault lies not with Google alone, either. This is a whole cloud services concern. I won't use Keep, but I am trying to use Evernote and I do use Omnifocus. Comixology stores the comics that won't fit on my iPad. Trello manages my workflow. Amazon holds movies and TV shows that my family have purchased.

So what happens when one of these companies goes belly up? Or their servers go down? Or there's a payment mix up and they decide to kill my account? These are problems that would range from pain in the ass to outright catastrophes, depending on the circumstances.

There is a mythos in the U.S. psyche that we must own things. Own a car, not lease it. Buy a house, not rent. But cloud services increasingly put us in the position of renting, or putting up with unwanted features (ads) to get something for free.

And, even if we do "own" something on the cloud, it's far more ephemeral than storing it in the physical world. I can own a movie on a DVD, and it can get lost, stolen, damaged or destroyed here in my house. Nothing in life is permanent. But in the cloud, things we buy are even more out of our direct control, and subject to the technical, legal and financial whims of the vendor holding our stuff.

If anything, Google's spring cleaning are a great reminder of those whims, and a wake-up call to anyone thinking about any cloud service. Go ahead and use what you want, but always make sure you have an exit strategy in place for when you want to leave, or the cloud vendor decides to close the store.

Image courtesy of Google.

Google Spring Cleaning Shows How Far You Should Trust The Cloud

Google has gotten to be pretty good at introducing cross-platform services that bring productivity and efficiency into our daily lives. But increasingly one has to wonder: why the hell should we care about services that, like every other in the cloud, could disappear at any given moment?

This week alone, rumors were out about Google Babble, a new effort to combine the different communication services (like Talk, Hangout and Chat) into one client/platform.

Then there were the confirmed efforts to hook third-party apps into using Google Drive, which would enable Google to act as the repository for application generated data.

Finally, just yesterday, the new Google Keep app for Android debuted, a service that, if it gets more features and maturity, could give Evernote a run for its money. But I have to ask myself, why in the world would I want to use a service like this from Google when they could, with two magic words, arbitrarily decide to drop the service if it doesn't work out for them?

Those words? "Spring Cleaning." (Or, "Fall Cleaning," depending on the date.)

Now, in full disclosure, I am very unlikely to use Google Keep anyway, since I still - still! - can't seem to integrate Evernote into my life.

But even if I were inclined to use Keep, "spring cleaning" comes back to remind me that putting my trust in Google services is becoming a bad idea.

It's Always About The Money

Let me be blunt: spring (or fall) cleaning for Google is really a breezy little marketing term for "we can't figure out how to monetize this, so it's gone." Looking at the most recent spring cleaning blog from Google, which lists the closures of APIs and services that Google will no longer support, that certainly seems to be the case. That, or they're changing things up in order to get increased revenue from existing services.

Google Reader, of course, was the service that got the most attention in this latest round of spring cleaning, with good reason: a service that's been around since 2005, has tens if not hundreds of thousands of users, and Google just up and decides to ax it. It is particularly irksome for me, since I use Reader as the main service provider for my Reeder app on iOS and OS X. I'll do the manual extract and import using Google Takeout, so in the long run, I'm only out an hour of work time.

But here's the thing: what other services does Google have that could get spring cleaning treatment someday?

I notice, for instance, Google News doesn't have ads, nor will it in the near future, because the only thing that keeps most publishers from suing Google is that Google doesn't generate direct revenue from Google News. (And even that doesn't stop some publishers.) At what point does Google look at the amount of effort they put into News and see they're not getting the expected returns?

Google Voice, which provides voice-over-IP, voice mail and transcription services users, does have a Skype-like freemium model, where the voicemail and Google-provided phone number is free, but making outbound international calls from the U.S. costs something. With a little revenue coming in, hopefully Voice won't be on the chopping block.

There are other ways to get revenue than ads, of course. Google + doesn't have ads (now), but Google has been pushing +1 functionality on ads in their Display Network for quite some time, so there's revenue being generated in there.

My fixation on ads is unfortunate, since an ad-free world would be nice. But nothing in life is free, and without some way to generate money for a given service, eventually that service will have to be shuttered or changed into something that can pull in the revenue - something I might not like.

Google has gotten to the point where, try as they might, they can no longer afford to keep services sans revenue going indefinitely. As a publicly traded company, they can't. Google has to demonstrate to shareholders at the end of the day that they are doing everything possible to generate more revenue.

Am I saying that it is never okay to trust Google? That's going to depend on your level of trust. As a consumer, my personal comfort zone is becoming seriously encroached. I look around at all of the Google-based services I use (Gmail, Calendar, Maps, Voice, News) for work and personal use and wonder if this road I have traveled with good intentions isn't leading me to a very troublesome spot.

Beyond Google

The fault lies not with Google alone, either. This is a whole cloud services concern. I won't use Keep, but I am trying to use Evernote and I do use Omnifocus. Comixology stores the comics that won't fit on my iPad. Trello manages my workflow. Amazon holds movies and TV shows that my family have purchased.

So what happens when one of these companies goes belly up? Or their servers go down? Or there's a payment mix up and they decide to kill my account? These are problems that would range from pain in the ass to outright catastrophes, depending on the circumstances.

There is a mythos in the U.S. psyche that we must own things. Own a car, not lease it. Buy a house, not rent. But cloud services increasingly put us in the position of renting, or putting up with unwanted features (ads) to get something for free.

And, even if we do "own" something on the cloud, it's far more ephemeral than storing it in the physical world. I can own a movie on a DVD, and it can get lost, stolen, damaged or destroyed here in my house. Nothing in life is permanent. But in the cloud, things we buy are even more out of our direct control, and subject to the technical, legal and financial whims of the vendor holding our stuff.

If anything, Google's spring cleaning are a great reminder of those whims, and a wake-up call to anyone thinking about any cloud service. Go ahead and use what you want, but always make sure you have an exit strategy in place for when you want to leave, or the cloud vendor decides to close the store.

Image courtesy of Google.

Cloud Computing: 4 Ways To Overcome IT Resistance

Business and IT leaders are bombarded with cloud computing hype and promotion. Yet very little is said about how the cloud affects the evolution of the IT organization itself. Enterprise cloud adoption is a transformative shift where the greatest implementation challenges are often more about people and process than technology integration.

Agents of change, especially in large enterprises, must overcome various forms of resistance. This includes organizational fiefdoms and the IT silos that evolved with them. These four organizational change strategies can help IT departments fight fear and inertia as they move to cloud computing:

IT Change Strategy #1: Use Tiger Teams To Break Down IT Fiefdoms

While no one is shocked that IT silos can hinder cloud adoption, you may be surprised how quickly you’ll encounter resistance. For example, setting up IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) offerings for your first private cloud will likely involve separate groups responsible for storage, computing, networking, platforms and security. Coordination among these groups is already difficult and you'll quickly find that many cloud vendors have product interoperability issues that cause documentation gaps, integration problems and incompatibilities. Teams will have to escalate issues through multiple vendors, causing long delays and strains between IT fiefdoms not accustomed to relying on each other.

The key is for siloed groups to share activities across traditional boundaries. To encourage this, leading companies have created Tiger Teams: small cross-functional groups of skilled, respected and entrepreneurial-minded workers. They should be experienced enough to navigate their home departments to accomplish needed tasks, politically astute enough to marshal resources and enterprising enough to push projects to completion. And they need a strong sponsor who can provide political cover and help break through entrenched resistance.

IT Change Strategy #2: SWAT Away “Analysis Paralysis”

One large financial institution implemented a cloud strategy with an incumbent vendor that claimed to offer the right strategy and products. The firm waited too long for proof points and had vastly disappointing results. When it tried to bring in other cloud vendors, they merely added confusion to the existing failed effort - leading to analysis paralysis and the inability to decide on the proper next steps.

Unfortunately, this scenario is being played out in many large enterprises. If you can’t afford a year of paralysis, create a SWAT team.

Smaller and more discreet than a Tiger Team, a SWAT team is quietly let loose to “get something done.” It emerges only when it has a concrete working model to integrate with the IT ecosystem for evaluation. Because it runs “small, fast and dark,” a SWAT team can be easier to initiate than a Tiger Team. A SWAT team’s goal is to break the paralysis and create a tangible model that everyone can improve. Building a SWAT team is relatively cost effective, especially compared to the opportunity cost of spending a year just trying to decide what to do.

IT Change Strategy #3: Challenge Legacy Obstinacy

Many organizations cling stubbornly to legacy applications and platforms, often including proprietary applications running on no longer supported platforms. While some groups may propose porting those applications to a modern, standardized, platform and as-a-Service offering, legacy zealots may claim that's too risky.

But there are many different techniques for cloud migration, including some require little to no re-architecture efforts. One size does not fit all when it comes to migrating applications to the cloud.

That's critical, because the benefits of eliminating non-standard platforms and infrastructure in favor of lower cost, cloud-based service offerings are too important to ignore. Because cloud computing promises automated processes that lower costs and speed cycle times for application provisioning, maintenance, patching and updating, cloud-based IT service costs will almost certainly decrease over time. Legacy system costs, meanwhile, typically continue to creep up. Many times, simply running numbers can help overcome emotional objections to changing the legacy status quo.

IT Change Strategy #4: Challenge Habitual Inefficiency

Most organizations existing IT processes and governance approaches are the result of years of layering of systems, technologies and process exceptions. Today’s cloud initiatives present a significant new opportunity to improve process automation and implement new governance best practices. That will likely breed resistance based on the idea of, “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” Don't buy it. The process has likely been broken for years.

Part of the resistance is political, as people within the IT organization understandably worry about positions being eliminated or particular fiefdoms losing prestige and power. The misperception may also exist that automation is fraught with risk.

But the real risk lies in not doing anything.

While some positions may in fact be eliminated and other roles may change with a move to the cloud, this is far better than the alternative. Sub-optimal IT efficiency can lead to lower enterprise productivity, a loss of competitiveness, lower profits and ultimately the risk of wholesale outsourcing of IT operations.

Successful Organizational Change Management

Addressing organizational change is vital to ensure the success of enterprise cloud-computing initiatives. By incorporating the right approach and building strong arguments to overcome resistance, you can help your organization make the changes necessary for successful implementation of enterprise cloud strategies.