by Maribel Lopez, Principal Analyst, Lopez Research

Technology has made March Madness madder than ever, giving the term a whole new meaning around the office. Especially with games tipping off between the hours of 9 and 5. According to a recent survey of 500 IT professionals (conducted by Braun Research), the NCAA college basketball tournament has been identified by 42% as a corporate network inhibitor. 37% reported slower speeds and 34% say the hoops tourny shut down their network for an extended period of time. It's easy to imagine how this is happening with employees streaming games from their work computers. The chances of your employees engaging in the same type of activity is relatively high. Bracketology, after all, can leave pride, money, and other unspeakables on the table.

The bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend has picked up a lot of steam in recent months and doesn't look to be slowing down any time soon. Technological advances, a growing number of mobile workers, and gadget affordability have all played a role in the takeoff process. In some ways this trend presents cause for concern; an increasing number of employees are sitting in their company's drivers seat and calling the shots in ways they shouldn't be. The device-types supported in a given corporate environment are no longer stemming from the will of the IT director. In many cases the line is being drawn by the employees who are bringing their personal-owned devices to the office.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) eliminates the need to install applications on the customer hardware. SaaS applications are typically accessed from a web browser and a single instance of the application often serves all the customers. Since the same application instance needs to fulfill different needs for different customers and there may be no option of creating a custom build for each customer, customizability of SaaS applications becomes an important aspect for delivering personalized software to the users. Customizability enables easy integration of the SaaS application with the customers existing systems and also empowers partners and resellers to easily configure the solution according to their and their customer’s requirements.

So, which tablet did you receive over the holiday season? Was it the Kindle Fire, the Motorola Xoom, or the iPad?

Yep, it's that time of year again. As people begin removing lights and ornaments from their trees and taking off those goofy Near Years Eve sunglasses, tech pundits across the web are relaying their forecasts and views of what enterprise technology landscape will look like in 2012...

Since its release last month, industry pundits have debated whether the low-cost Amazon kindle fire will be the one to disrupt the immense market lead enjoyed by the Apple iPad. Earlier discussions point to the fire as the best competitor yet...

Did you know that around 45% of the mobile workforce has a job that is compatible with a certain amount of mobile commuting? Wow!

In round one, we broke the two tablets out of their boxes and shared our initial impressions. In round two, our contenders showed us what they were made of as we cross-compared their tech specs. In round three, you learned what it would be like to use each of these tablets at home or the workplace. Now for the round you came to see: IT management capabilities! (if you haven't already, I highly recommend you watch a recording of the event here)