Joël Van Hoolandt — Fractional CTO | Magma Consulting

Where is Europe in a strong cloud computing strategy? hmmm...., 'not that far' I would say, but there is some hope in the decisions and in the implication of the European authorities and the lack of a mandatory clear vision of regulating the question. If you're interested in what the European Parliament is doing on the Cloud Computing question, have a look at the official publication. You can download the report here .

Read about the Berkeley project and the "Web privacy census", aiming to measure online privacy (based on the cookies found on the most popular sites)... Click to read the Blog post in NYT .

New strategy to create single set of rules for cloud computing and increase EU GDP by €160 billion annually by 2020. Many of us are using ‘cloud computing’ without even realising it. Web based e mail, Facebook and Spotify all use the technology to store data such as pictures, videos and text files. The files are stored in massive data centres containing hundreds of servers and storage systems that are compatible with very nearly all computer software. When you wish to access your information, you simply connect to the ‘cloud’ from your PC, smartphone or tablet.The advantages are numerous – users don’t have to buy or maintain expensive servers and data-storage systems. Over 80% of businesses already using the technology have reported a drop in IT costs of 10-20%, while 20% have seen savings of 30% or higher. In addition to lowering IT costs, cloud computing saves office space and reduces the need for in-house IT support teams. But the EU is not yet reaping the full potential of cl...

Ever wanted to implement a Business Intelligence or any enhanced analytics within your company? Well, based on this video, it seems that SP2013 will be very promising for the future. The XL Web Part integration provides the capability for most of the companies I know to dispatch and display real time quantitative information. This could be an affordable and easy way to deploy a BI solution within the financial sector. Have a look, this is a very valuable contribution from the guys from Gig Werks.

Announced for October, I'm quite excited with the idea to discover the Windows8 version - and the huge transformation on end-user interface level. Having had an interesting conversation earlier this week about the impact of Windows8 on the tablet (corporate) market, we came to the following conclusion: 1. Windows8 on tablet will be as good as IOS6 (yes, I dare to write that some Microsoft products will be 'as good as' Apple products. Sorry folks); 2. The corporate network integration will be optimal, in Microsoft environment at least; 3. The price per unit will be significantly cheaper than the Apple material; 4. Security will be better (sorry again...) Microsoft and Ballmer not innovative enough? Will see....

What can we do in management consulting with Twitter? If you're not Lady Gaga, Madonna or Barack, what can you do with Twitter if you're an ordinary man, just working as CIO and not looking for over-exposure on the Internet....? Well, I guess the answer will be: stay informed. I added quite a lot of well-known twitters in my following queue and I've to aknowledge, it's quite cool to read the latest news about the topics you selected. A kind of perpetual RSS feed, with real-time and online information about various topics (music, book, publishers, arts etc.). My real-time gazette, written by the people I allowed to write and I decided to read. Or not. Nothing changed, basically.

Not sure it's a good idea though, but yes, finally on Twitter...hmm....can't be on the Net without it, hu..? check: #MagmaConsult account and find some more there :-)