IT Executive Exchange met for Leveraging Cloud Computing!

Pie in the Sky or the Next Big Thing on the Horizon? One of the fastest growing consumer technology trends is cloud computing, where data and software is housed in remote data centers rather than on-site servers. Microsoft's cloud computing data center in Northlake Illinois is designed to hold up to 400,000 servers. Amazon is offering its Elastic Computing Cloud service. The Economist reports that “Google is said to be operating a global network of about three dozen data centers loaded with more than 2m servers (although it will not confirm this). Microsoft is investing billions and adding up to 35,000 servers a month. Other internet giants, such as Yahoo!, are also busy building huge server farms." These and other firms are betting that IT shops will want to move a great deal of their processing into these ultra-efficient centers. This session of the ITEE was held on Friday, June 12, 2009 and considered the pros and cons of cloud computing in our unique setting of NE Ohio.

What You Need to Know About Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ?

At the last CITe Lunch and Learn Series Aaron Geh presented search engine optimization (SEO). At a high level, students learned the basics of SEO, including how it works and why it is important. In addition, they learned why it is so important to drive more qualified traffic to the web sites, convert that traffic to leads or sales, and then measure success in real numbers. There was also a Q & A for students after this interactive session.

The Executive Business Forum featured Quality Assurance and Software Testing

The Center for IT and eBusiness hosted the 3rd Executive Business Forum at the University of Akron on Wednesday, April 1, 2009 from 11:30 am to 1:00 pm. Our guest William Lewis presented testing and quality assurance in the Agile world & how to infuse Test Driven Development into the process. He also discussed the business impacts of adopting Software Testing and Continuous Quality Improvement & a practical roadmap for implementation. IT executives, professionals and academia also had chance to get to know each other better during the luncheon. 

Open Source Software. Does it work? Does it pay? Will you regret it later?

Particularly in difficult economic times, firms are re-assessing whether or not it makes sense to use Open Source Software, which appears to be significantly cheaper. This session of the IT Executive Exchange included a range of topics around Open Source, such as: how does it fit into the overall software portfolio, what are the (hidden) costs and benefits, what are some of the tools and packages that exist for various applications, security issues, and other important factors. The ITEE began with a networking lunch on March 27, 2009 from 1 pm to 2 pm and then took place from 2pm to 4pm.