Elearning - February/March 2008 - (Page 11) Forecasting Tools Move To Broad Management With today’s regulatory and competitive pressures, financial measurement and performance management has never been more critical. Most current forecasting tools don’t provide the enterprise-wide data management and modeling capabilities to sustain continuous analysis of forecast-versus-actual business results. “Now more than ever before, organizations have the best access to cutting-edge planning and forecasting tools to streamline finance processes,” says Jerry Kaczmarowski, managing director of Technology Solutions at Slalom Consulting. “Techniques of the past are being pushed aside or enhanced by more advanced methods.” New technology was unveiled at Slalom’s exclusive seminar titled “Driving Business Performance” in coordination with Microsoft and Two Degrees. The seminar, which took place in Seattle, Wash., was aimed at financial executives to discuss Microsoft’s new PerformancePoint technologies. It also provided more than 100 local executives with predictions on the impact of this technology on critical areas like budgeting and financial planning. Conference presenters discussed how to move to advanced planning and forecasting techniques across the enterprise, while letting the finance team continue to use triedand-true technologies like Excel. The end result gives companies much better ability to forecast monthly results, drill down into performance problems, and communicate information throughout the enterprise. For more information, visit the Website http://www.slalom.com/. Storage Needs Will Grow to Quadrillions According to Steve Duplessie of Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc., an analyst firm based in Milford, Mass., private companies will need 27,000 petabytes of storage space within two years. Much of the demand is due to the need to store burgeoning numbers of e-mail. (A petabyte is a quadrillion, or a million-billion bytes. To understand the size of a petabyte, Wikipedia notes that Microsoft stores on 900 servers a total of approximately 14 petabytes, mostly imagery for its digital model planet, Virtual Earth.) Acccording to a report in the New York Times, the University of Pittsburgh sends and receives more than 30 million e-mails per month, compared to 17 million per month last year. Another factor driving the need for increased storage space is the boom in large CAD files, cloned files, and the adoption of virtualization technology. Duplessie’s report is available for downloading at the Website www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/_documents/NewsEvent/News Event443.pdf. People on the Move brings more than 20 years of knowledge and expertise to the company, including hands-on leadership and experience in managing human resourcesrelated functions for global organizations such as Marsh Inc., and Colgate-Palmolive Co. Also hired: Thomas Karrat as executive vice president of sales and marketing, another new senior management position. ELLEN WILSKER, VICE PRESIDENT OF NORTHERN REGION SALES FOR THE RICHARDSON GROUP was the recipient of a 2007 Stevie Award in the “National Accounts Manager of the Year” category at the second annual Selling Power Sales Excellence Awards. She is a two-time member of Richardson’s Chairman’s Club, as well as a five-year recipient of Richardson’s President’s Club award. DEBORAH FAUCETTE HAS BEEN NAMED BY LEARNSOMETHING, INC., to the new position of senior vice president of Sales and Marketing. Before joining LearnSomething, Faucette worked for the Catalina Health Resource. ADVANCED BROADCAST SOLUTIONS (ABS) has appointed Mark Warner, former director of Microsoft Studios, as its vice president. In his new role, Warner is charged with managing the company’s headquarter office and scaling its growth smoothly. He joins ABS on the heels of a highly distinguished career, including the receipt of five Emmy Awards. MIMEO.COM has hired Coleen Smith as “chief people officer,” a newly created position. Smith Elearning! February/March 2008 11 http://www.slalom.com/ http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/_documents/NewsEvent/NewsEvent443.pdf http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/_documents/NewsEvent/NewsEvent443.pdf http://MIMEO.COM
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