Jenny Thomas
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Manta Releases More COBOL Courses
March 25, 2013 Jenny Thomas
… Read moreIt was just last year when Bill Hansen, president of Manta Technologies achieved his long-time goal of introducing a COBOL training series for programming students. COBOL was the one training course Hansen said customers consistently asked for over the years, so he was pleased to add it to Manta’s curriculum.
Now comes the addition of two more courses to the COBOL series: Performing Arithmetic in COBOL and COBOL Table Processing. The curriculum already includes Developing a COBOL Program, COBOL Output Programming, and COBOL Input Programming, which we told you about last year. The two new
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IT Job Market Slides In February, But Could Rebound In Summer
March 18, 2013 Jenny Thomas
… Read moreWhat goes up, must come down. Sometimes this is good news, like in the case of gas prices or the Frisbee you stuck on the roof of your house last summer. But when you are talking about the job market, in particular the number of IT jobs available, down is not the direction you’d be hoping to see. It was just one month ago that the analysts at Janco Associates offered some hope to IT job seekers, with news of a spike in the number of new jobs for IT professionals in North America in the month of January.
But
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Enterprise IT Spending In The States To Improve In The Second Half
March 11, 2013 Jenny Thomas
… Read moreIt’s always nice to have something to look forward to. In the U.S., the recession we have been stuck in for what seems like forever has left us with a seemingly endless view of bad news including continued high unemployment rates, a failing housing market, skyrocketing gas prices, and a looming fear of the fiscal cliff among the many issues we had staring us in the face.
But out on the horizon, the experts at IDC see a glimmer of change in our not-too-distant future. In its recently released United States Black Book 4Q12, IDC updated its forecasts for
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Does Working At Home Really Work?
March 4, 2013 Jenny Thomas
… Read moreWhen Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer recently dropped the bomb that she was ending work-from-home arrangements beginning this June, telecommuters around the world held their breath. Was it time to close up the home office?
Although Mayer’s decision has re-ignited the debate about the pros and cons of telecommuting, whether or not it is a good idea to allow employees to work at home seems to depend on who you talk to.
Here in the IT Jungle, telecommuting has been our way of life since our inception back in 1996. In my experience, working from home is not for
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Manta Offers Free Student Reference Guides To Students
February 25, 2013 Jenny Thomas
… Read moreMost of us have adapted to the new and improved paperless way of life. Heck, many of you out there have led the charge to rid your company of wasteful pages that must be filed in favor of electronic documentation and storage.
But you’re not alone if you wouldn’t mind seeing a good, old-fashioned hard copy every now and then.
Budget cutbacks and rising costs have forced companies into eliminating expensive luxuries like paper, printers, and ink, but it’s not just about doing away with endless print jobs. The online world has many resources available. We get our news more
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Have You Got An Enterprise App For That?
February 18, 2013 Jenny Thomas
… Read moreHaving an app already sounds like a cliché. In the Apple App Store, for instance, there are approximately 775,000 apps available, as compared to the mere 800 apps it offered when it opened its doors in July 2008. Best guesstimates put the Google Play store at a close second in the neighborhood of 600,000 apps and growing. It begs the question: How many more apps can we possible need?
It looks like the sky may be the limit as enterprises start to get in on the app mania. The analysts at Gartner believe there is a new app wave
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January Sees North America IT Jobs Explosion
February 11, 2013 Jenny Thomas
… Read moreThe folks at Janco Associates have some good news for IT job seekers. According to a new Janco report, based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, the IT job market exploded with 73,500 new jobs in January.
Even with the unemployment rate rising to 7.9 percent in 2013, Janco is seeing the number of new jobs for IT professionals is at levels high enough for IT mid-level manager and developers to say IT is in full recovery mode. According to data Janco extracted from the January jobs report from the BLS, there were 73,500 more IT professionals employed
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Social Business Benefits Are A Long-Term Investment
February 4, 2013 Jenny Thomas
… Read moreThere’s no need to review why your company has to get up to speed on social business. Get on the train or get left at the platform. We’ve all heard the lecture. And it must have sunk in because according to the gurus at Gartner, enterprise social networks are fast-becoming the primary communication channels for noticing, deciding, or acting on information relevant to carrying out work.
So everyone is staying on trend and ready to reap the rewards. Good news, right? Now here’s the catch: Gartner estimates that through 2015, 80 percent of social business efforts will not achieve
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Execs Say New ‘Digital’ Tech Tops The Priority List This Year
January 28, 2013 Jenny Thomas
… Read moreA new year brings a new opportunity to look ahead at what we want to accomplish in the next 12 months. In the world of IT, there are always fires to put out and systems to maintain, but according to a recent survey by the analysts at Gartner, 2013 needs to be the year when CIOs take control of digital technologies such as mobile devices and applications, analytics, big data, social media, and the cloud.
The survey was conducted in the fourth quarter in 2012 and included 2,053 CIOs representing more than $230 billion in CIO IT budgets and
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Steampunk Will Be The Next Big Rage, So Saith IBM
January 21, 2013 Jenny Thomas
… Read moreIf “IBM” was the only word in that headline that made any sense to you, you’re not alone. While IBM has spent the last 100-plus years making a name for itself in the computing world, it is probably not even on the list when it comes to discussing pop culture trends.
Let’s start with the obvious question. Steampunk is defined by IBM as a sub-genre inspired by the clothing, technology, and social mores of Victorian society. Wikipedia provides a more detailed description of steampunk as a type of science fiction that typically features steam-powered machinery. Steampunk works, which can include