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CIO Executive Council

A Peer-Advisory Service and Professional Association for CIOs

Webcast: In the Google Apps Cloud: How to Achieve Your Business Objectives

Dec 3rd, '09, 1 - 2 pm US/Eastern (GMT-5)

Join Council member Brent Hoag, Director, Global IT, at JohnsonDiversey, as he discusses the adoption of Google Apps which has helped meet four corporate goals; sustainability, simplification, increased employee productivity and global collaboration.

Webcast: Collaboration Initiatives: Benchmarks & Best Practices

Dec 15th, '09, 4 - 5 pm US/Eastern (GMT-5)

Join Council members Ruth Thorpe, VP & CIO at the U.S. Pharmaceutical Operations of Sanofi-Aventis, and Gary Kuyper, CIO at Bethany Christian Services, as they speak about their collaboration initiatives and experiences in how and why they chose the social networking and collaboration tools they are using and their business goals for collaboration, and facing culture change challenges.

Data Overview: Collaboration Initiatives Field Guide: Benchmarks & Best Practices

This appendix to the Council Field Guide provides an analysis which discusses benchmarks for collaboration IT implementation costs, adoption rates and payoffs. The overview identifies top IT and business goals and satisfaction rates for collaboration initiatives as well as best practices and lessons learned for implementing collaboration IT.

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Yahoo Is Out - Who Might Microsoft Look to Acquire?

Consider Microsoft's relative weaknesses -- search, Web advertising and Web 2.0 services -- who could Microsoft target that will provide the same value as Yahoo?

Bachelor No. 1: AOL LLC

Forget about its declining dial-up business, which Time Warner Inc. is splitting off from AOL proper in any case. AOL is the most logical acquisition for Microsoft for at least four reasons:

AOL's online advertising network, called Platform A, is the largest in the U.S. -- even bigger than Yahoo's. According to comScore Inc., Platform A had 91% reach of the total U.S. Internet audience in March in comparison with Yahoo's 85% reach and third-place Google's 81% reach. Microsoft, through its DRIVEpm division (previously part of aQuantive Inc.), ranks eighth, with 66% reach. Time Warner itself says Platform A, formerly called Advertising.com, delivers 3 billion Web banner ads a day to AOL and other Web sites. AOL acquired Advertising.com Inc. in mid-2004 for $435 million, a price that now looks pretty good.
It may seem like only your parents and grandparents actually use AOL, but its Web properties are actually the fourth most popular in the U.S. measured by unique visitors, behind only Yahoo, Google and Microsoft, according to comScore. They are ahead of such leading lights as Fox Interactive Media's MySpace.com, eBay, Amazon.com and Facebook. Despite the overlap, a merger of Microsoft and AOL's properties would likely lead to an immediate leap to the top.
One of those Web properties is AOL's recently acquired Bebo Inc. Though not popular in the U.S., Bebo is reportedly huge in the U.K. and many other countries. It's one of a number of sites -- Hi5, Friendster, Google's Orkut and others -- that are vying for third place behind MySpace.com and Facebook in the casual-social-networking space.
AOL Instant Messenger's (AIM) days of dominance may be long over, but according to comScore, it remains the third most popular IM network worldwide, behind Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger, and the most popular in the U.S. AIM also had no interoperability with either Microsoft or Yahoo's services (it chose to partner with Google instead) making a combination with Windows Live Messenger even more appealing.