Anyone who has bought computer systems over the last 30 years has come up against the same dilemma – shall we go for a ‘best of breed’ packaged solution, or shall we build it internally, using the skills of the internal IT teams? It is the classic “Make or Buy” dilemma.

You talk about your requirements with IT. They look at the problem – it looks like a few database tables with a couple of front-end screens for data entry/update will do the job. Chuck in a couple of reports and hey - the job’s done. It won’t take more than a couple of months, tops. Surely that’s better than spending more money on what looks like an expensive solution from a vendor?

Is your organization moving towards cloud computing solutions? If so, these initiatives can typically be viewed as two different types of projects.

1. Moving application servers and databases to cloud servers such as Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure.
2. Migrating files and data into cloud storage.

How can this be done without disrupting your current EUC and Model controls? CIMCON can help.

There are numerous, well-publicized incidents of data loss and data breach associated with the use of spreadsheets. This perpetual information security risk has led many to call for doing away with spreadsheets entirely. But before you go disrupting any critical business processes that aren’t really broken, consider taking advantage of a new Excel add-in that is available at no cost via Microsoft AppSource.

Nowadays we take spreadsheets for granted. Their power is simply at our fingertips. But it wasn't always this way. How did we come to have these useful tools so readily available? There is surprisingly little formal information about how they came to be, but luckily, there are others who share our passion and have done something about it.