Gaming Excellence - Flight Simulator X

In an interview with Hal Bryan, Flight Simulator Community Evangelist at ACES Studio, developer of the Flight Simulator franchise. He touched on what it’s like to work at ACES, the research and development required to master a flight simulation engine, and what’s new in Flight Simulator X.

For example, FSX features a number of new aircraft, including the de Havilland Canada Beaver, the Air Creations trike ultralight, and the Grumman Goose among others. To build the planet, they use data from NASA, the US Geological Survey, Jeppesen, and a variety of other sources from around the world.

GamingExcellence is a comprehensive gaming website which provides up-to-date news and editorials for a variety of platforms.

Blog media company - Corante

Corante is the "The world’s first blog media company, a trusted, unbiased source on technology, science and business". About their readers, they say "Corante's community of more than 450,000 monthly readers aren’t just casual observers of the sector - they're the individuals on the cutting edge, the early adopters and innovators who are creating the technologies, building and running the sector's best companies, and dreaming up the applications of the future."
Pronunciation: [core-AUNT (as in haunt)]

IT and Business consulting blurring

The accelerated convergence of business and IT processes has also meant the blurring of lines between IT services vendors and traditional business consultants, according to Bo Di Muccio, program manager for consulting services at IDC. Paul Weinberg reports at echannelline.

"This increasing link is causing all of the general management consultancies [i.e. strict business consultants] to build up their technology focused capabilities. Five years ago, there would have been completely different lists of companies doing IT consulting and business consulting; now there is more of an overlap."

"The growing convergence of business and IT -- in dialogue and in fact -- has obscured many of the strict distinctions between the IT and business sides of consulting services. While the nature of the activities and players in these markets still warrant treating IT and business consulting separately, the primary implication of this convergence is that the business consulting market is more closely tied to IT than ever."

All of the four top GMCs -- McKinsey, Boston Consulting, Bain & Company and Booz Allen Hamilton --- are also conducting consulting in IT, CIO advisory, intellectual property and outsourcing, observed Di Muccio.

In addition, he continued, the large accounting firms are quietly rebuilding their consulting practices that include the addition of IT to the mix as their post Enron agreements to stay out of consulting are expiring.

Although IT vendors like Hitachi and Fujitsu are looking at getting involved in business consulting this is not an area for the novice, continued Di Muccio.
"This is not an easy market to enter. The expertise around the business process is not something you develop over night with limited capital."

The other issue facing the GMCs now offering IT consulting involves the shortage of IT talent, some of which is already being monopolized by the IT vendors, Di Muccio stated.

While IT vendors acquire companies, business consultants tend to grow "organically," he noted. "Business consulting has been growing more slowly than other areas of consulting."

As business consulting services rush out to hire IT talent and build up technology expertise "their ability to deliver across business and IT functions is becoming less and less of a potential differentiator," added Di Muccio.

"Therefore, business consultants will increasingly be forced to find other ways of differentiating themselves, and one example is through the productization of business consulting offerings."

IBM Launches R&D Consulting Practice

IBM to Help Companies Innovate by Maximizing R&D Operations and Investments
Marketwire reports that IBM Global Business Services unveiled a new management consulting practice intended to help companies produce innovation and competitive differentiation from research and development (R&D) spending.

Specifically, IBM's R&D Management consultants will focus on the following solutions for clients:

-- R&D transformation and optimization -- IBM consultants assess the R&D
business model to help R&D executives identify which areas R&D should focus
on from both an effectiveness and efficiency standpoint that will enable
the most impact to profitability and strategic differentiation. IBM
consultants also provide a roadmap and business case for R&D strategy,
management, vision and execution.
-- R&D Strategy -- IBM consultants develop product/services strategies,
business models and operating models (including people, process and
technology) that best link R&D strategy with the overall business strategy.
-- Product Innovation Management -- IBM consultants perform a strategic
assessment on the lifecycle of product innovation and provide a roadmap to
efficiency and effectiveness.
-- Portfolio management -- IBM consultants provide strategies and
management systems to create the correct balance and trade-off within a
company's product portfolio.
-- Collaboration -- IBM consultants help clients identify what types of
collaboration are beneficial and help create the structure needed to
support collaboration efforts within the enterprise and across innovation
networks.
-- Ideation -- IBM consultants assist clients with the strategies and
management systems designed to create and sustain the flow of innovative
ideas and to manage these ideas as a portfolio of assets.
-- Impact of future technology -- IBM consultants utilize a scientific
methodology to understand what future technologies may have an impact on a
company's product portfolio and provide guidance for how to incorporate
future technologies into future products.