Podcast: SaaS and the Cloud-PBBI’s President Offers His Reason Why Things Must Change

The economy, with two recessions in 10 years, has changed the way IT managers look at technology investments. Pitney Bowes Business Insight president Mike Hickey provides a frank assessment of how his company evaluated the opportunity for cloud computing. He explains why he has reoriented his company’s business model to adapt to this new environment, what software he will offer as a service and how he must find a way to do it quickly. He discusses in detail how clients are eschewing huge upfront software costs for the SaaS model that allows clients to move into more current technology solutions at lower cost. Editor in chief Joe Francica sat down with Hickey during the Insights Conference, PBBI’s user event, in Miami on May 12, 2010.
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Podcast: Gathering Data from the Asia Pacific Region-Obstacles and Successes

Geospatial data are relatively easy to obtain in the U.S. but what about in the Asia Pacific region where government policy differs widely from country to country. In fact, today’s challenges in the region have moved from acquiring the spatial foundation data (streets, basic demographics, and political boundaries) to data with finer demographic and geographic granularity. Editor in chief Joe Francica spoke with Sean Richards, director of product management for Pitney Bowes Business Insight (PBBI) in Brisbane, Australia, and Scott Robinson, director of global data products for PBBI about the obstacles to success and whether countries recognize the benefit of a more open data policy.
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Podcast: Exclusive Interview with Mike Hickey, President, Pitney Bowes Business Insight

For this exclusive interview, Directions Media Editor in Chief Joe Francica spoke with Mike Hickey, president of Pitney Bowes Business Insight, about the recently announced business unit composed of Pitney Bowes MapInfo and Group 1 Software. After the acquisition of MapInfo in 2007, Hickey took charge of this unit. He was tasked with overseeing the synergy that existed between these two companies focused on business geographics and location intelligence. He would also need to determine where this unit fit within the parent company’s primary business, mailstream technology.

Hickey provides details on the renaming of the business unit, the retention of the MapInfo brand, and today’s economic climate. "Your competition now isn’t just people that are in the same business as you; your competition is anybody that is competing for IT dollars, said Hickey. "You have to have a pretty strong value proposition and return on investment with your clients." [The interview lasts 14:30]

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Podcast: 2007 Year in Review

It’s time to look back on the year with Directions Media’s editors Joe Francica, Adena Schutzberg and Nora Parker. The industry watchers pick out a few themes and explore what they mean today and look a bit into the crystal ball. Among the topics: the value ($$$) of geo, the new geodata, “neogeography,” convergence, the quick-deciding user and the GPS-enabled ski jacket. The podcast is 27 minutes long and was recorded on Dec 17, 2007.

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