• Cloud Overview and Opportunities
• SharePoint Online
• Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
• Sites &Communities (Collaboration & Social Computing)
• Composites (Workflows)
• Search
• Business Intelligence (Insights)
• Development

SharePoint TechFest is again being combined with the Innotech Dallas conference, a regionally focused business to business technology conference & expo. Cogent has participated in InnoTech Oklahoma for several years. “We’ve enjoyed our affiliation with Innotech, and when Innotech took over the SharePoint TechFest, we were excited because of the new opportunities the combined conferences present to our clients and our firm,” said Marc Hoppers, Founder, President, and CEO of Cogent.

Register Now for SharePoint TechFest using discount code COG50 in the discount code box to receive a special rate of $149, which includes the full day event, lunch, reception, give-a-ways, and so much more.

Thursday, May 17, 2012
8:00 am – 6:00 pm
Irving Convention Center
500 Las Colinas Boulevard West
Irving, Texas 75039

Cogent Company is pleased to continue its relationship with the CDIT in the College of Business at University of North Texas (“UNT.”) For many years, Cogent has been an active member of the CDIT, not only contributing to guidance and direction, but also participating on panel discussions around business intelligence and security. The agenda for the day is as follows:

• Sign In and Continental Breakfast (8:00 — 8:30 am)
• Session I (8:30 – 10:00 am)
• Break and Networking (10:00 – 10:20 am)
• Session II (10:20 – 11:30 am)

The speaker at the February 24th event will be George E. Danner. George is President of Business Laboratory, LLC, and he specializes in the application of agent-based simulation modeling, Monte Carlo simulation, System Dynamics, Game Theory and Real Options to some of the world’s most difficult and complex business problems. George has 28 years of experience in corporate strategy, specifically operational and financial analysis, across a wide variety of industries: manufacturing, energy, telecommunications, transportation and financial services at firms including nGenera Corporation, Industrial Science LLC (as founder), and Arthur Andersen. George has a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University and a Master of Science in Management from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“More and more, we are using our clients’ data to help them compete better at lower costs,” said Eric Lakey, Cogent Vice President and head of Cogent’s Advisory Services Practice. “The modeling concepts that George is going to discuss are leading many companies, not just the fortune 100, to be able to see around corners, anticipate market and business events, and game plan various scenarios.”

Marc Hoppers, Co-Founder, President and CEO of Cogent and member of the Advisory Board for the UNT College of Business Information Technology and Decision Sciences department, said, “George spoke at UNT several years ago, and he had some great ideas and shared practical experience. Jerry Dake and the CDIT team at UNT continue to do a great job bringing in speakers who push practitioners to think beyond traditional ways of thinking. We always benefit from the great discussions, and we encourage our clients to get to Denton for these seminars.”

Cogent invites its clients, prospective clients, and friends of the firm to join us in Denton on Friday, February 24, 2012. For more information on registering, contact our office through Memory Bobbitt at mb@cogentcompany.com.

• Cloud QuickStart
• Analytics QuickStart
• Mobile QuickStart

These three solution domains are important for not only Chief Information and Technology Officers, but also for all executives to understand. Cloud, analytic, and mobile solutions are all changing how we build and use software systems to improve business performance. Because of this, business executives need to plan how each will impact their business.

In a brief statement to CIOs at a recent private event sponsored by Cogent, Cogent’s President and Chief Executive Officer encouraged CIOs to “include business executives in the discussion of the promise of new technologies.” He also said that “technology executives have an opportunity to shape the culture and future of their firms by showing their users and business customers that technology can be the lever to a more efficient firm.” He went on to say, “CIOs and CTOs are in the unique position to extract more value from existing systems by incremental investment in newer technology, including cloud, analytics, and mobile. These incremental type technology solutions present the opportunity to yield asymmetric benefit to the financial and time investment required.”

In 2009, Cogent launched the Program Management Office (“PMO”) QuickStart to help its clients get a PMO planned and off the ground. In the years since that offering was launched, Cogent Consultants have helped clients plan and implement proofs of concepts, trial solutions, and phase 1 solutions around not only PMOs, but also full-lifecycle projects for business intelligence solutions, mobility solutions, and cloud solutions.

Eric Lakey, Cogent Vice President responsible for Service Delivery and Advisory Services practice leader, said of the final QuickStart Guidance deliverable, “These RoadMaps are not just ‘sales’ documents. We work to prepare guidance that our client firms can take and use with or without us participating. Of course, these are services that we are very good at delivering, but we want to make sure our clients understand that we are most interested in improving their results.”

Cogent’s QuickStart services provides you with meaningful guidance regarding to what extent cloud, analytics, or mobile solutions can have a positive impact on your business. The Cloud Assessment gives you:

1. A structured, four-hour discovery workshop: Cogent consultants will interview key leaders at your company. We cover the major operational functions in your company and identify opportunities for adopting cloud-related services. We do this by finding technology or processes that allow current technology to be replaced or enhanced with cloud, analytics, or mobile solutions.
2. Cloud Guidance Roadmap: Upon completion of the workshop, Cogent’s consultants will produce a QuickStart Guidance document that includes our recommendations & roadmap for cloud, analytics, or mobile initiatives in 2012.

Take the next step. Contact Cogent Consultants to take advantage of our exclusive QuickStart services.

• email info@cogentcompany.com or…
• call us at 214.341.1004

Contact us today to get started. We’ll contact you within 24 hours to discuss you next steps.

Given the cloud’s promise of lower costs and increased performance, you (the leaders of your company’s technology and/or business units) need to plan how the cloud will impact your business.

You don’t want to allow it to happen. You need to make it happen.

Plan Now How Your Company Will Leverage the Cloud in 2012.

If you are looking to adopt the Cloud in 2012 and/or find yourself needing to… Migrate on-premise software solutions to utilize cloud services Use variable computing power for operational or analytic applications Mitigate the high cost of growing volumes of SharePoint data Blend your operational expenses and capital expense Ramp up an incentive-oriented social or traditional incentive campaign with incremental traffic? Then you need our free Cloud Assessment. This short, 2 hour workshop,will pinpoint areas where adopting the cloud services like Microsoft Azure will  make a positive impact. Take the next step. Contact us to take advantage of our Cogent Cloud Assessment… email cloud@cogentcompany.com or… call us (214.341.1004) complete the form below Hurry, because the offer ends 12/23/2011* *You only need to schedule the assessment by this deadline. The assessment workshop will held at a mutually agreeable time.

Knowing how to take advantage of the cloud solutions will determine how you:

• manage your technology assets and resources
• manage your financial assets
• determine how & where you can grow your business in ways previously not obvious.
• improve customer care and customer relationships

Cogent’s Cloud Assessment provides you with meaningful guidance regarding to what extent the cloud can have a positive impact on your business.

When you engage Cogent, we help you think through your cloud options with Azure.

The Cloud Assessment gives you:

1. A structured, four-hour workshop: Cogent consultants will interview key leaders at your company. We cover the major operational functions in your company and identify opportunities for adopting cloud-related services. We do this by finding technology or processes that allow current technology to be replaced with cloud technology or where cloud technology can introduce a capability not currently able to be delivered.
2. Cloud Guidance Roadmap: Upon completion of the workshop, Cogent’s consultants will produce a Cloud Guidance document that includes our recommendations & roadmap for cloud initiatives in 2012.

Contact us today to get started. We’ll contact you within 24 hours to discuss you next steps.

The Windows Azure platform is a flexible cloud–computing platform that supports applications, data, and infrastructure in the cloud, together with a cloud marketplace. The Windows Azure platform reduces the level of upfront investment required for expensive infrastructure and allows you to exploit Internet-accessible servers rather than buying and maintaining your own machines. With the Windows Azure Platform you pay only for what you use, scale up when you need capacity and pull it back when you don’t. Microsoft handles all the patches and maintenance – all in a secure environment with over 99.9% uptime.

The Windows Azure Platform today has four parts:

• Windows Azure: A Windows environment for running applications and storing data on computers in Microsoft data centres.
• SQL Azure: Relational data services in the cloud based on SQL Server.
• Windows Azure AppFabric: Cloud-based infrastructure services for applications running in the cloud or on premises.
• Windows Azure Marketplace: An online service for purchasing cloud-based data and applications.

Contact Cogent today to learn about how to take advantage of Microsoft AZDPS SA benefits today to take advantage of Azure in your business.

Ty Anderson, Cogent’s Vice President, leader of Cogent’s Application Development Practice, and Microsoft MVP, said today, “This clearly acknowledges the serious investment Cogent has made in delivering world-class cloud computing solutions. Microsoft’s Azure platform opens up a significant opportunity for our clients to leapfrog competitors by streamlining operations, reducing costs, and increasing revenues.”

Beginning today, Cogent will offer an additional planning service: The Azure Deployment Planning Services (AZDPS.) The AZDPS is a structured consulting engagement designed to help its clients understand what the Microsoft Public Cloud offering is and what Windows Azure offers their business. Cogent’s clients can use their Service Assurance vouchers to purchase these consulting engagements.

Cogent Company is pleased to continue its relationship with the CDIT in the College of Business at University of North Texas (“UNT.”) For many years, Cogent has been an active member of the CDIT, not only contributing to guidance and direction, but also participating on panel discussions around business intelligence and security. Recently, Jerry Dake, UNT Senior Lecturer Decision Sciences and Executive Director of the CDIT, announced the 2011 seminar series on Geospatial Data Analysis.Jeff’s session will focus on Gartner’s research in this area and cover where we have come from and where this type of analysis is going. The agenda for the day is as follows:

• Sign In and Continental Breakfast (8:00 — 8:45am)
• Session I (8:45 – 10:00 am): History and objectives of GIS
• Break and Networking (10:00 – 10:20 am)
• Session II (10:20 – 11:20 am): Current research and future directions in GIS

The speaker for the day, Jeff Vining, is a research vice president in Gartner Research, where he covers GIS, homeland security, and law enforcement. He has been with Garner Research for approximately 8 years. Prior to joining Gartner, Mr. Vining was the executive director of a federal government-sponsored advisory council tasked with identifying emerging technologies for public safety applications. Before this, Mr. Vining served as an attorney advising the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of the U.S. Navy, and the Arkansas State Police. Mr. Vining previously served on the International Association of Chiefs of Police Highway Safety Subcommittee and currently serves on the GOVSEC/USLaw advisory boards, participates in a local community emergency response team, and serves on a local government emergency preparedness committee, as well as the advisory board to the Salvation Army.

Todd Turman, Cogent Vice President and head of Cogent’s Information Management Practice, said, “Technology advancements have allowed our clients to more affordably implement geospatial and other sophisticated visualizations into their solutions. This year’s CDIT topic on the intersection of GIS and BI is timely given that we are seeing a dramatic increase in our client’s ability to adopt these types of solutions.”

Marc Hoppers, Co-Founder, President and CEO of Cogent and member of the Advisory Board for the UNT College of Business Information Technology and Decision Sciences department, said, “We’ve had a long relationship with Jerry and CDIT, and we always benefit from the great discussions.”

Cogent invites its clients, prospective clients, and friends of the firm to join us in Denton on Wednesday, November 9, 2011. For more information on registering, contact our office through Memory Bobbitt at mb@cogentcompany.com.

Are you tired of consultants pretending to know your business?  We don’t just pretend to look like we know what we are talking about.  We work to know what we are talking about.  We don’t simply come in and solve a problem A to Z.  We make sure we can’t solve it A to B first.  If there are quicker, more effective solutions, we will find them. That’s what we do.  We work to understand your business and your business problems. Then, we use technology to solve those problems.  If the technology doesn’t exist, we will create it.  We’re that good.  And we won’t wear this suit unless you make us.  If you make us, then we will.

Mobility

There’s a lot of buzz around the upcoming Mango update, which will add hundreds of new features and capabilities that build upon the unique design and integrated experiences of Windows Phone. For companies building solutions with Exchange and SharePoint, Mango adds a number of new Outlook and Office Mobile productivity features, bringing even more value to your solutions on Windows Phone. Mango will also add built-in support for Office 365 and a free Lync Mobile app, making communication and collaboration a snap for companies whose infrastructure is on premises or in the cloud. Mango will also offer added functionality for organizations to make the most efficient use of resources, allowing IT departments to use existing infrastructure to manage phones or distribute their own applications using Targeted App Distribution in Marketplace.

For developers, Mango adds a range of new capabilities for delivering richer more compelling apps. In addition to support for SQL Linq, sockets, and background processing, Mango brings new ways for app developers to make the user experience more engaging and seamless through Live Tiles and integration with Bing search services.

Cloud

Senior leaders from Microsoft also discussed the transition to cloud computing. Satya Nadella, head of Microsoft’s Server & Tools business, said “Our mission, simply put, is to cloud-optimize every business,” he said, “and bring the benefits of this transformation to all of our customers.” Nadella walked through Microsoft’s strategy of spanning private and public clouds with a common set of tools for management, identity, virtualization, and development. This freedom of movement across public and private clouds is unique to Microsoft, and reflects “the realities of hybrid IT, which is the reality customers will demand from us as an ecosystem.” Nadella also emphasized the continued opportunity in the traditional server market, as private and public cloud computing drives increased appetite for servers. “Cloud computing is as big a transformation as we have ever seen and, together with our partners, Microsoft will help customers through the shift,” said Nadella.

Data

Noting the ever-increasing importance of data in both public and private cloud computing, Nadella announced the availability of a community technology preview of the new Microsoft SQL Server, currently SQL Server codename “Denali.” For the first time, customers can begin testing the much-anticipated features of “Denali,” including Project “Crescent” for visual data exploration and SQL Server Developer Tools codename “Juneau,” for a modern development experience across server, business intelligence and cloud development projects.

Finally, Microsoft Corp. today unveiled updates to the Microsoft Partner Network (MPN), to better help partners grow their businesses and meet evolving technology needs of customers around the globe through tools, training and incentives totaling $5.8 billion for fiscal year 2012.

Cogent is pleased to continue to deepen its relationship with Microsoft in an effort to provide guidance and solutions to its clients on Microsoft technologies. Ty Anderson, Cogent Co-Founder, Vice President and leader of Cogent’s Application Development/Systems Integration Practice, said, “Marc and I started our firm based on the opportunities that we saw in the Microsoft technology around .NET, SQL, and the Office SharePoint products. While we’ve expanded our technology partnerships and delivery capabilities beyond Microsoft, we still value the work that Microsoft is doing to stay ahead of corporate IT needs.”