Every week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on 3 ways IT still fails itself, a developer’s checklist for the cloud, and more. I hope you find them useful:

Enterprise software: Win over the staff and you’ll win over the business
With the rise of mobile apps and consumer-focused web services, end users demand more out of their enterprise applications. They expect everything to be as simple and intuitive as the applications they use everyday. This puts added pressure on the IT department to meet the end user’s rising expectations.

3 ways IT still fails itself
IT departments are often overworked and underappreciated, but how much of that is their own doing? This article focuses in on a few ways IT departments can act as their own worst enemy.

The developers checklist to prepare for the cloud
Whether or not your company plans on moving to the cloud in the near future, you should at least begin preparing for the cloud. That means you must move towards open standards and develop applications that deploy anywhere–on premise or in the cloud. Then, if your company ever switches to the cloud, you’ll be ready.

Software-as-a-Service: The dirty little secrets of SaaS
With the rise of Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings, businesses now have a choice: Host their own applications or use applications hosted by a SaaS provider. While the latter option may sound easier, this article raises some great issues to consider before diving in.