Strategies and Trends for Information Technology Leaders
Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said on Thursday he still sees a “certain buoyancy” among technology and telecommunications customers worldwide, despite recent U.S. economic woes. “Our industry is not immune to what goes on in the global economy. And yet as I travel … given the current circumstances, people still see a certain buoyancy…
McAfee, the world’s No. 2 security software maker, said on Monday it plans to buy Internet security company Secure Computing Corp. for $465 million in cash. The move gives McAfee a suite of software, services and hardware products to protect hackers from getting past the perimeters of computer networks. McAfee is already the No. 2…
Fortune 500 companies abandon more than one-third of software-development projects after implementation because they don’t meet user needs, according to a study released today by analyst firm Voke Media. The survey was conducted from April through July. That sees a lot of money squandered — the average project costs $3.2 million and requires almost 1,300…
To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of Windows Vista’s demise have been exaggerated. Somewhat, at any rate. Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. recently released a report that indicated Vista still isn’t ringing many bells with major IT shops. “A year of overwhelmingly bad publicity, coupled with opportunities for continued XP ‘downgrades’ or potentially skipping over Vista…
In their book Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath mention the “curse of knowledge” and define it as follows: once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. When IT professionals fail to take this into account, it can become frustrating for them and for…
If this recession turns out to be like the one we came out of just a few years ago, then IT is going to be cutting back a lot, again. Since most companies still view IT as a cost center; something lumped in with other G&A expenses such as finance and HR, it’s only logical…
When it comes to asset management, financial planning and service planning, IT departments are stumbling with fragmented tools, confused directives, and in some cases just a lot of bad advice from consultants. But, this just means that many IT organizations are ripe for new technologies and new ways of working to bring the traditional realm…
This is the final installment of a three part series on Software as a Service (SaaS). The first article, SaaS: An Idea Whose Time Has Finally Come , explored the evolution of SaaS as a viable alternative to in-house application hosting. A follow-up article, titled The SaaS Steamroller and Enterprise Software Vendors details the reasons…
Even though gas prices have fallen dramatically in the past few weeks, it seems almost a certainty—right up there with death and taxes—that this welcome trend will change. Although not tied as tightly to the price of crude, as oil prices change so do things like the costs of electricity, which companies use with abandon….
Everyone involved with software development, deployment, or procurement understands that security is important. As such, it is an area that CIOs consistently identify as a top priority for new IT investment. Most IT executives now recognize that software security is not just about security features, but also depends on security assurance. System security can be…