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Intel secrets revealed! How transparent is your IT operation? Does the rest of the company know how your budget is spent? Your performance against SLAs? Cost per terabyte of WAN traffic? And if they do, do key outside constituencies such as customers and vendors also know? Update: Business Objects to buy financial software vendor Business Objects has agreed to buy Cartesis, a maker of finance and performance management software, for €225 million in cash, or about $300 million, the companies announced Monday. April 23, 7:48 a.m. PDT Timely coverage Usually daylight-saving time is no big deal. We “spring ahead,” grumble briefly about an hour of lost sleep, and get on with life. This year could be different. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 advanced DST by three weeks, forcing IT managers into a feverish patch-fest, as they scramble to make sure their systems can handle the March 11 transition.  March 12, 3:00 a.m. PST Crisis management 101 I recently participated in some war-game-style what-if exercises with a small group of IT execs. The goal was to stimulate thinking about how corporations can best prepare for, and respond to, significant business disruptions, whether from terrorism, weather, biological threats, or other unexpected shocks. March 8, 3:00 a.m. PST IT as a service: taking care of business More and more organizations are transforming their IT departments into self-sustaining business units, treating internal users as if they were external customers. And for good reason, says Dennis Drogseth, vice president of Enterprise Management Associates, an IT management consultancy. March 5, 3:00 a.m. PST Gartner: CIOs need to focus on business expertise Two of three companies aim to grow faster than their markets this year, making it more important than ever for chief information officers to shift their priorities to encompass business objectives, according to a survey from Gartner. February 14, 6:29 a.m. PST Disney CEO previews new site, game As befits the head of one of the world's biggest entertainment conglomerates, The Walt Disney Co.'s Robert Iger had an array of stars on hand to spice up his International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) keynote Monday. But the biggest hit in the speech was a sneak peak at the company's new Web site and its upcoming massively parallel online "Pirates of the Caribbean" game. January 8, 9:29 p.m. PST IBM names new chief of Greater China Group IBM Corp. named Dah-Chuen Chien to succeed Henry Chow as chief executive officer (CEO) for China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, effective immediately, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday. January 8, 3:28 p.m. PST Balancing IT budgets No matter how carefully you plan and manage your slice of the IT budget, you’re going to mess up somewhere. Invariably, you’ll spend more than you should in some technologies, and less than you should in others. The trick — as detailed in “Spending Smart” — is to figure out the optimal budgetary mix across your IT portfolio and adjust accordingly. January 8, 3:00 a.m. PST IT as a revenue center When the Security Benefit Group’s IT department hit the streets in 2004 to try selling a homegrown service to external customers, there was skepticism in the ranks. “I can’t say anybody believed we would actually make a sale,” CTO Brent Littleton says. December 4, 3:00 a.m. PST Good ideas take time Two years ago, I publicly floated the concept that IT should start thinking more like entrepreneurs. What a disaster! I was speaking at a meeting of CTOs, and I mentioned that I’d heard of a few IT departments that were focusing, at least in part, on creating saleable new products and services for their companies. I asked the group what they thought of the idea. December 4, 3:00 a.m. PST Dodgy IT research yields dubious findings Well, it’s almost that time of year, when the holiday cards start to roll in. You know the drill — the ones from relatives and close friends get opened and showcased prominently, especially if their kids or dogs are cute. But the courtesy ones from people you barely remember sit there in a pile for weeks until you overcome the guilt of chucking them. November 24, 3:00 a.m. PST New litigation rules put IT on the front lines of data access On Dec. 1, when the latest version of the FRCP (Federal Rules of Civil Procedure) goes into effect, CIOs and their IT departments will find themselves on the firing line in most major business litigation. [Read about the cases that started it all.] November 17, 3:00 a.m. PST Update: HP quadruples income for fourth quarter Capping a year when it reclaimed the title of world's largest PC vendor despite a boardroom scandal, Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) on Thursday reported net income of US$1.7 billion for the fourth quarter, more than four times its mark for that period last year. November 16, 3:02 p.m. PST Cisco names Rebecca Jacoby new CIO Cisco Systems Inc. has a new executive to spearhead the company's own use of IT. October 24, 2:43 p.m. PDT IT by the book Can something that’s been kicking around for more than 15 years qualify as an overnight success? It certainly feels that way with ITIL, a collection of nine books that lays out a blueprint for IT service management. In the United States, at least, ITIL has recently catapulted itself from a respected, if somewhat obscure, treatise for governance geeks to a mainstream discipline. October 23, 3:00 a.m. PDT Getting a head start on ITIL IT can no longer deliver services based on technology fiefdoms or silos as it has in the past. This practice is dead. Organizations that refuse to accept it will either dissolve, get outsourced, or end up being controlled by external entities such as CFOs, business units, and so on. IT needs to rethink the ways in which it contributes to the business -- and how it manages itself. October 20, 3:00 a.m. PDT Is IT on the rise again? When I read the press release that IBM was “helping” the computer science department at Georgetown University develop an SOA (service-oriented architecture) curriculum, and that the courses would use WebSphere integration middleware, I raised an eyebrow. Wouldn’t that be like a pharmaceutical company developing a curriculum for a medical school on how to treat depression, I wondered? October 10, 3:00 a.m. PDT Driving IT innovation abroad As you read this, I’ll be winging my way to Prague, where I’m helping facilitate a two-day CIO round table on IT in emerging markets. Don’t worry — it’s not a boondoggle. Just an out-and-back trip (flying coach) — and I’ll probably be too jet-lagged to enjoy the beer. September 22, 3:00 a.m. PDT Can a day without DSL be too far off? YouTube.com was down last night, and I couldn’t believe it. My brother was visiting from the East Coast, and I wanted to show him this cool Internet video, Judson Laipply’s The Evolution of Dance, which I’ve gotten addicted to this summer for some reason. August 25, 3:00 a.m. PDT Update: AOL to slash up to 5,000 jobs worldwide AOL will slash up to 5,000 jobs worldwide, or just over a quarter of its workforce, as the struggling unit of Time Warner restructures in an effort to bring in more revenue. August 3, 11:49 a.m. PDT Microsoft loses veteran GM to Google A Microsoft Corp. technology evangelist has left after 15 years with the company to go work for archrival Google Inc., continuing a string of high-profile personnel changes at Microsoft this month. June 29, 11:02 a.m. PDT Are you significant? You know how political polls always mention a “margin of error” of so many percentage points? So Candidate X may be 3 percent up in the polls, but that’s actually “a statistical dead heat.” Well, the technology research world needs some discipline like this, because too many research firms have gotten lazy and are playing it fast and loose with small sample sizes. June 2, 3:00 a.m. PDT Ballmer lobbies for Microsoft R&D spend Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer Wednesday defended Microsoft's plan to boost its R&D (research and development budget) for next year to Wall Street analysts who worry the increased investment will lower earnings potential and mean less return to shareholders. May 31, 11:55 a.m. PDT Lessons in learning You certainly can’t accuse us of following the pack. Here it is, late May, with the world fixated on graduation and summer plans, and what’s InfoWorld hawking? A special “Back to School” package, with one article on IT pros polishing up their business skills and another on the challenge of providing continuous learning in a budget-conscious environment. May 22, 3:00 a.m. PDT Gartner weighs in on the state of IT Promising a reporter an exclusive is like dangling a sausage link in front of your dog. So of course when Gartner Fellow Ken McGee offered me an advance look at Gartner’s presentation on the current state of IT -- to be unveiled at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo in San Francisco the week of May 15 -- I bit. May 9, 3:00 a.m. PDT > Business |
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