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Don't manage IT like the Titanic Ever seen one of those movies, such as "Titanic," where the passengers and officers dance and dine on deck in luxurious comfort while hundreds of sweaty, tough men toil below in the suffocatingly hot engine room? Microsoft lends a tech hand to U.K. startups Microsoft will assist U.K. startups in using its software technology under a program launched on Monday by CEO Steve Ballmer. October 1, 8:48 a.m. PDT Congress holds new hearing on immigration bill It appears that the STRIVE (Security Through Regularized Immigration and a Vibrant Economy) Act of 2007 isn't quite dead after all.  September 6, 3:20 p.m. PDT CA, Deloitte team up on security push in Asia CA and Deloitte & Touche are expanding an existing partnership to cover more of Asia, hoping to tap growing demand from large companies for software that improves security. August 15, 4:34 a.m. PDT HP is its own case study with datacenter project The datacenter consolidation project being undertaken by Hewlett-Packard will help it be more efficient but also informs the consulting advice it gives to client companies. June 20, 5:09 a.m. PDT Dell announces virtualization services, pact Dell has announced the availability of virtualization services that aim to help enterprises draw up and implement their virtualization plans -- and it'll help you choose from its own hardware and software portfolio too of course. June 1, 7:27 a.m. PDT VCs take startups on the road InfoWorld's Month of Enterprise Startups (or "MoES" for short) is one way to get exposed to fresh, innovative ideas that are offbeat -- a way to get IT staff thinking about different areas that they might not have got involved in without it. But MoES is not the only way. May 14, 3:00 a.m. PDT Arrest deals blow to Siemens' IT services division The arrest of a top-ranking Siemens official responsible for its IT services business will not affect daily operations at the unit, according to a company spokesman, but the publicity could hardly have come at a worse time. March 28, 5:12 a.m. PST Software, services to carry European IT Demand for software and IT services will continue to grow steadily in Europe this year, but sluggish performance in the telecommunications sector will dampen the reasons to celebrate, according to a forecast released Thursday ahead of the Cebit trade show. March 8, 9:14 a.m. PST Tech 101 for startups “It’s not the old guard in manufacturing anymore. Now there is a new guard” that understands technology and can digest the information and knowledge that advanced business applications offer to young, growing companies. March 6, 3:00 a.m. PST BT to buy services company INS for $196M U.K. telecommunications carrier BT Group plans to extend its enterprise services offering in the U.S. with the acquisition of International Network Services. February 1, 5:04 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 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 German government approves $1.6B to spur IT innovation German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called on politicians, business leaders, and researchers to cooperate more closely in helping the country secure a leading position in the global IT sector and pledged money to support collaborative efforts. December 19, 5:51 a.m. PST BT to help carriers build next-gen networks BT Group hopes to recycle some of its expertise from building a next-generation all-IP (Internet Protocol) network in the U.K. by offering consultancy services to network operators in other countries. December 6, 8:09 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 Dell buys IT services firm to ease Vista upgrades Dell has acquired a British IT services firm, with plans to offer consulting to large businesses as they upgrade to Microsoft's new Vista operating system. November 14, 8:33 a.m. PST IBM, Lehman create China venture fund IBM Corp. and investment bank Lehman Brothers Inc. have set up a US$180 million fund to invest in Chinese companies to help them transform themselves through the adoption of information technology and new business practices. October 30, 4:17 a.m. PST 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 IBM and Oracle team with i-flex on banking software Indian financial software company i-flex solutions, IBM, and Oracle will jointly market i-flex’s banking software to customers worldwide. October 11, 7:09 a.m. PDT IT's virtual asset economy The phrase “kid in a candy store” conjures up a dazzling dreamscape of treats and an immediate longing for everything that the kid sees. October 4, 3:00 a.m. PDT The ire of IT hiring My Sept. 18 “Higher Hiring” column ignited a firestorm in my inbox. A fair number of readers agreed that today’s IT management is looking primarily for techies with communications expertise, management chops, and business smarts — skills many old-school heads-down programmers lack. October 2, 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 IBM reaches out to startups, VCs IBM is making another move to strengthen ties with global IT startups and their venture capital backers, providing special access to the technical experts and products housed in IBM Innovation Centers. September 21, 7:13 a.m. PDT Making sense of the IT job market Here’s a paradox for you: The latest government stats indicate that the IT job market is positively sizzling right now. Unemployment hovers at a nearly imperceptible 3 percent, and employers everywhere report difficulties finding qualified workers to fill open spots. Yet every week I receive e-mails from frustrated, even angry, IT folks whose jobs were either eliminated or shipped overseas. Although they keep plugging away, they simply cannot find work. And these folks are not just a bunch of cranks; they’re IT pros with real skills and experience to match. September 18, 3:00 a.m. PDT Business strategy, meet execution I got an interesting teaser in the e-mail this week: “Study Suggests Nearly Half of All Leaders See a Disconnect Between Strategy and Execution.” I won’t say who sent it because they blew the execution: The so-called study wasn’t posted anywhere online, and when I called the number, they’d already left for the weekend. September 1, 3:00 a.m. PDT The upside to the death of locality Today, some 26 million U.S. workers telecommute, according to Hossein Eslambolchi, author of 2020 Vision: Business Transformation Through Technology Innovation. By 2010 that number will grow to 40 million. And if gas prices keep rising, the number of telecommuters might increase even more. August 1, 3:00 a.m. PDT Infosys turns 25, faces new challenges Infosys Technologies, India’s second largest outsourcer, is celebrating its 25 year anniversary in Mysore near Bangalore, where the company operates one of several services delivery facilities in the country. July 31, 6:05 a.m. PDT Product management bug is spreading Each week, I typically pick out some piece of research from an analyst firm, rake it over the coals, add a couple of wisecracks, and move on. This week I went looking for research on a subject I thought was really important to the future of IT, and I found nothing. July 7, 3:00 a.m. PDT Ether helps bloggers charge for consultations A new online service from Ingenio lets experts field queries from advise-seekers, manage appointments, and charge for their services. June 26, 5:38 a.m. PDT Software’s big shake-up Last week’s announcement that a graying and dignified-looking Bill Gates would relinquish his day-to-day role at Microsoft was the latest chapter in a major changing of the guard for the software industry. First came SAP’s Hasso Plattner, who’s still pulling strings as chairman of SAP’s supervisory board but is no longer the always-on CEO. Then came Sun’s Scott McNealy, handing over the reins none too soon for many industry observers. June 23, 3:00 a.m. PDT Bush veteran tapped as tech trade group president Phillip Bond, a former technology policy advisor in U.S. President George Bush's administration, will be the new president and chief executive officer of the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), a trade group actively involved in pushing tech issues in Washington. June 19, 11:40 a.m. PDT FedEx seeks innovation in IT overhaul From the outside, FedEx Corp. looks like a simple shipping company, relying on its orange and purple-painted airplanes to deliver 6 million packages around the world every day. June 14, 12:09 p.m. PDT IBM unveils R&D consulting practice IBM is set to launch new consulting services aimed at helping companies get the most from their R&D operations. June 14, 8:27 a.m. PDT Open source education Graham Glass wrote a blog entry this week that touched on two of my favorite themes: open source and education. In the middle of a project based on the red-hot Ruby on Rails platform, he took time out to explain how he found, and worked around, a Rails limitation. Digging down to the roots of the problem took six hours of investigation. Crafting the work-around took just six lines of code. June 7, 3:00 a.m. PDT IBM readies businesses for flu outbreak Your business may be prepared for a fire or an earthquake, but what happens if 40 percent of the company is out for weeks, sick with the flu? June 6, 6:54 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 Outsourcing vs. shared services There are two current trends in IT with diametrically opposed points of view that are worth looking at. The first is shared services, wherein the IT organization becomes the internal service provider to the rest of the company. The second is combined business process and IT outsourcing all done under one roof -- although, of course, that roof is somewhere other than at the company. May 30, 3:00 a.m. PDT Novell sells off consulting business Novell this week sold its stake in Celerant Consulting for $77 million to Celerant managers and U.K.-based investments group Caledonia Investments. May 26, 9:13 a.m. PDT IT careers: It’s not just about the title One of the bigger barriers companies face when developing IT professionals is tradition -- the one that says employees have to climb a career ladder. Employees steeped in this tradition resist assignments that don’t move them to the next rung. It also makes employers wary of employees who don’t progress to the next rung on a regular basis. 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 Are your software services compliant? In case you haven’t noticed, just about every part of the IT infrastructure must comply with some regulation or other. April 25, 3:00 a.m. PDT Is extreme outsourcing and consolidation worth it? Last week, Accenture signed a seven-year applications outsourcing deal with Unilever to run all of Unilever’s application development, implementation, and support. Unilever believes it can save approximately $700,000 in the first year. April 18, 3:00 a.m. PDT Coping with the compliance headache More and more, business is being driven through regulation. Multiple regulations, from Sarbanes-Oxley to HIPAA and beyond, will have a big impact on cost but will do nothing for the revenue side. The question becomes how to minimize the impact on business operations. April 11, 3:00 a.m. PDT Unisys sells stake in Japanese unit, begins layoffs Unisys has sold most of its stake in its Japanese affiliate, Nihon Unisys, and will use the proceeds to fund the first phase of a move to lay off around 3,600 employees worldwide, the company said in a statement. March 21, 4:19 a.m. PST Homeland Security probes L-1 visa abuses In the course of my research for a column on misuse of the L-1A and L-1B visa program for temporary workers in the United States, I was alerted to the Inspector General’s report published in January of this year by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), titled “Review of Vulnerabilities and Potential Abuses of the L-1 Visa Program." March 21, 3:00 a.m. PST IBM to open 40 more innovation centers IBM Corp. plans to open 40 more Innovation Centers around the world this year, upping its annual investment in the centers to US$250 million, the company said Monday. March 14, 4:32 a.m. PST Deciphering IT corporate-speak I was senior IT manager at a large health-care organization when the vice president of applications management asked me to create a centralized quality assurance department. At that point, our IT organization consisted of close to 1,500 staffers scattered over eight states, but quality assurance was still being done on a project-by-project basis. Centralizing this operation would bring us badly needed consistency, and (I hoped) would improve customer satisfaction. February 28, 3:00 a.m. PST IT's input on outsourcing Few words strike fear into the hearts of IT pros like "outsourcing" and its closely related foreign cousin, "offshoring." For many, the "O" words are simply euphemisms for layoffs, an all-too-common occurrence. Worse, the corporate appetite for outsourcing continues to grow. February 27, 3:00 a.m. PST IT education centers open in Belfast and Prague Several hardware and software vendors announced Thursday the opening of two educational centers dedicated to helping teachers integrate new technology into their lessons. February 23, 4:32 a.m. PST Wall Street Beat: Strong earnings point to growth Strong financial results from Dell and Hewlett-Packard, a shakeup at France Telecom SA, and good news from the retail sector put technology investors in an upbeat mood this week, and set the stage for some high expectations from the technology sector -- or at least parts of it -- for the quarter ending in March. February 16, 4:46 p.m. PST Hitachi to hire 2,000 consultants worldwide Hitachi plans to add over 2,000 consultants around the world in a move to grow its business and IT consulting operations, the Japanese company announced Tuesday. February 7, 4:55 a.m. PST Mapping IT meltdowns Every few months, I exchange e-mail with a contact of mine, a guy with a fairly high-level IT job in the government. Actually, I don't really exchange e-mail with him. Because he works for a particularly secretive branch of the government, he has never given me his e-mail address. So I send a note to his assistant, who eventually e-mails his boss's response back to me in government time -- somewhere between immediately and never. The reply e-mails are based, presumably, on whatever my .gov guy has told his assistant. Occasionally, though, the whole process feels like a high-tech version of the game "telephone," with exquisite opportunities for misunderstanding built right in. January 30, 3:00 a.m. PST The IT worst case scenario survival guide You’re lost in the IT wilderness, starved for funding and thirsting for recognition. As the infrastructure sinks slowly under your feet, alligators crawl out of their corner offices to snap at your heels and marketing weasels begin gnawing at your flesh ... January 30, 3:00 a.m. PST Update: Microsoft has record Q2, misses revenue estimates Microsoft Corp. on Thursday reported the highest quarterly revenue in company history for its fiscal 2006 second quarter on the strength of its Windows OS and a series of highly anticipated product releases. Still, the company fell slightly shy of analysts' revenue expectations. January 26, 5:00 p.m. PST CDC pulls Onyx bid, buys hosted SCM developer Hong Kong software maker CDC Corp. is withdrawing its bid for a majority stake in CRM (customer relationship management) software developer Onyx Software Corp., ending the specter of a drawn-out struggle for control of Onyx. January 20, 1:15 p.m. PST Wall Street Beat: Earnings bring mixed results Earnings season blew in with a vengeance this week, with disappointing fourth-quarter results from industry bellwethers Intel Corp. and IBM Corp. offset by better-than-expected reports from other vendors. January 19, 4:20 p.m. PST SAP CEO: German IT sector needs special treatment Globalization is a good thing and it's here to stay, according to Henning Kagermann, chief executive officer of SAP. But that doesn't stop him from asking for special treatment for Germany's high-tech companies, to help them compete in world markets. High-tech companies need flexible working laws and lower non-wage labor costs, he said in a speech delivered at the German government-sponsored Informatikjahr IT conference earlier this week. January 19, 5:52 a.m. PST 3Com CEO Claflin headed for retirement 3Com Corp. President and Chief Executive Officer Bruce Claflin will retire as soon as the networking technology vendor finds a replacement for him, the Marlborough, Massachusetts, company said Wednesday. January 11, 5:01 p.m. PST The Celtic Tiger roars again The Celtic Tiger may be ready to roar again. Ireland earned the nickname when its economy underwent a dramatic boom during the late 1990s, fueled largely by foreign investments from high-tech companies. Now things appear to be booming once more. January 5, 7:15 a.m. PST HP and Blackstone may bid for CSC, report says Hewlett-Packard (HP) and private equity firm Blackstone Group are reportedly considering bidding for Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC), the second sizable buyout of an outsourcing company said to be in the works this week. January 5, 5:05 a.m. PST A channel play for SaaS in 2006 Microsoft’s competitors are ridiculing what they claim is Redmond’s half-hearted entry into the world of SaaS (software as a service) with CRM 3.0. In numerous conversations I’ve been told, “It shouldn’t even be called SaaS. They’re not even hosting it. They are just reselling their solution to VARs.” January 3, 3:00 a.m. PST Why IT needs strong leaders Dispatch from Pearlz Cybercafe, Fredericksburg, Texas -- Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, the man credited with winning the Pacific Theater for the United States during World War II, was born in this dusty town and, according to the local museum, was nothing if not a great leader. He wasn't an in-your-face Patton or a MacArthur type -- and judging from the results, he didn't need to be. December 2, 3:00 a.m. PST No. 6: Winding up your Web servers Is there really that much you can do to tune a Web server and maximize performance? In fact, there is -- mainly by adjusting a handful of critical settings to match the production traffic you expect. November 28, 3:00 a.m. PST Microsoft and Satyam unite to tackle Chinese market Microsoft China and Satyam Computer Services have agreed to work together in Greater China to tap what they hope will be growing demand for complex IT systems from large businesses in the region, they announced Thursday. November 10, 5:23 a.m. PST Gartner: IT groups shrinking, changing The demand for IT specialists is decreasing and the size of IT departments is shrinking significantly, according to new research presented by Gartner at the Gartner ITxpo conference in Cannes, France, on Wednesday. November 9, 7:58 a.m. PST Gartner: IT groups shrinking, changing The demand for IT specialists is decreasing and the size of IT departments is shrinking significantly, according to new research presented by Gartner Inc. at the Gartner ITxpo conference in Cannes, France, on Wednesday. November 9, 7:18 a.m. PST The H-1B swindle It appears there is hard evidence to prove that employers are using the H-1B visa program to hire cheap labor; that is, to pay lower wages than the national average for programming jobs. October 25, 3:00 a.m. PDT IBM launches workforce consulting services IBM Wednesday launched a new consulting service designed to help businesses plan for critical changes in their workforces as more of their most highly skilled baby boomer workers retire -- taking their knowledge with them. September 28, 9:33 a.m. PDT HP to help mobile operators launch new services Hewlett-Packard on Tuesday announced a new business, dubbed the Services Marketplace, aimed at helping telecommunications operators adopt new, innovative services for their users. September 27, 7:04 a.m. PDT Thanks for the help -- now you're fired I was a project manager at a small software development house that was trying to promote a lucrative technology-insertion contract with a major electronics company. We had established a good relationship with two of the electronics company’s engineers, whom I’ll call “Molly” and “Sam,” and their manager, “Bernie.” Bernie’s group was scheduled to demonstrate a prototype of a new product at a national trade show that was only one week out. The hardware was in good shape, but the software was all over the floor. Panic was in the air. September 27, 4:00 a.m. PDT HP to end sponsorship of F1 racing team Less than a week after Hewlett-Packard announced plans to lay off 5,900 workers in Europe, the company has decided to end its sponsorship of the BMW Williams Formula One car racing team. September 14, 7:11 a.m. PDT Companies launch networked software research initiative Thirteen software and telecommunications companies are launching a consortium to work together to develop new software and services based on open standards. September 6, 7:22 a.m. PDT The myth of job security I’ve come to realize that I’m an outlier in terms of job stability. In my 28-year career I’ve had only three jobs: 11 years with Arthur Andersen, 11 years with Oracle, and seven years with my current company. This seems quite normal to me. My father also had three jobs in his whole career, including 20 years with Sears. My grandfather retired after 40 odd years for Nashua Corporation, a cardboard and paper manufacturer in New Hampshire. Commit your career to your company and it’ll take care of you for life. Right? September 6, 4:00 a.m. PDT Dirty words, take II My column "IT's Seven Dirty Words" -- a subjective list of terms that shouldn't be repeated in polite IT company -- generated piles of e-mail from readers who were quick to add a few choice words of their own. In the interest of sharing, let me reproduce a few of their suggestions. September 5, 4:00 a.m. PDT Nokia-backed venture fund targets China BlueRun Ventures, a U.S. venture capital firm that counts Nokia among its financial backers, has opened a Shanghai office to identify investment opportunities in Chinese technology companies, it said Tuesday. August 31, 4:35 a.m. PDT Are U.S. workers second-string IT hires? Why is the Department of Labor refusing to post on its Web site a database of more than 50,000 job openings — many for IT workers — for 2006? Are they precluded by law to do so, as a DOL spokesperson claims? August 23, 4:00 a.m. PDT Meet IT's new managers Mike Blake didn't start out as a geek. August 22, 4:00 a.m. PDT Decoding analyst-speak How many industry analysts does it take to change a light bulb? We’ll get back to you on that. But first, wouldn’t you like to purchase our Illumination Industry Survey, which predicts that yearly spending on light bulbs will reach $3.7 trillion by 2010? August 22, 4:00 a.m. PDT CIOs must adapt to today's business realities As companies increasingly seek employees who can straddle the line between business and IT, even the roles of traditional CIO and CTO positions are changing. In the past, a CIO could punch his or her ticket by spending a certain number of years in application development, a few years overseeing infrastructure, another few managing outsourcing, and so on, says Paul Groce, a partner at Christian & Timbers, an executive recruiter. Today, companies are looking for techies who can use IT to help them reinvent their businesses. August 22, 4:00 a.m. PDT IT's seven dirty words Remember the George Carlin routine “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television”? (No, I’m not going to print them here; if you’re really curious, Google ’em.) I got to thinking the other day that IT has its own set of dirty words. Try saying any one of these in polite IT company, and someone will hand you a bar of soap to wash your mouth out. My filthy seven: August 15, 5:00 a.m. PDT Farewell, CTO Connection If you haven’t checked out this week’s columns yet, let me be the one to break the bad news: Chad Dickerson is hanging up his InfoWorld CTO spurs and heading off to Yahoo, where he’ll be toiling away in the brave new world of search. August 8, 5:00 a.m. PDT Open source licensing offers many choices At last count, the Open Source Initiative (OSI) recognized nearly 60 different open source licenses. If you just want to install and use a packaged application, the license under which it was released shouldn't matter much. But it's particularly important to pay attention to licensing terms if you want to modify the code or use it in your own projects. August 8, 5:00 a.m. PDT CEOs are faking it, Stanford professor says Your company's chief executive might be a pretender, and that may be a good thing, according to Stanford University Professor of Management Science and Engineering Robert Sutton. July 22, 5:53 a.m. PDT IBM services head leaves amid reorganization IBM is reorganizing its Global Services business, replacing John Joyce as the group's head with a pair of executives. July 19, 9:35 a.m. PDT Tommorow's IT workers As an executive at a firm that provides IT consulting services to companies around the globe, I often think about the challenges the next generation of IT workers will face. This field is hugely complex and getting more so by the year. It already encompasses dozens of subspecialties, each of which may take years of study and practice to master. July 15, 5:00 a.m. PDT Ex Secretary of State Colin Powell tries the VC world Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has a new role as a venture capitalist, joining Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) as a strategic limited partner, the venture capital firm announced Wednesday. July 13, 8:44 a.m. PDT How to find the right advice Gartner is a prominent research company that offers opinions based on market trends and its own investigations. The bulk of Gartner’s business, according to Martin Reynolds, Gartner vice president and fellow, is the advice that it gives its clients as to which vendors and strategies they should consider. July 12, 5:00 a.m. PDT Wall Street Beat: Nasdaq bounces back after bombings Terrorist attacks on the London Underground Thursday caused a momentary dip in U.S. stocks, though the market broadly recovered by the end of the day. The attacks, however, gave one more reason for traders in IT companies to be cautious, as the market heads into another earnings season. July 7, 2:11 p.m. PDT Seven keys to job security Wondering how to prevent your job from being downsized, marginalized, or outsourced? There’s no magic formula, but these strategies will help make you more valuable. To put it in glossy-magazine terms, “Old and Busted” is routine work and technology that is not critical to business strategy. “The New Hotness” is the ability to manage a coherent set of business processes and services that contribute materially to the company’s efficiency or competitive edge. July 4, 5:00 a.m. PDT Microsoft's Web site does have compliance covered Recently, a fellow IT geek was complaining about Microsoft's lack of information regarding the compliance bogeyman. His face flushed, he practically spit the last drops of his beer across the table at me, snapping "Where is Microsoft's Sarb-Ox [Sarbanes-Oxley] compliance guide? You can't find anything on their site." June 23, 5:00 a.m. PDT IBM lands $1.6B services contract with NiSource Energy supplier NiSource said Tuesday it has signed a 10-year agreement with IBM to outsource a number of IT support functions, a deal IBM estimated will be worth $1.6 billion in service fees over the life of the contract. June 21, 8:24 a.m. PDT Microsoft catches them young in India Microsoft has opened an IT academy in the southern Indian state of Karnataka where it will provide IT training for school teachers from across the state, it announced Friday. June 17, 5:09 a.m. PDT Secrets of a great off-site retreat It’s not every day that you find yourself in a hastily assembled platoon of your IT colleagues, crouched behind a barrel with your finger resting nervously on the trigger of your gun, hoping the enemy doesn’t shoot you from behind while you’re providing cover fire for your director of engineering as he valiantly initiates a full frontal assault on the enemy compound. May 31, 5:00 a.m. PDT Sapient makes India a global services hub BANGALORE, INDIA -- Sapient has moved its operations in Bangalore, India, to a larger facility and is increasing its staff in the country, the company said Wednesday. May 25, 5:18 a.m. PDT Dire forecast for IT jobs A government report due out later this year will offer an analysis of the characteristics of the kind of IT work that is less likely to go offshore. May 17, 5:00 a.m. PDT Hear it now When I look back on rolling my first code into production, I can’t remember a line of code I wrote, but I recall the conversations with the mentor who gave me the IT bug. May 10, 5:00 a.m. PDT The great business process handoff During the past 15 years, standards such as Java, Windows, and TCP/IP have made it much easier to outsource various aspects of IT, spawning a huge IT outsourcing industry. But that trend may pale in comparison to the next outsourcing wave: BPO (business-process outsourcing). May 9, 5:00 a.m. PDT > Business |
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