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Pundits on parade: What’s next in tech You’ve heard of Christmas in July, that classic advertising gimmick designed to lure shoppers into stores despite the oppressive heat and humidity. We’ll, we’ve got New Year’s in August, which invites you to stay indoors and read “The next big things in IT” -- 15 predictions about the future of technology. Diagnosing health care IT A few weeks ago I stirred up a heap of contention with my column “RIP, electronic medical records?” about the battle at Kaiser Permanente over its pioneering health care digitization megaproject. The comments posted on the column by readers were like an instant replay of the finger pointing and armchair quarterbacking that’s apparently been going on inside that organization -- an interesting skirmish that showed the passion flaring on all sides of this issue.  June 14, 3:00 a.m. PDT More IT war stories Off the Record, the real-world slice of life that graces the last page of InfoWorld, is one of our most popular columns. I know this from reader surveys and from all the e-mail I receive about it. As reader Roland Sickenberger put it recently, “It’s my favorite part of the magazine, kind of like a ‘Dilbert come to life’ thing.” March 5, 3:00 a.m. PST Women in technology: A call to action A quick scan of almost any IT department -- from the trenches to the corner office -- confirms it: Women who embrace technology as a lifelong career remain a rare breed. To be sure, opportunity for women in technology has advanced in the past few decades, as have education initiatives aimed at leveling the playing field, but for every woman rising to prominence or embarking on a profession in IT, there seems to be another opting out of her career in technology. January 29, 3:03 a.m. PST Back to school: Getting girls into IT Despite the success of various education initiatives in the past several years, there’s little doubt that the shortage of women in technology begins on the playground. As such, many industry leaders and experts believe the long-term solution to the gender imbalance in IT lies in women technologists going back to school -- way back, to high schools and even elementary schools to mentor young girls, who too often give up on math and science at an early age. January 29, 3:02 a.m. PST Activism provides competitive advantage for IT Encountering another woman working in technology was a rare event for me when I started out in IT many years ago. In the years since, women have made significant strides, sometimes against great odds, proving their mettle as both tech execs and engineers. January 29, 3:01 a.m. PST Gender crisis in IT You don’t need a degree in statistics to recognize that IT is a men’s club. Just walk the floor of any tech conference or, in all likelihood, your own office — XY chromosomes everywhere you look. January 29, 3:00 a.m. PST Agile scripting: Bigger bang for app-dev bucks Enterprises will spend too much this year creating monolithic apps — the sort of server-side efforts that involve formal requirements and tie up dozens (or hundreds) of architects, coders, and testers. Most would be better off using scripting languages, Web services, and SOA to weave together browser-based apps that leverage existing assets. January 8, 3:00 a.m. PST Technology of the Gods January is named after Janus, the two-faced Roman deity of beginnings and endings, who reportedly was able to look both forward and back. So for our Jan. 1 issue, we pay homage to the mythological immortal with our seventh annual Technology of the Year Awards, an analysis of where IT has been and where it’s going in 2007. January 1, 3:00 a.m. PST Why many software projects fail Several years ago, I was hired as IT manager at the convention center of a well-known Gulf Coast metropolis. There was plenty of action, with one big show after another. For the first few weeks, my job revolved around repairing recalcitrant PCs, riding herd on the Exchange server, and making sure the wireless network was operational so conventioneers could get their e-mail and exchange files. December 19, 3:00 a.m. PST Review of reviews It’s coming up on closing time for 2006. All around us, everyone is going into holiday mode. Not to be curmudgeonly contrarians, InfoWorld will be following suit, taking a one-week break before returning on Jan. 1 with our first print issue of the year. (It’s really only a semi-hiatus; InfoWorld.com will continue to perk over the holidays with a slightly reduced slate of stories.) December 18, 3:00 a.m. PST XQuery and the power of learning by example If you set out to explore XQuery, the XML query language, you’ll soon encounter a collection of examples, or use-cases, that show how XQuery can query and transform XML data. These scenarios are elaborated in a W3C document that presents a sample data set — about books, authors, prices, and reviews — and enumerates a set of queries against that data. For each query, there’s a description (“List names of users who have placed multiple bids of at least $100 each”), a solution written in XQuery code, and an expected XML output. November 15, 3:00 a.m. PST Redefining innovation Innovative ideas are a dime a dozen, according to Jim Andrew, senior partner at big-time consultancy BCG. In fact, at most companies, coming up with great concepts for a product, service, or process isn’t even an issue. But turning those ideas into money … ah, there’s the rub. October 30, 3:00 a.m. PST Cast your vote for IT's future Dear reader: Ask not what IT can do for you, ask what you can do for IT. With the crucial midterm congressional elections just a couple of weeks away (not to mention a bevy of state and local contests), it’s time to issue my first annual From the Analysts political endorsements. October 20, 3:00 a.m. PDT Does “built to last” apply to IT? Over the weekend, I bought an amazing antique chair: a fancy wooden office swivel chair in practically mint condition, including all its original cast-iron hardware. Although probably made between 1900 and 1915 (the patent date is 1897), it’s remarkably modern, with fully adjustable height, tilt, and back support, like the best Aeron chairs of today (well, its wooden surfaces are a tad stiffer). With any luck, it will last another 100 years and be just as functional. August 11, 3:00 a.m. PDT Don't upgrade Web software, just keep improving it When I logged in to my bank’s online system to pay some bills last night, I was greeted with the following message: “Bill payment system upgrade completed.” May 31, 3:00 a.m. PDT Tech startups to watch Startups are back! or at least, startup fever is back. Scan the latest numbers from PricewaterhouseCoopers and you won’t find any hockey sticks -- the level of investment in enterprise-related technology startups has actually remained fairly flat, hovering between $1.5 and $2.3 billion per quarter from 2003 through 2005. May 15, 3:00 a.m. PDT Akimbi virtualizes the application test bench In the average datacenter, a lot of IT resources are spent on preproduction application testing. Servers, networks, databases, and applications must all be deployed, followed by a series of installs and uninstalls for various versions of the application environment being put through its paces. The more homegrown applications you create, the more staff hours you burn on this repetitive but crucial work. “It’s all quite churny,” says James Phillips, CEO of Akimbi. May 15, 3:00 a.m. PDT A casting call for my screencasting experiment I’d like to invite some of you to join me in a journalistic experiment. As you know if you’ve been following my work through the years, I preach what I practice. My analytical perspectives flow from my own hands-on work. However, my experience is necessarily limited to certain styles: Web programming, lightweight integration, semistructured data, collaboration. May 10, 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 Microsoft pushes into health care Microsoft has initiated a new program to push its software into the health-care industry, the company announced at the World Health Care Congress, which begins Monday in Washington, D.C. April 17, 8:26 a.m. PDT Frustration drove Owens Forest Products to open source The IT group at Owens Forest Products went the traditional route of many smaller companies: a custom ERP system using tools such as Microsoft SQL Server, ASP.Net, and Business Objects’ Crystal Reports. April 3, 3:00 a.m. PDT Bringing software development back in-house I’ve written so many columns about offshore outsourcing that I never thought I’d do another. Then I met Mike Fields, the new CEO at CRM vendor Kana Software, and I changed my mind. This time I want to talk about what Fields calls “backshoring.” February 7, 3:00 a.m. PST SAP steps into the software-as-a-service arena It’s as momentous as when the Union Pacific met the Central Pacific and the final, golden, spike was driven at Promontory Summit, Utah, completing the transcontinental railroad -- not that in high tech anyone would notice an event as significant. I can’t even predict for you all the innovations that will be generated from the recent developments, but I will give you my thoughts. January 31, 3:00 a.m. PST Top technologies of the year Welcome to our first issue of the year. For those of you who took a break, re-entry into the heady universe of work may be a bit discombobulating. Fortunately, last Saturday, the world’s ever-considerate timekeepers saw fit to give us an extra sliver of time -- a leap second-- to prep for the new year. And now, with the pop of the cork (or was that the buzz of a pager?), we’re ready to herald 2006, a potential banner year for the enterprise. January 2, 3:00 a.m. PST Do-it-yourself software services? If you’re a regular reader of my column, you know that I’ve been looking closely at the pluses and minuses of the SaaS (software as a service) model recently. SaaS solutions let you easily deploy standard functionality across a wide spectrum of users cheaply, as opposed to best-of-breed, on-premises applications, which cost more but offer product and competitive differentiation. December 13, 3:00 a.m. PST Toward swappable Web services Walt Johnson is an IT planner at California Independent System Operator (CalISO), the not-for-profit operator of the state’s wholesale power grid. I met him at InfoWorld’s SOA Executive Forum last week, where he described CalISO’s transition to service-oriented architecture. November 16, 3:00 a.m. PST British American Tobacco builds SOA one step at a time For British American Tobacco (BAT), SOA success came early. The challenge now lies in determining how quickly SOA should be scaled across the enterprise, and for which functions. November 7, 3:00 a.m. PST Making SOA work Implementing SOA (service-oriented architecture) is one of the most daunting projects that an enterprise IT organization can undertake. Service orientation represents a whole new way of thinking and doing, one that changes the way developers operate and interact with the business. November 7, 3:00 a.m. PST Toolkits for user innovation Technology trends obey certain predictable laws, among them that every action produces an equal and opposite reaction. So the recent backlash directed at AJAX and other "Web 2.0" technologies was no surprise. November 2, 3:00 a.m. PST Borland buys IT governance technology for ALM Shoring up IT management and governance capabilities in its ALM (application lifecycle management) platform, Borland Software on Monday is set to announce its acquisition of software vendor Legadero and its Tempo technology. October 17, 5:00 a.m. PDT The importance of interaction data The twin themes of this year's Accelerating Change conference were AI (artificial intelligence) and IA (intelligence amplification). On the AI track, people talked about making systems smarter. On the IA track, people talked about harnessing collective human intelligence. The tension between the two groups struck some sparks. October 12, 3:00 a.m. PDT SAP promotes ESA ecosystem Customers, software developers and other partners attending SAP AG's TechEd workshop in Vienna are being urged to embrace the company's new Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA), which has moved out of the lab and into the enterprise. September 21, 8:41 a.m. PDT Sprint rationalizes its infrastructure with SOA As far back as four years ago, Sprint’s IT staff was already headed toward SOA (service-oriented architecture). They just didn’t know it yet. September 12, 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 Memory Firewall monitors apps at run time When it comes to foiling hackers, Saman Amarasinghe views the world in stark terms. August 1, 5:00 a.m. PDT Mercury looks to lighten compliance load Promising to lighten IT’s heavy and ongoing burden to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulations, Mercury Interactive on Monday issued IT Governance Center 6.0, which automates the process of managing IT changes driven by compliance mandates. May 2, 5:00 a.m. PDT Anatomy of an IT disaster: How the FBI blew it Some FBI agents ruefully refer to the trilogy project, a massive initiative to modernize the FBI's aging technology infrastructure, as the "Tragedy" project. It certainly has all the earmarks of tragedy: the best intentions, catastrophic miscommunication, staggering waste. March 21, 6:00 a.m. PST Needs-based architectures Say goodbye to one-size-fits-all architectures -- the old days of just giving users their apportioned slice of “the system” are long gone. As financial pressures force IT departments to act more like internal service businesses, architectures are by necessity becoming more responsive to the fast-changing needs and service-level requirements of multiple segments of users. March 11, 3:00 p.m. PST Stellent ramps up metadata management Stellent on Tuesday rolled out a new version of its Universal Content Management platform along with an update to its Stellent Sarbanes-Oxley Solution. February 1, 3:06 p.m. PST The perils of customization The strong response to my recent column about enterprise IT customization and the MTV show Pimp My Ride suggests that pop culture might actually be educational in the right context. Reading through the feedback, I suspect that the yearning for customization in the MTV show might simply be a reflection of larger human tendencies that need to be monitored. Crazy customizations might be fun to watch on television, but most readers seem to agree that when it comes to IT, it’s best to stick with a nice, boring set of wheels. January 14, 3:00 p.m. PST Open source documentation On Christmas day, after the potlatch subsided, I headed out for a run. When I flicked on my MP3 player, however, I heard ... nothing. Glancing down at the display of my Creative Nomad MuVo TX I saw an unwelcome message: "File system error." Grrr. January 7, 3:00 p.m. PST ECM wares seize control of records creation, management Under the shadow of government regulations IT must comply with, a host of ECM (enterprise content management) vendors are blending previously stand-alone RM (records management) capabilities into their CM and compliance recipes. August 23, 6:00 a.m. PDT Rally racing into managing developers Rally Software Development on Thursday will introduce Rally Release 1, a Web-based service for managing software development projects based on “agile” programming methodologies. June 23, 4:25 p.m. PDT Serena buys requirements management technology Application lifecycle and change management vendor Serena Software on Monday will announce the acquisition of Integrated Chipware’s RTM (Requirements & Traceability Management) technology for approximately $3 million. June 21, 4:58 a.m. PDT COO Clarke maps out CA's development priorities LAS VEGAS -- Computer Associates International Inc.'s (CA) sales have been flat for the past few years, a trend the company hopes to change with a renewed commitment to its channel business and a handful of targeted investments in technology development, Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke said Tuesday in a meeting with analysts at CA World. May 27, 6:53 p.m. PDT Startup ITM aims to help IT manage its own business A startup founded by former IT executives Monday announced a set of software packages that aim to give CIOs (chief information officers) management tools on a par with those long available for finance and other corporate functions. May 24, 4:03 p.m. PDT IBM to unveil next version of WebSphere Commerce At the end of April WebSphere Commerce, IBM will formally announce Version 5.6, an upgrade to its e-commerce platform that will include a new feature called Starter Stores. Starter Stores is a collection of business processes configured to address different business requirements for different customer segments such as b-to-b, b-to-c, and partner and channel management. April 8, 1:52 p.m. PDT > Application development > Applications |
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