Blog Archive

HP's Hurd, IBM's Palmisano Agree: Cloud Is Lousy Name

Nov 5, 2009 02:41 PM
Posted by Bob Evans

Sure, Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd and IBM CEO Sam Palmisano spit nails at each other over most things, but on this they agree: while cloud computing has tremendous potential as a technological approach, the term itself is a lousy name. We're with you, guys, but please: whatever the new name is, no more three-letter acronyms, okay?

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Is Microsoft Bing Fake Search?

Nov 4, 2009 12:08 PM
Posted by Bob Evans

Discussing Microsoft's new price cuts for cloud apps, my colleague Mary Hayes Weier reported Microsoft VP Ron Markezich said he's seen no evidence that Zoho or others offering "fake Office capabilities" can match Microsoft Office. Counterpunching, Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu asks if that means Bing is fake search"?

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IBM Taps SAP For Global Single-Instance Project

Nov 3, 2009 12:49 PM
Posted by Bob Evans

IBM is consolidating its extensive global collection of individual SAP applications and versions into a single global instance that will deliver greater resilience and flexibility to IBM's operations in 170 countries around the world, revealed IBM CIO Pat Toole in an interview yesterday.

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IBM Says Business Analytics Will Outpace ERP Plus CRM

Nov 1, 2009 07:39 PM
Posted by Bob Evans

Vowing to continue acquiring vendors of analytics and BI software, the head of IBM's business analytics group said he believes "information-driven transformation" will become bigger and more important than the ERP and CRM categories combined.

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IBM And HP Seeking $700M Microsoft Outsourcing Deal

Oct 30, 2009 09:12 AM
Posted by Bob Evans

IBM and Hewlett-Packard are among the finalists for a $700 million outsourcing contract from Microsoft to manage huge portions of its global IT infrastructure, according to a media report from India.

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Confirmed: Significant Percentage of IT Spend, "No ROI"

Oct 30, 2009 08:53 AM
Posted by Jonathan Feldman

What could you do if you had, say, 25% of your budget freed up to use for innovation instead of maintenance? I'm asking because in our recent research about end user devices, we learned that two thirds of a research population of 558 IT professionals spend anywhere from 11% to over 40% on end user device replacement. And, what's the ROI? Most do ...

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IBM Takes $150M From Sun And HP Accounts In Q3

Oct 29, 2009 11:30 AM
Posted by Bob Evans

IBM says its Migration Factory service had a busy third quarter as it displaced Sun and Hewlett-Packard Unix servers and storage systems for 235 separate customers, accounting for $150 million in revenue for IBM. For the first nine months of the year, IBM said, the corresponding revenue total is $400 million.

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Oracle Fading In Rear-View Mirror, Says SAP CEO

Oct 28, 2009 06:00 PM
Posted by Bob Evans

Trying to apply some sort of favorable spin to SAP's disappointing quarterly results, CEO Leo Apotheker implied that while things at SAP aren't exactly booming, the situation at Oracle is even worse.

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EMC Adding Big Data Center Plus 400 Jobs: A Cloud Hub?

Oct 27, 2009 09:46 AM
Posted by Bob Evans

Five weeks ago, EMC said it would add 400 jobs in Research Triangle Park over five years. Three weeks ago, it announced its new Atmos Online Compute Service. And yesterday it bought a 450,000 square-foot warehouse in RTP to serve as a data center and R&D facility. If we triangulate in the Triangle, could that mean that mean EMC will base its new At ...

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Fidelity Sees Surge In Mobile From Gen X And Y Customers

Oct 26, 2009 01:21 PM
Posted by Bob Evans

A search for "chief wireless officer" shows it's a very exclusive club. One name that'll come up is Fidelity Investments' chief wireless officer Joseph Ferra, whose 10-year advocacy for mobile IT has driven huge growth for Fidelity Anywhere, particularly among Gen X and Gen Y clients.

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Twitter, Facebook Waste $2B Annually In U.K. Economy

Oct 26, 2009 09:45 AM
Posted by Bob Evans

Calling the personal use of social media by businesspeople during the workday "a productivity black hole," a British IT services company said more than half of the 1,460 surveyed employees said they spend up to 40 minutes per week on such sites. I'd say that while those numbers might be accurate, the conclusion is astoundingly shallow.

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The Top 10 Offshore Nations In The World

Oct 22, 2009 08:45 PM
Posted by Bob Evans

Which countries around the world are the best choices for your offshoring projects? This study by respected outsourcing/offshoring consultancy Tholons includes some nations that are obvious (India) but also some that are unexpected: will the neighbors of the U.S. to the north and the south both make the list?

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SAP Salvages Maintenance Contract With Siemens

Oct 21, 2009 05:08 PM
Posted by Mary Hayes Weier

When software vendors issue a press release on a deal, it's usually for a new customer win. But after some scuttlebutt last month about souring negotiations between SAP and marquee customer Siemens, SAP decided to put out a different type of release Wednesday: Siemens has renewed its maintenance contract with SAP.

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The Top 8 Outsourcing Cities In The World

Oct 21, 2009 09:03 AM
Posted by Bob Evans

While there's been a lot of talk recently about fundamental upheavals in the global outsourcing industry, this year's list of the top 8 outsourcing cities in the world remains the same as last year's, according to a joint study by experts Tholons and Global Services.

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Gartner's Tepid IT Spending Forecast

Oct 20, 2009 05:57 PM
Posted by Chris Murphy

Gartner predicts a 3.3% increase in IT spending next year, after plunging in 2009. And more than half of CIOs likely will see no increase, or a cut.

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EMC Tops IBM In Huge Deal For Storage

Oct 19, 2009 09:14 PM
Posted by Bob Evans

One of Australia's largest hosting providers has bypassed incumbent storage provider IBM and instead picked EMC to deliver 261 terabytes of of storage. The customer's CTO said big factors were EMC's tight three-way alliance with Cisco and VMware and its willingness to extend service coverage from three years to four.

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HCL Ties Its Pay To Boeing 787 Sales

Oct 16, 2009 05:48 PM
Posted by Chris Murphy

I just spoke with HCL America President Shami Khorana, who shared some examples of how the company’s tying outsourcing pay to client business results--including the sale of Boeing 787s.

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For You, iPhone, Anything

Oct 15, 2009 06:40 PM
Posted by Chris Murphy

Here’s how one CIO bent--well, blew up--the company’s smartphone policy to let the iPhone in the door.

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Oracle Not Telling The Truth About WebSphere, IBM Says

Oct 15, 2009 11:28 AM
Posted by Bob Evans

Continuing to use its massive Oracle World stage as a platform from which to jab at its competitors, Oracle has been touting benchmark results that show the superiority of its middleware over IBM's. But IBM has shot back, claiming Oracle unfairly rigged the results, used antiquated figures, and generally pumped out a lot of BS to mislead customers.

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CIO TV

National Semiconductor Company takes the top spot on the InformationWeek 500 list of the nation’s business-technology innovators. ; 2008 InformationWeek 500 winner; collaboration; InformationWeek500 conference; innovation; National Semiconductor; product development; Techweb TV; Ulrich Seif; virtual inventory; Fritz Nelson spoke with Kent Kushar, the CIO of E&J Gallo Winery about what it takes to be the best and what qualities tomorrow's CIO should possess.; CIO's Uncensored; Gallo Winery; Kent Kushar; TechWeb; Tomorrow's CIO; One of the industry's leading CIOs, Ralph Szygenda, talks about what it takes to be a CIO and what tomorrow's CIO will have to do to prepare.; CIOs; General Motors; Informationweek; Ralph Sygenda; TechWeb; Techweb TV; Tomorrow's CIO; Fritz Nelson spoke with Dan Drawbaugh, last year's InformationWeek Chief of the Year, about what qualities tomorrow's CIO should possess. Dan is the CIO of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.; CIO's Uncensored; Dan Drawbaugh; Techweb TV; Tomorrow's CIO; CIOs from State of Michigan and National City Corporation Talk About the Innovative Projects their Teams Have Been Executing On, Including Core System Replacement and Business Portals; CIO Innovation; CIO Symposium; CIOs; Informationweek; MIT; TechWeb; Techweb TV; Scott offers his perspective on software innovation, the role of analytics in Disney's business, and more.; analytics; career; CIO; customer relationships; digitization; innovation; software; software as a service; Carter says the notion that innovation is dead is "preposterous!"; access; career; CIO; Connectivity; globalization; offshore outsourcing; software as a service; software innovation; Web 2.0; Redshaw sees a resurgence in software innovation and talks about the benefits of software as a service and SOA at Motorola.; business process management; career; CIO; software as a service; software innovation; Web 2.0; web services; Phillips talks about the benefit of global IT standards, innovation spending, and the future of IT careers.; business process management; career; CIO; global standards; governance; IT education; metrics; scorecards; Bailar discusses the role of IT in business growth, his must-read business book, agile development and he offers up some advice to the software vendor community.; agile development; business books; business performance; business process management; Call Center; CIO; customer relationships; innovation; IT effectiveness; productivity; Project Management; roi; scorecard; time-to-market; The co-authors of "The New Age Of Innovation" talk about their basic concepts of N=1 and R=G. ; CIO; customer intimacy; e-commerce; General Motors; globalization; Ralph Szygenda; re-engineering; GM's tech leader talks about consolidating, re-engineering, upgrading the company's application infrastructure. ; CIO; complexity; General Motors; globalization; integration; legacy systems; privacy; Ralph Szygenda; security; What does it take to be a CIO in the customer-oriented, globalized business environment today? Ask Ralph. ; business; CIO; customer intimacy; General Motors; infrastructure; Ralph Szygenda; supply chain; Learn how GM is building a global IT environment and what it takes to be labeled a dinosaur around his organization.; architecture; business acumen; business process outsourcing; collaboration; complexity; consumer technology; Global IT standards; globalization; IT management; real-time; roi; security; virtualization; Hear Randy's vision for the data center of the future and how he intends to slay the legacy monsters.; applications; business acumen; business processes; business-IT alignment; centralization; CIO career; complexity; data center consolidation; data centers; Data Warehouse; Efficiency; leadership; portfiolio management; reducing risk; roi; scalability; His challenge? Creating open environment for Internet users without compromising information security and privacy.; broadband; business acumen; capacity; CIO; CIO role; content generation; data centers; infrastructure; internet; privacy; security; social networking; video; Web 2.0; She considers business acumen just as important as technical knowledge for a CIO. Here's why.; business acument; Business continuity; career development; disaster recovery; IT recruitment; IT-Business Alignment; roi; security; wireless;