InformationWeek Daily Archives
05/23/2013 06:56:33 Daily, June 24Satellite Destruction
In This Issue:
1. Editor's Note: SAP Isn't About Easy
2. Today's Top Story
- Satellite Destruction Using Google Earth And Orbitron
3. Breaking News
- iSuppli Cuts Semiconductor Revenue Forecast
- Boston Celtics Use Tool To Battle Botnets
- Lawyer Group Responds To Controversial YouTube Video
- Apple Mac Sales Grow Faster Than Windows PCs In Consumer Market
- Nuance To Buy AOL's Tegic Communications
- Cybercrime Fighters To Gather This Week
- Google CEO Demos Apple's iPhone, But Not On YouTube
- RIAA Request For Music Downloaders' Identities Denied
- WiMax Is Scarce, But Many Consumers Know Why They Want It
- Dell Won't Preinstall Ubuntu Linux On Small-Business Computers
- Intel Draws Parallels Between Chips And Ratatouille
- Google Turns Its Hardware Manufacturing Over To Dell
- Yahoo To Acquire U.S. Sports Media Site Rivals.com
- Apple Patent Foretells iPod And iPhone Security
- Stolen Backup Device Holds Info On 225,000 Ohio Taxpayers
- Nvidia Gives Supercomputing A Hand
- iPhone Frenzy Will Tempt Hackers To Break Apple's Security
4. The Latest Digital Life Blog Posts
- Beware Of Sticky Fingers When BlackBerrys Handle State Secrets
- The Most Hated Words On The Internet
- Ventrilo Harassment Exposed
- What Can Real-World Businesses Do To Succeed In Second Life?
5. Job Listings From TechCareers
6. White Papers
- Mobile Data Security Essentials For Your Changing, Growing Workforce
7. Get More Out Of InformationWeek
8. Manage Your Newsletter Subscription
Quote of the day:
"The thing that impresses me the most about America is the way parents obey their children." -- King Edward VIII
Kimberly-Clark's experience with its three-year, $100 million SAP rollout -- plus $17 million for user training -- is hardly big news. But it underscores something I've thought for a long time: The decision to move to SAP has little or nothing to do with making it easier for employees to perform better in the real world. On the contrary, it has everything to do with B-school egghead theories about making business operations fit together like Lego blocks, regardless of the human cost.
That, from corporate management's viewpoint, is its greatest strength. SAP is a very rigid product. My experience, watching a couple of SAP rollouts from the sidelines, is that the company does not adapt SAP to its business processes, it adapts its business processes to SAP. And this gives management a great benefit: It standardizes the business. It forces businesses that have operated in idiosyncratic ways to adopt regimented methods of execution and reporting.
The primary customers for SAP seem to be the suits who make big bucks from mergers and acquisitions. The easier a company is to understand, the easier it is to buy and sell, and standardizing the reporting is the first step in that process. (The idea that it also makes it easier for managers by allowing them to respond to predigested data in knee-jerk ways rather than requiring that they really understand their business is surely just cynicism on my part, right?)
Interestingly, SAP is only the first in what looks like a growing class of enterprise applications. Salesforce.com is another example of a one-size-fits-all solution that in fact fits some much better than others. If Web-delivered services are the future, then we'll see more standardization of business practices as businesses move to standard services rather than developing their own.
All this leaves me wondering: In this roboticized future where all companies do everything the same way, how will any company be able to capitalize on its opportunities? Are the eggheads engineering the possibility of success out of business with these all-encompassing "solutions" that work so hard to make it impossible for mediocre managers to fail?
David DeJean
Satellite Destruction Using Google Earth And Orbitron
iSuppli Cuts Semiconductor Revenue Forecast
Boston Celtics Use Tool To Battle Botnets
Lawyer Group Responds To Controversial YouTube Video
Apple Mac Sales Grow Faster Than Windows PCs In Consumer Market
Nuance To Buy AOL's Tegic Communications
Cybercrime Fighters To Gather This Week
Google CEO Demos Apple's iPhone, But Not On YouTube
RIAA Request For Music Downloaders' Identities Denied
WiMax Is Scarce, But Many Consumers Know Why They Want It
Dell Won't Preinstall Ubuntu Linux On Small-Business Computers
Intel Draws Parallels Between Chips And Ratatouille
Google Turns Its Hardware Manufacturing Over To Dell
Yahoo To Acquire U.S. Sports Media Site Rivals.com
Apple Patent Foretells iPod And iPhone Security
Stolen Backup Device Holds Info On 225,000 Ohio Taxpayers
Nvidia Gives Supercomputing A Hand
iPhone Frenzy Will Tempt Hackers To Break Apple's Security
On the go?
Unified Communications
Windows Vista: Meeting Expectations Or Falling Short?
8 Fast Facts About The InformationWeek 500
Beware Of Sticky Fingers When BlackBerrys Handle State Secrets
The Most Hated Words On The Internet
Ventrilo Harassment Exposed
What Can Real-World Businesses Do To Succeed In Second Life?
MarketSense seeking Programmer - C#, ASP.NET in Burr Ridge, IL
McCamish Systems seeking Business Systems Analyst in Atlanta, GA
MCCI seeking Project Manager in Ithaca, NY
BreakthroughIT, Inc. seeking Change Management, Technical Impact Assessment in Groton, CT
Blizzard Entertainment seeking Senior Oracle DBA in Irvine, CA
For more great jobs, career-related news, features and services, please visit CMP Media's TechCareers.
Mobile Data Security Essentials For Your Changing, Growing Workforce
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InformationWeek Daily Newsletter
1. Editor's Note: SAP Isn't About Easy; It's About Regimentation
ddejean@dejean.com
www.informationweek.com
Researchers use off-the-shelf software as part of an experiment to demonstrate the vulnerability of critical space infrastructure.
Global revenue is expected to increase 6% to $276.6 billion this year from $260.9 billion last year, the firm said.
Mi5 is releasing a high-speed appliance designed to detect and shut down botnet activity -- something the Celtics have been looking for.
The American Immigration Lawyers Association advises employers to meet the legal requirements when hiring foreign nationals, even if the process is "far from perfect."
Apple's share of desktop and notebook sales online and through brick-and-mortar stores in May rose to 13% from 11.6% in April, according to the NPD Group.
Tegic's T9 predictive text input software will be mated with Nuance's speech and imaging software, the companies said.
Law enforcement officials, including all 92 assistant U.S. attorneys, will meet to coordinate efforts against zero-day vulnerabilities and other online threats.
The event triangulated three hot media subjects -- Google, Apple's iPhone, and YouTube -- and put a spotlight on the Google-Apple alliance.
A judge said the RIAA will have to work with the university to notify the students who have been sued before it can gather information about them.
A survey finds that nearly half of the respondents plan to use WiMax for e-mail, while 31% cited online media viewing and 28% cited mobile TV and music downloading.
The computer maker will sell only the hardware and let small-business customers install the open source operating system themselves.
The semiconductor maker is spending $8 million to promote a Pixar movie it hopes will encourage consumers and IT managers to buy its dual-core products.
Until late last year, Google assembled its high-end enterprise search box on its own, from components supplied by a variety of white-box manufacturers.
Yahoo said it would acquire Rivals.com, a site for fans of college and high school teams, bolstering the Internet media company's place as the top U.S. sports site in audience terms.
The patent application envisions several possible tests that could be used to prevent a portable device from being recharged.
The device was stolen after a state intern took it home as part of a policy that called for one backup device to be kept offsite.
The new GPUs are meant as an alternative to having developers divide a supercomputing application among multiple CPUs, commonly made by Intel or Advanced Micro Devices.
Security researchers at IBM admire the iPhone's apparent security but note it will suffer from its fair share of attacks.
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----- The latest research, polls, and tools -----
The concept has been the "next big thing" for a long time. But as with a lot of innovative technologies, time brings improvements in the products and the business benefits as well as some interesting new players. Learn how more than 300 companies are deploying unified communications and VoIP in this new report by InformationWeek Research.
While security enhancements top the list of reasons companies are installing Windows Vista, concerns about compatibility and costs are driving the less-than-stellar adoption rates. Learn how more than 600 business technology professionals responded to these questions and more in InformationWeek Research's Windows Vista: Meeting Expectations Or Falling Short?
Use this quick online tool to examine technology and business strategies of the most innovative users of technology, the InformationWeek 500. With this tool, you can review aggregate budgeting and spending plans, methods of innovation, level of customer focus, risk management priorities, global strategies, and technology deployment plans.
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4. The Latest Digital Life Blog Posts
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/digitallife/
We're not at war with France, at least not the last time I checked, but that doesn't mean that the French want their state secrets coursing through the U.S. telecommunications infrastructure, courtesy of French government officials addicted to les BlackBerrys. Sure, BlackBerrys come with built-in encryption, but is that enough when you really, really don't want anyone to get his or her hands on the information you're carrying around?
"Blog," "netiquette," "cookie," and "wiki" are among the most hated words on the Internet, according to a British poll.
What happens when your MMORPG is hijacked by a player with a headset, chat software, and a whole lot of attitude? Duke Nukem, for starters.
I'm wrapping up an article I've been struggling with for months, about how real-life businesses succeed in Second Life. It's a tough article to do because I think the overwhelming majority of real-life businesses that move into Second Life are failures.
5. Job Listings From TechCareers
This paper outlines four requirements for implementing an effective and flexible enterprise-class mobile security solution for your mobile data and devices. An organization needs a single enterprise solution for all mobile devices and data -- one that's simple, powerful, and flexible, and that meets the strategic objectives of mobile data security.
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