Alignment, staffing and culture are often more critical than software and apps
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While U.S. consumer confidence inched up a bit this month, consumers' overall outlook is generally pretty "dismal," according to the Conference Board's director of consumer research. A simil... More >
Earlier this year, Acer's chairman made some pretty big predictions about the potential growth of his company's business -- so big (a possible increase in sales of 70 percent) that it seemed like w... More >
Back in May, I blogged about an application from business intelligence vendor Cognos that could deliver BI data directly to BlackBerry handhelds. I cited optimistic forecasts regarding the growth of ... More >
Craig Barrett, chairman of Intel, minces few words in his opinion piece regarding the European Union's so-called Blue Card. In the piece, which was recently published in The Washington Post... More >
Much of the ire over American job losses is directed at U.S. companies that choose to outsource work to other countries or at companies that apparently use instruments like H-1B visas to employ f... More >
For a business of any size, the value proposition of blogging can be pretty squishy . Though marketing is the reason cited by most businesses for blogging, actual sales generated from such activity ... More >
I blogged back in September about the rise of Western-style ills like stress, depression and heart disease among workers in India's outsourcing industry. The problem is an increasingly seri... More >
<body><p>Back in September, I blogged about the <strong><a href=" http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/tve/?p=199" title=" Social Networks: The Few vs. the Many">proliferation... More >
This week's NetSuite IPO has reawakened interest in using software-as-a-service to deliver enterprise resource planning (ERP) to SMBs that can't afford pricey ERP suites from Oracle and SAP. Y... More >
The U.S. market for outsourcing has been soft most of this year, as I blogged in April , and in August and again in October . Economic uncertainty is leading American companies to scale back their... More >
When it comes to budget planning, SMBs are often so focused on immediate spending needs that they find it difficult to look very far into the future. They would do well to broaden their vision... More >
One of the biggest advantages enjoyed by human salespeople is that they can see a look of confusion on a shopper's face -- and, in theory, offer to help. Your PC, in contrast, just sits there no matt... More >
With Google's stock price in the $700 range as of today, it's kind of hard to find fault with the company's business. Yet that is exactly what the New York Times does in this recent piece . T... More >
Many companies view Facebook with distrust -- or even attitudes approaching downright hostility, as evidenced by the Facebook bans imposed by Credit Suisse and other businesses. It's hard to... More >
User adoption is a vexing issue for just about every type of enterprise software. Indeed, a recent post by blogger Khoi Vin set off a flood of comments in the blogosphere, much of it from folks fr... More >
Despite an ostensible desire to modernize their services, public-sector agencies appear to struggle with such basic technology concepts as data security and data transparency. They are known more f... More >
As U.S. demand for outsourcing softens , Indian service providers like Wipro and Infosys are looking to Europe and other markets to boost their business. Oddly enough, they may be missing a s... More >
If you are looking for some interesting food for thought, there's a veritable feast in CIO.com's annual State of the CIO survey. ZDNet blogger Larry Dignan does a good job of condensing the... More >
The prevailing wisdom is that SMBs want technology solutions that are both inexpensive and simple. And that may be a sticking point when it comes to SMB adoption of open source software, opines blo... More >
Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue blasted his state's performance in announcing his decision to consolidate the 11 agencies that account for the bulk of the state's tech spending, creating a Georgia Technol... More >
We blogged in August about the plans of Indian outsourcing provider Wipro to locate a software development facility in metro Atlanta . With more details about the deal emerging, it sounds as if Wipr... More >
As I blogged last month, lots of SMBs anticipate business growth in the coming year , with 45 percent of companies with fewer than 1,000 employees saying they expect growth of at least 10 percent, a... More >
Toyota has long been considered the king of the optimized business process , with its emphasis on continual improvement and eliminating inefficiency. The auto manufacturer also makes good use of tec... More >
Poorly managed IT projects seem to be about as common in many companies as purloined food and other office refrigerator "issues." But how serious are these problems, really? It's tough to sa... More >
Rising energy costs, the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis and other economic factors are putting a damper on business technology spending plans, say industry analysts. Gartner, Forrester Research and ID... More >
I just blogged Friday about the pharmaceutical industry's increasing willingness to outsource research and development . A story from in-Pharma Technologist.com provides further proof of the trend.... More >
The global economy allows companies to take the best-of-breed concept to tremendous lengths -- sourcing parts and labor from virtually anywhere in the world to get the desired combination of low cost... More >
To hear broadband providers tell it, the speed's the thing. But the reality appears to be different -- at least for SMB users. According to a survey of 447 SMBs conducted by UK Online, speed... More >
On the one hand, IBM's decision to compare autonomic computing to a human body's nervous system, with the ability to heal itself, seems like a stroke of marketing genius. On the other hand, that desc... More >
Some companies are downright conflicted about Web 2.0. While a character on one shoulder whispers that emerging technologies can boost efficiency and drive innovation, one on the other shoulder warns... More >
Dell has certainly found the retail religion. The PC maker, which once shunned retail outlets to build a business model around direct sales to customers, is now lining up distribution deals with ret... More >
It's a bitter pill for U.S. pharmaceutical companies to swallow. With the increasing economic burden of health care costs, they will be hard pressed to maintain their high-price, high-margin b... More >
One of the most interesting nuggets of information in IDC's new report on projected technology spending for 2008, as related in this News.com article , is its prediction that tech vendors will aggre... More >
In an effort to drum up more interest in its CRM software, introduced in 2006, SAP is revamping it with a new interface modeled on Google's iGoogle portal application, which lets users populate a h... More >
Like other observers, we have been watching China's burgeoning economy and its efforts to move up the offshore value chain, from a destination for low-cost manufacturing to one that performs software... More >
Following up on yesterday's blog about tech companies that are experimenting with cubicle-less office layouts, it turns out that a lot of workers sound less than excited about the concept. S... More >
Even as Facebook faces growing heat over its Beacon feature , which essentially turns folks into (possibly unwitting) promoters for the goods and services they purchase, Forbes reports that the si... More >
Yesterday we blogged about companies that are adding Web 2.0 technologies to their intranets in an effort to make them more useful and user-friendly -- and one company that has abandoned its intran... More >
While we are not fans of adding Web 2.0 technologies to existing enterprise applications for the simple sake of doing so, we are beginning to see all kinds of innovative, business uses of Web 2.0. &n... More >
At the risk of seeming cubicle-obsessed (since we've blogged about them twice in the past few weeks), we found another interesting item that we can't resist passing along. One of our blogs men... More >
A while back, we blogged about employees of India's outsourcing industry becoming pretty stressed out due to heavy workloads, odd hours and other factors. Now some of them are choosing a different ... More >
As the number of business intelligence pureplays dwindle , with SAP's acquisition of Business Objects and IBM's purchase of Cognos, the remaining BI specialists not surprisingly are rushing to put a... More >
While many time-starved consumers forgo small retail stores for "one-stop shopping" at Wal-Mart or other big-box retailers, the Internet lends itself well to virtual browsing and buying. Someone who ... More >
Service-Oriented Architecture is the catalyst that allows today’s companies to respond to business demands faster and more effectively than ever.
Learn how virtualization reduces the TCO of managing your date, while contributing towards your sustainability efforts.
Answers to the ongoing challenges of the mobile office: to work anywhere, securely and efficiently.
Data management tips and techniques that insure ease of access, comprehensive security and absolute privacy for your invaluable company information.