Alignment, staffing and culture are often more critical than software and apps
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This is a big week for outsourcing-related acquisition announcements. HP speedily closed its $13.9 billion acquisition of EDS. A rumor broke that BT may sell some or all of its 31 percent ownersh... More >
For years after the introduction of the automobile, cars had to fight horses and buggies for space on the road. While some folks couldn't afford cars, I suspect many just stuck to their buggies simpl... More >
Most business executives are huge fans of quantifiable benefits. Which is why Web 2.0 technologies are often such a hard sell to these folks. They intuitively understand that something like a wiki ca... More >
<body><p>Even as a very big outsourcing deal closed in the U.S., with HP <strong><a href=" http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/sts/?p=451">completing its $13.9 billion... More >
In speedy fashion, HP has closed the biggest outsourcing deal in recent memory, its $13.9 billion acquisition of EDS. As I wrote this spring (and I wasn't the only one), the impetus for the deal was ... More >
So often IT and finance are cast as adversaries, with the former battling for something the latter just doesn't want to give. So I really enjoyed a recent Computerworld story that relates how IT he... More >
Though the IT spending picture looks murky, most experts appear to agree that U.S. companies are scaling back on their tech budgets for the foreseeable future. SMBs are a notable exception ... More >
Andy Warhol once said that "in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." And that was before YouTube. A modern twist on that statement could be that "in no time at all, ever... More >
Techies are often advised to brush up on their broader business skills, such as project management. Yet in at least some fields, too many folks following this advice may have contributed to shortages... More >
On Friday I wrote about RFID's struggle for respect , a matter complicated by the original overheated expectations that tried to sell RFID as the solution to almost every business ill, from shoddy s... More >
IT Business Edge blogger Carl Weinschenk and I have both written about the continuing difficulties in getting SMBs to adopt Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solutions. There's the fact that lega... More >
Earlier this month I wrote about a couple of recent job surveys that seemed to contain discrepancies about the number of IT jobs gained -- or lost -- over the past year. Numbers from the U.S... More >
In writing about Gartner's latest HypeCycle report last week, I noted somewhat snarkily that RFID had been "mired in the Trough of Disillusionment for an awfully long time." Gartner projects that R... More >
Earlier this year, I wrote about Chinese companies' efforts to woo foreign executives , to help make up for a lack of local executives with management experience. I also wrote about HP's cultural e... More >
Earlier this month IT Business Edge blogger Lora Bentley wrote about IBM's promise to offer a Windows-free desktop by next year, a goal it will accomplish through partnerships with three of the lar... More >
Last August, I wrote about the dread harbored by the IT industry over a possible Big Problem related to Big Iron. Lots of aging programmers versed in the legacy languages of mainframes, such... More >
Sometimes it's easy to get to the truth. Just ask the "researchers" who only had to wait for some ice to melt to determine that Bigfoot isn't real after all. Sometimes it's not easy at all. ... More >
I wrote last week about how to inspire innovation within a company by empowering employees to operate outside the usual business processes . All fine and good, but some folks think that much ... More >
There's good news for CIOs in a recent SearchCIO.com survey of tech executives and IT managers. Sixty-seven percent of respondents don't appear concerned about losing their jobs in the down econo... More >
Growth in India's domestic IT market outpaced growth its export market in 2007-08, as I wrote earlier this month. So it's no big surprise that in Gartner's latest tech spending report, emerging mark... More >
Companies often find that nearshoring reduces some of the management costs and complexities associated with offshoring. Attorney Andrew Rigby is hoping to convince UK companies that current... More >
In my half-dozen years as a telecommuter, I've found widely varying managerial attitudes toward the practice. I go to great pains to tell my current manager when I'll be out running errands at lunch ... More >
Cisco is creating a single engineering team and single channel partner program for its Cisco and Linksys brands, as IT Business Edge and other publications reported last week. The announceme... More >
I've written about Agile software development twice in the past month, highlighting its potential to help developers produce enterprise applications that will actually help business users do their ... More >
Last month, I wrote about Gartner analyst Linda Cohen's contention that companies employ IT outsourcing to help prepare themselves for mergers . Makes sense to me, as getting an outside party to tak... More >
While business processes are used to aid innovation, sometimes they can hinder it as well. IT Business Edge blogger Rob Enderle did a fine job of illustrating this in a post from earlier this... More >
Earlier this year, I wrote that Forrester Research and other analysts were expecting that, even with a slowing economy, SMBs wouldn't cut their technology budgets as much as their larger counterparts... More >
Add Gartner to the list of analysts weighing in with a recent opinion on Web 2.0 technologies. As I wrote earlier this week , depending on which company is providing the analysis, Web 2.0 isn... More >
When it comes to IT employment, money isn't everything. That is, if you believe a recent survey by staffing company Computer People. According to an IT Pro item about the survey, nine out o... More >
When IT Business Edge blogger Loraine Lawson wrote about SAP's acquisition of Business Objects late last year, she predicted there would be plenty of integration between the two vendors' products. ... More >
Earlier this year I wrote about IBM's ambitious plans for Lotus Foundations , a bundle of software pre-installed on servers that includes Lotus Domino, file management, directory services, firewall,... More >
Starting a customer community is kind of like building a birdhouse. It seems simple on paper but can prove challenging in practice. That was the big takeaway from a Deloitte study I wrote about last ... More >
Earlier this month I wrote about the growing trend of companies employing workers to monitor what their customers say about them on blogs, forums and other online channels of communication. ... More >
Where will the next Silicon Valley be located? North Carolina's Research Triangle? Massachusetts' Route 128 corridor? It may be Bangalore or another area of India. India is growing an impress... More >
IDC is pretty smart. Back in December, the research company forecast that SMBs would outspend their larger counterparts in 2008, with markets like India, China, Russia and Brazil emerging as especi... More >
Who hasn't been persuaded to try something new with the "everybody's doing it" line? Most folks have fallen for some variation of this at least once in their lives, and some people succumb to it repe... More >
Just five months ago, I wrote about how demand for IT jobs seemed to be holding firm , even as other sectors halted hiring and/or cut jobs . But it didn't take long, about a quarter, for the slowin... More >
Earlier today I wrote about the American manufacturing industry's efforts to introduce more automated technologies , a move hampered by a lack of personnel with the skills required to operate such s... More >
The U.S. frets about losing manufacturing jobs to China -- and with justification. A recent Economic Policy Institute study indicates that its uneven trade balance with China cost the U.S. 2.3 milli... More >
When I wrote about software-as-a-service back in March, I shared the concerns of some analysts that adoption could stall unless vendors made more of a concerted effort to woo new customers, includi... More >
At my house we're big fans of Where's Waldo , a series of books in which you try to find a goofy-looking guy wearing a striped shirt and specs. Easy, right? The catch is, he's hiding in plain sight ... More >
When you're trying to re-engineer a process as complex as the manufacturing of an airplane, something aerospace giant Boeing is trying to do with its new 787, there are bound to be stumbles along the... More >
I have a longstanding interest in mobile CRM, if for no other reason than I can't figure out why it hasn't seen broader adoption , given the fairly obvious appeal of keeping busy sales reps and othe... More >
I'm coming off " Shark Week " on the Discovery Channel, during which my 7-year-old son and I view as much shark-related programming as possible. The more gruesome, the better. Not surprisingly, many ... More >
Earlier this month I wrote about how SMBs should promote employee benefits such as easy access to senior executives to attract talented hires rather than getting into a compensation contest with bi... More >
Retail technologies fascinate me, because they are such an important part of CRM. If done well, they play a big role in establishing and maintaining customer relationships. And if done poorly, they c... More >
Last week I wrote about Agile software development's ability to help bring IT and the business closer together, thus increasing the odds that IT would provide enterprise applications that actually ... More >
Perhaps inspired by the example of Northrop-Grumman , which is establishing software development facilities in towns like Corsicana, Texas, instead of offshoring development, some rural U.S. regions... More >
Last week I wrote about a Deloitte report that found plenty of unrealized potential in the customer communities hosted by companies in an effort to boost customer loyalty and interest in their prod... More >
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