Archive

IBM recently announced that it will pour US$250 million into the development of radio frequency identification and sensor network technology over the next five years. In addition to developing hardware, including the wireless tags and readers, IBM also plans to provide software and integrated suppor...

PeopleSoft shocked the business world this morning by announcing that it had fired Craig Conway as president and CEO, effective immediately. Dave Duffield, the company's founder, stepped into the CEO position, and the presidency will by shared by two men, Kevin Parker and Phil Wilmington. The news s...

Customer retention has always been an important issue for wireless operators, and they acquired a new problem earlier this year when users gained the right to take their mobile phone numbers with them to a new carrier. In their efforts to retain customers, most focus on services and products. Some s...

They're at it again -- Oracle and (reluctantly) PeopleSoft -- like siblings in the back seat on the ride to grandma's house. Now that a federal court has said that Oracle's pursuit of its rival is OK on anti-trust grounds, Oracle is trying to clear the remaining hurdles, such as the European Commis...

Almost one-third of the world's financial institutions have outsourced work overseas, and the practice has spawned consumer and political backlash. But according to many analysts, the benefits outweigh the negative publicity incurred by financial services giants such as American Express and Discover...

While American minds may be opening to various self-help pharmaceuticals, from Viagra for erectile dysfunction to Wellbutrin for depression, American feet aren't equally comfortable walking the aisles of brick-and-mortar drugstores to get the goods, some studies show. Enter Drugstore.com, a site lau...

There are many common threads that tie together shopping for an analyst firm and kicking the tires of a sports utility vehicle. The power promised by the marketing behind both is impressive. The trick is finding one that fits what you want to accomplish. Both have high expectations associated with t...

A little more than a week ago, JPMorgan Chase withdrew from a seven-year, $5 billion Internet technology outsourcing agreement it inked in 2002 with IBM. It decided to pull IT inside. But this decision represents an anomaly in the outsourcing industry. All news reports verify the accomplishment of a...

This week I'm trying something different. I usually try to go in-depth with one subject for a column. To do that I frequently start out writing about a number of different ideas just to see where they end up. Many of the ideas don't make it into a column because they never reach a sufficient length...

The Oracle-PeopleSoft controversy has caused a ripple -- or perhaps a wave -- that has not yet reached the shore of software development, but it carries implications for many software firms. Although Oracle's hostile takeover of PeopleSoft is by no means a done deal, the very possibility signals a s...

First Chicago (now Bank One) initiated the trend of charging for face time with a teller in order to encourage the more cost-efficient use of ATMs. Competitors hastily followed suit. In December 2002, however, the bank dropped this controversial practice, concerned that self-service banking channels...

A week ago the U.S. District Court in San Francisco decided for Oracle in the antitrust case brought by the U.S. government, giving the software firm more hope that it can complete its hostile acquisition of PeopleSoft. "The Department of Justice may want to appeal it, but I don't think they're goin...

It's time the software industry quit ducking the tougher questions of growth by blindly claiming that every segment will either be conquered by or collapse into the domain of enterprise resource planning systems. It's getting tiresome to have so many industry insiders, financial analysts, journalist...

For companies with average revenues of $8.26 billion, the average IT budget hovers around $28.21 million, according to a Gantry Group survey. Given those numbers, small and medium-sized enterprises may wonder how they can compete in reliable and innovative information technology. But for a company w...

A fire at a telecommunications hub in Chennai, India, crippled call centers across the country yesterday, and voice and data service interruptions continued this morning. Cell phone customers of Tamil Nadu were also impacted by the fire at a Bharti Tele-Ventures Limited telecommunications facility i...