Stories by David Beynon

Commbank aims ‘for line of sight' IT management

The Commonwealth Bank's restructure of its technology, operations and procurement division reflected the need to give business units direct responsibility for their front and back office operations, according to new CIO Bob McKinnon.

HP services beyond ‘break-fix'

Hewlett-Packard has no intention of taking on the big services players operating in the management consulting and mainframe outsourcing niches.

Credibility crunch

Do you care particularly about the bookkeeping turmoil US-based Worldcom and to a lesser extent Xerox find themselves in? No I didn't think so.

Virtual snobs

Two years on and I'm still being bugged by the inverted logic and arrogance that went along with the dotcom bubble. Where do American journalists and analysts get off with describing the 'offline' world (aka planet Earth)?

Web site usability lags but improving

Australian Web site usability lags two to three years behind that of similar US-built sites, according to Dr Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Norman Group (NNg).

EDITORIAL: The next big thing, really

Despite being a victim of overblown hype, wireless solutions will be one of the biggest enterprise trends since the industrial, oops, er, I mean since the Internet revolution. It's the next 'big paradigm shift' and all that, according to predictions of a Gartner analyst conducting an Asia-Pacific region study, to be based on some 950 interviews examining the trends, drivers and investment plans for the wireless data market.

Opinion: Enterprise software train builds steam

Reports of sagging revenues with stalled sales have driven much change in the enterprise application software market this year. Revamped plans, sell-offs of things non-strategic, acquisitions, and global sales management reshuffles account for just some of the activity of recent months. Mix this in with a raft of product announcements and things are a little confusing.

Analysis: Intel CIO pushes productivity payoff

You would expect the CIO of the company built on the famous Moores law of exponential growth over time in CPU capacity to push the productivity benefits of new IT investment. This is exactly what Intel VP and CIO Doug Busch did in Sydney last week.

Novell future

It could be that I used to be the editor of Network World, it could be that because I have been to its light industrial-like HQ complex in exciting Provo, Utah and to a few BrainShare networkers' conventions in my distant past that I have a curiosity about the fortunes or misfortunes of Novell.

Not yet slobbering

A recent Computerworld story (CW April 29, p1) about the possibility of mainframe skills joining the dinosaurs in extinction touched a nerve with reader, Steven Hughes (letter follows). Understandably so.

HP/COMPAQ: HP enters risky phase

After months of detailed merger planning, the new HP is now entering a risky implementation phase, stretching out until October.

Opinion: Just a way to pay

Maybe you've heard about the visions of utility computing. You know, ultimately everything you need in IT is right there in a wall socket, just like the power you buy by the kilowatt-hour from that reseller known as your power utility. I first heard this idea years ago. The wounded US hype machine is again spinning out of control, trying to build some excitement around the concept. If you ask me, the IT department as we know it would be totally stuffed or non-existent in such a future.

Wouldn't it be nice

Would your job be easier if standards actually standardised more than the basic things? Lately, there's been a lot of talk about the need for the storage and other vendors to have their devices work better together, as was the case in the networking market several years ago.

Spamming around

Spam. Because you can delete it after reading no more than the subject field, e-mailed spam is not as annoying as telelemarketers calling home at dinnertime. Pathetic as it may sound, in between perusing all the serious Newsnet items on how to spam-proof the inbox, I admit that I enjoy some of the junk e-mail.

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