Stories by Michael Vizard

Being Market Leader, Industry Leaders Not the Same

When you look out across the computer industry, it becomes apparent that there are 10 companies that have amassed enough raw capital to be considered market leaders. In alphabetical order, these companies are Cisco Systems Inc., Compaq Computer Corp., Dell Computer Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp., Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp., SAP AG, and Sun Microsystems Inc..

CTOs are leading IT evolution

Help wanted: renaissance person needed for challenging CTO position.
The successful CTO candidate today is one-part hands-on IT specialist, one-part diplomat, and one-part business visionary. Of course, the trouble is that there just aren't many people out there who fit the bill. And a large part of that problem has to do with a fundamental flaw in the IT education process in general.

Business guru sees e-business shakeout

More than 85 per cent of the companies trying to restructure their business around e-commerce are going to blow it, claims legendary business guru Tom Peters.
Speaking at the "e-Link 2000" conference sponsored by CommerceOne, the author of "In Search of Excellence, and the "Reinventing of Work" series said that most companies will fail in their efforts because they lack the intestinal fortitude necessary to accomplish their goals.

Two Views of the New Economy

More than 85 percent of companies trying to restructure around e-commerce will blow it, business guru Tom Peters said here this week. Speaking at Commerce One Inc.'s e-Link 2000 conference, the author of In Search of Excellence and the Reinventing of Work series said most companies will fail because they lack the needed intestinal fortitude.

Business Guru Tom Peters Sees E-Business Shakeout

Over 85 per cent of the companies trying to restructure their business around e-commerce are going to blow it, legendary business guru Tom Peters said at CommerceOne's e-Link 2000 conference in Las Vegas.

CEO Targets Exchange to Exchange Integration

At the e-Link 2000 conference here on Tuesday, Mark Hoffman, CEO of Commerce One Inc., outlined a new strategic initiative for his company that seeks to place Commerce One at the heart of a new wave of "metacapitalism" that will be driven by the integration of large-scale digital exchanges across multiple industries.

(Wasted) Effort Goes into Standards Organizations

As any vendor will tell you, the beautiful thing about standards is that there are so many of them. This of course means that in some form or another, vendors can always pick some standard to comply with that fits with their business model. On the reverse side of that equation is the customer, who must often feel that all the standards in the world are ill-defined and knows that two products that support the same standard may not work with each other.

The Mad Rush to Dot-Com May Slow

In some way or another the vast majority of the catastrophic failures that occur with any system can be attributed to pilot error. In essence, that means somebody simply didn't know about some element of a procedure or just simply chose to ignore that procedure in the interest of saving time. Unfortunately, there are two trends that are conspiring to make these kinds of errors even more common in the future than they are today. The first of those trends is the constant race against time in the technology industry today, driven by the whole dot-com company phenomenon.

Outsourced Network Monitoring Debuted

Former executives of Excite@Home Inc. and Global Crossing Ltd. announced the formation of a company called NOCpulse, which later this year will provide operational support services to IT organizations running corporate Web sites.

Sprint CTO Vision Calls for Unified Devices

As the chief technology officer at Sprint Corp., Marty Kaplan is laying the foundation for a new generation of unified telecommunications services. In an interview with InfoWorld Editor in Chief Michael Vizard, Kaplan lays out his vision for brokering services that will allow people to seamlessly access information across a broad array of computing devices.

From the Editor in Chief

Everywhere you go in this red-hot economy, people are complaining about the same thing: They just can't find enough qualified people to drive their e-business initiatives. Now the truth of the matter is that most companies take a very passive approach to recruiting people, often only putting a classified advertisement in the local newspaper. In fact, senior management is more often than not pleased to see a position stay open for an extended period of time to help balance the budget.

E-Learning Curve

During the past year, Lotus Development Corp., as a unit of IBM Corp., has been steadily reinventing itself by focusing on collaboration, knowledge management, and distance learning as three separate but related markets. In an interview with InfoWorld Editor in Chief Michael Vizard, Lotus CTO Nick Shellness discussed how he sees these spaces evolving and how the Cambridge, Mass.-based company is maturing as a software organization within the IBM family of companies.

From the Editor in Chief

Given the rapid rise of e-business initiatives, there's no question that the next big wave of activity in this space will be centered on analysis tools of all types and stripes. After all, building a digital exchange to handle transactions is one thing, but understanding the business relationships that make up that exchange is quite another.

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