It always seems to come down to the same issue regardless of how often technology models change. Take for instance the e-business phenomenon, which has helped spawn new software categories such as digital exchanges, corporate portals, and e-commerce applications. But when you start to peel back the onion, you find yourself in a familiar discussion that goes like this: Should your organization go with a suite of products from one vendor that promises tight integration, or should it pursue a best-of-breed strategy relying on emerging Web standards to tie it all together?
As a relative new player in the network-caching arena, WorkFire is making efforts to establish a position alongside companies such as Inktomi and Novell. In a conversation with InfoWorld Editor in Chief Michael Vizard, company founder Tom Taylor talks about how WorkFire.com is taking a unique "genetic" approach to accelerating the serving of Web pages at sites such as CarsDirect.com Inc. and Norman Levy & Associates.
As the CEO of Extensity Inc., Bob Spinner has been at the core of the revolution in procurement practices that has changed the way companies such as Cisco Systems Inc., America Online Inc., and NEC Corp. manage their purchasing departments.
This past week witnessed another milestone in the illustrious history of InfoWorld -- the launch of the first annual CTO Forum, a conference at the Sheraton Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Highlights of the event, which drew together over 175 chief technology officers from all walks of business, were the keynote speeches from Bill Joy, chief scientist at Sun Microsystems, and Pekka Ala-Pietila, president of Nokia Corp.
One of the great privileges of being the editor in chief of InfoWorld is that you get to interact with a broad range of people from all spectrums on a daily basis. But one of the encounters I look forward to most is when we bring the InfoWorld Corporate Advisory Board (CAB) to visit the editors of our magazine.
Amazing things can happen when you take some time off to welcome a new member of the family. In my case, the arrival of Matthew Joseph seems to have coincided with a radical shift in the political landscape. In fact, a month ago it seemed this country was dedicated to the concept of a government that was based on being for the people and by the people. Today you have to wonder if, in the wake of the remedies proposed by the government to rein in Microsoft, the guiding principle of government applies to some corporate entities more than others.
Rentals.com Inc. is trying to reinvent what is widely considered to be one of the most painful processes that every person experiences frequently in his or her lifetime: renting out or renting a property. No matter which side of the process you're on, the entire activity is a labor-intensive process driven by tons of paperwork. As CTO of Rentals.com, Vadim Akselrod is trying to change the complicated process by turning it into an automated Web service. In an interview with InfoWorld Editor in Chief Michael Vizard, Akselrod discusses Rentals.com's business model and what it takes to stay ahead of the dot-com game.
Push technology moved from being heralded to being vilified in less than a year as IT managers resisted product offerings that brought the network to its knees. Since then most of the companies in this space have sought to re-invent themselves save one. BackWeb Technologies Corp. went back to basics to create a network-friendly set of push technologies that company President and CEO Eli Barkat calls "Polite Push." In an interview with InfoWorld Editor in Chief Michael Vizard, Barkat talks about the future of push technology in the age of e-business.
Garden.com Inc. has become the de facto Web site for gardening enthusiasts around the world. Its success has been mostly due to Garden.com's ability to build an intricate supply-chain infrastructure that allows it to deliver perishable goods in a timely manner.
We have now lived through so many iterations of the Internet that it's hard to keep track of what actual stage we're in. For example, this time last year the hottest topic of discussion was business-to-consumer e-commerce applications that were going to radically alter the way we shopped for everything.
As time goes by, things that were once considered difficult always become easier. Back in the 1980s, setting up a local area network took luck and experience, whereas in the 1990s the intricacies of deploying a suite of ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications nearly consumed us. Today, both tasks can be accomplished using procedures that have withstood the test of time, making these once-daunting tasks seem downright manageable.
In an industry that emphasizes the benefits of automation, it's ironic that the single most important asset in the business today is people. In the last 30 days we at InfoWorld have had the pleasure of hosting two events to help keep us in touch with the needs of our readers. The most recent event was a gathering of our Corporate Advisory Board, or CAB, which is made up of IT executives from a number of respected, high-profile companies, including Colgate-Palmolive, Nestle, Visa, and Gannett.
If business is war, then in this age of the digital economy the application development department must be the equivalent of the munitions factory. The trouble is -- as is often the case in war -- most of the weapons on hand at the beginning of the conflict are tired relics that harken back to a bygone era.
Economics is primarily about power -- and who has the most. In the United States, that power manifests itself in various vertical industries that typically have two or three dominant companies. For example, Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., and DaimlerChrysler AG dominate the auto industry, whereas
One of the peculiar things about the adoption of new technology is that, although products get launched with much fanfare, the adoption rate tends to play out over an extended period of time, until one day you look up and it's everywhere. This seems to be the case with wireless technologies that are just now on the cusp of going mainstream. The most prominent example of wireless adoption has been the Palm Inc. Palm VII, which allows people to access all kinds of data and to synchronize their schedules on their Palms with their PCs remotely via a wireless data connection.