News

OppenheimerFunds Gets Return on Investment from Agile and SOA

OppenheimerFunds learned at least two lessons in its deployment of service-oriented architecture: Let business drive technology instead of the reverse, and switch to Agile development processes early.

The Mix and Match Trouble with Virtualization and Cloud Computing

Cloud computing experts, including VMware co-founder Mendel Rosenblum, say virtualization will become mainly an underpinning to cloud computing. So why aren't VMware and Microsoft making it easier to mix and match virtualization products in a wa

How to Get Executive Buy-In for Your Application Development Projects (and Why It Matters)

You might have a great IT strategy for solving a business problem. But unless the development staff or IT manager can sell the idea to senior management, everyone will be disappointed. Three CIOs who have been-there-done-that explain what works.

Attack of the Neginators

How to Move Photos from Picasa to Facebook

If you have Google's free photo-editing software Picasa, and you also use Facebook, it's easy to connect the two. In this Facebook tip of the week, we show you how to upload photos to your Facebook account from Picasa and share them with f

SAP Who? Inside One of SAP’s Smallest ERP Customer Success Stories

Artisan Hardwood Floors, a 37-employee company in Central Texas, doesn't look like a typical SAP buyer. But its decision to purchase SAP, and its experience so far, illustrates the promise and peril for SAP and rivals Oracle and Microsoft as the

MGM Mirage Seeks to Transform Its IT Project Management Office into an Enterprise Project Management Office

The discipline and transparency imposed by a project management office (PMO) can benefit the entire company, not just IT, says Myrna Soto, MGM Mirage's CISO and vice president of IT governance.

Best (Free) Mobile Twitter Apps for BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile

Twitter lets you share details on whatever you're doing. But how many truly interesting activities happen in front of a PC? Thanks to these seven mobile Twitter apps for BlackBerry, iPhone and Windows Mobile devices, wherever your smartphone g

vApps May Ease App Migration, But Require Closer Security Scrutiny

Abetted by ThinApps, VMware vApps may make application management and provisioning a lot easier, but will require even more attention to security in depth, real-time monitoring and auditing after an incident.

Finding Out What’s Wrong With the New Facebook (With a Little Help From My Friends)

ERP Lessons from Rich People Who Stink at Golf

So You’ve Inherited a Crummy Outsourcing Contract…

CIOs share tips for fixing problem relationships

How to Overcome the Obstacles to Mobile Enterprise Apps

There's help, and some tools, for IT departments challenged with taking enterprise departments wirelessn

Free BlackBerry Apps: Five Can’t Miss Software Downloads

These five great free BlackBerry applications can help you stay up to date on news, keep in touch with colleagues and friends, communicate with social networking contacts and instantly diagnose the "health" of your handset.

Leapfrog Makes a Flying Leap onto the SOA Pad

Some development teams are building a service-oriented architecture the old fashioned way: fast. Leapfrog Enterprises director of Systems Infrastructure Eugene Ciurana describes seat-of-the-pants SOA design in a virtual environment.

Attn Travelers: Buy a BlackBerry, Get 4,000 American Airlines AAdvantage Miles

An Objective Method for Evaluating Project Managers’ Performance

A long-time project manager for EDS outlines a sensible way to evaluate project managers' performance using objective metrics that matter most to the business.

Who Rocked the Tech World?

Technological progress has depended on the leadership, insight and innovation of those who dreamt big and worked hard.

SOA Governance: Balancing Process and Agility

By now everybody has heard over and over how governance is critical to the success of any SOA Implementation. Companies implementing SOA must provide the proper level of governance required to achieve reuse and flexibility without negatively impacti

TeleNav Track: GPS Tracking Service Gets Valuable Makeover

The latest version of TeleNav's mobile-phone-based GPS employee-tracking-service, TeleNav Track 4.1, gains interesting new features, including the ability to manage and control group timecards and set associated "geofences" around work

Microsoft, VMware: Time to Get Back to Helping Customers

Microsoft's recent marketing shenanigans have been entertaining, but now it's time to go back, fix licensing issues, get products to work together and quit wasting customer time on childish stunts, even if they're funny. n

WSO2 Releases New Open Source Data Services Product

WSO2 CTO and co-founder Paul Fremantle discusses the company's new product that focuses on data services.

VMware Answers Virtual Security Questions With VMsafe Details

While much is still unclear about VMware's vision of the future, the company painted a more complete picture of the VMsafe program at last week's VMworld show, adding detail about how third-party security tools will work with VMware's

How Vivek Kundra fought government waste one Google App at a time

The Washington D.C. government is migrating its 38,000 employees over to Gmail and Google Apps, which it plans to use for document sharing, spreadsheets and as a wiki. Here's a look at how and why, from cost to continuity.

9 Tips for Taking Control of Your IT Career in the Face of Layoffs

With unemployment rates at their highest level in six years and layoffs planned at some of the biggest companies, tech workers are feeling anxious about their jobs and powerless in the face of economic uncertainty. Two IT staffing experts offer some

How to Deal With Problem Employees

Employees behaving badly? Three tips for nipping workplace annoyances in the bud

Four Non-Obvious Things Pink Floyd Can Teach Your Team

BlackBerry Users Get Expanded Enterprise IM on New Microsoft OCS 2007 Support

SOA Still Isn’t Just For Integrating Legacy Systems

Service-oriented architecture is not just for legacy systems but can be strategic for Startups as well. Service-now.com, a SaaS provider of IT Service Management solutions, has used SOA as a competitive advantage.

What’s Red Hat Doing in the Virtualization Business?

When you think Red Hat, you think Linux. Maybe, if you're a developer or a CTO, you also think JBoss. Red Hat, itself, now wants you to think virtualization.

Prize of VMworld Announcements Isn’t a Virtual Data Center; It’s Better Plumbing

Visions of virtual data centers make for good keynote fodder, but the most important thing coming out of this week's VMworld is a set of tools to make it easier to keep the network, storage and security links with a virtual machine no matter whe

Financial Industry Mergers, Acquisitions and Meltdowns: What’s in Store for IT Execs and Staffers?

Economic chaos has rocked thousands in IT: From CIOs, such as Merrill Lynch's Tom Sanzone and Washington Mutual's Deb Horvath, to tons of jittery IT workers.

VMware Innovations Aren’t As Thick As They Should Be, But Impressive Nevertheless

CEO Paul Maritz wasn't impressive in his discussion of innovation or detail, but CTO Harrod got into more of the security, fault-tolerance and other elements that are genuine ground-breakers.

Mac BlackBerry Users Rejoice: RIM Promises New Mac Tools

The future is bright for Apple Mac users who love their RIM BlackBerrys. That's because new, Mac-compatible tools for BlackBerry users are expected within the first half of 2009. Wireless services that will address BlackBerry-related issues for

New Survey Finds That Nearly Every Kid Is a ‘Gamer’

Nearly 100 percent of kids play videogames, and they aren't playing by themselves: Two-thirds play face-to-face with their buddies, and a quarter play online with other people.n

VMware Chief Redefines Virtualization, But Doesn’t Make Case for Real Innovation

VMware CEO Paul Maritz redefined VMware's vision of virtualization in his VMworld keynote this week, mostly by changing the names of existing products. What he didn't do is convince customers VMware is ready to break out of its rut and inno

The Danger of Being Too Nice at Work

Russ Edelman, the author of Nice Guys Can Get the Corner Office, explains how you can be a nice person and still succeed at work. But, he says, being too nice hampers your career growth and costs your employer time and money.

The Definitive Definition of SOA

Let's stop wasting time trying to come up with clever definitions of service-oriented architecture and get down to the business of using it.

Five Tips for Going From 0 Virtual Machines to 1000

Most IT organizations start getting questions around 100 to 150 virtual machines. Here's advice for those ready to cross the tipping point and go from saving money on servers to creating a cloud-like infrastructure inside the business.

IBM Launches Center for Social Software to Move Enterprise Social Networks a Step Forward

The Center's director says IBM hopes to work with IBM customers and members of the academic community to develop and build upon the company's social software, such as Lotus Connections and Beehive (a social network for the enterprise).n

Who’s Most Aware of Corporate Fraud and Security Vulnerabilities? Those Paranoid IT People, Of Course

The latest Kroll Global Fraud report highlights the rise in corporate fraud-related losses. The risk consulting firm says IT staffers are more likely than their higher-ups to know where the vulnerabilities, such as information theft or data loss, can

VMworld: Desktop Virtualization Goes Much More Mobile

VMware's VDI technology gives way to an upcoming group of products called Vmware View. The big news: users can move with their VMs from the office to the laptop and back. Meanwhile, rival Microsoft does some guerilla marketing with VMworld atten

How Businesses Can Get More from Social Networking: Avoid the ‘Kumbaya Zone’

AMR Research analyst Jonathan Yarmis says that social media falls short of providing business value for many companies. In order to combat this problem, companies must start small and focus on what conversations they want to have in social media foru

BlackBerry, Smartphone Users Get FUZE Conferencing Service from CallWave

CallWave's new Web-based collaboration and conferencing service will enable users to employ any Internet-connected computer or smartphone to share high-definition (HD) images, audio and video, as well as make local and international conference c

VMware Chief Fails Credibility Test in Virtual Data Center OS Pitch

Paul Maritz outlines a bold vision, but weakens his own with with a lack of technical detail and enough commitment to change to demonstrate VMware can make serious progress toward multivendor management, let alone data-center Nirvana.

VMworld: CEO Maritz Outlines Broad Plans for Cloud and Client

Bowing Out of a Job Interview with Your Reputation Intact

From SAP ERP Software to Saving the World: Catching Up with Shai Agassi

Shai Agassi's rise to SAP's executive board was fast and furious. But his resignation in 2007 and his bold plan to rid the world of its dependence on oil have been equally abrupt. In this Q&A, Agassi speaks with CIO.com about his reason

Cool Programmer Challenge: Football Algorithm = $50,000

TopCoder is running a developer contest for ESPN to write an algorithm that predicts the outcomes of college football games for the sports network. The winner gets $50,000. Score.

RIM BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) 4.1 for Microsoft Exchange SP6 Maintenance Update

RIM has released a maintenance update for its BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) software for Microsoft Exchange, addressing a number of issues that affect both BlackBerry administrators and end users.