Stories by Thomas Wailgum

No one will deny the global celebrity of Angelina Jolie. She's on the cover of magazines, stars in blockbuster movies and is a ratings bonanza each time she appears on TV. Now that she's had twins, she's got triple the appeal for some fans.
The spammer community loves her too: On average, about 2.28 per cent of the total global daily email volume contains subjects like "Angelina Jolie naked," "Angelina Jolie nude movie," and "Angelina Jolie naked video," according to Secure Computing's latest TrustedSource.org spam report.

Rob Reeg took over as president of MasterCard's Global Technology and Operations in May 2008, the de facto chief of IT at the US$4 billion credit-card and electronic payment provider.

Everyone has got <a href="http://advice.cio.com/al_sacco/new_details_on_apple_iphone_3g_activation_for_business_customers">an opinion</a> about the new Apple 3G iPhone (faster? yes! battery life? booo!), but how did <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/437264/subject/Apple+Inc.">Apple</a>'s behind-the-scenes <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/40940">supply chain</a> systems and processes fare during the much hyped rollout last week?

Not many people-including business analysts themselves-are able to <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/343013">agree upon a standard job description</a>, typical skill sets, proper training methods or a well-defined career path for the business analyst position. Yet almost everyone who's ever toiled away on an 18-month software development project can agree on the importance of the business analyst role to project success. (For more on this topic, see <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/336213">"Why Business Analysts Are So Important for IT and CIOs."</a>)

SAP executives knew they had a problem. By early 2007, after several years of quarter-over-quarter growth, senior decision-makers at the German software giant, including co-CEO <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/393663/subject/Leo+Apotheker">Leo Apotheker</a>, were hearing more and more about an alarming shortage of SAP talent in the marketplace.

The enthusiasm for and growth in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) market cannot be discounted. SaaS has become a viable and cost-effective (initially, at least) means of application delivery for the small, midsize and even large businesses.

In the pursuit to achieve "one version of the truth" from their growing volumes of corporate and customer data, enterprises are struggling to implement master data management (MDM) initiatives today.

No doubt, retailers are facing tough economic times as gas prices surge, real estate troubles persist and employment worries increase. As a result, U.S. consumer confidence recently dropped to <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/24839602">its lowest point in 16 years.</a>

Most line-of-business execs, project managers and software developers who have worked on application development teams can attest to the importance of good business analysts.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are a career-defining decision for many IT executives. And yet, says an expert who follows SAP and its base of corporate customers, many of those executives don't pay enough attention to the German software giant's strategy for updating these bet-your-business applications.

Just off State Route 520 in Redmond, Washington, you'll find Microsof's headquarters. To be sure, it's not the typical software vendor's corporate address - the beige building found in today's suburban office park never too far from a strip mall.

What Microsoft's Windows Vista has lacked in rates of universal corporate adoption to date, the operating system has certainly made up for in widespread notoriety and critical press coverage.

As COO of <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/341077/subject/Microsoft+Corporation">Microsoft</a>, <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/341077/subject/Kevin+Turner">Kevin Turner</a> is responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of some 38,000 employees in Microsoft's worldwide sales, marketing and services units. And along with <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/341077/subject/Bill+Gates">Bill Gates</a>, Steve Ballmer and five other top executives, Turner sits on the senior leadership team that charts Microsoft's strategy.

As Kindred Healthcare CIO Rick Chapman begins to discuss storage strategies, he asks a revealing rhetorical question.
&quot;The question you should ask me is: why would I be talking to you about this, as opposed to the VP of data center operations?&quot; The simple answer, he explains, is that Kindred's infrastructure and storage costs sit high atop his agenda - and his executive committee's right now.

Big-ticket acquisitions and consolidations in the business intelligence market were surely the most notable events of 2007. <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/203900/subject/IBM+Corporation">IBM</a>, <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/203900/subject/Microsoft+Corporation">Microsoft</a>, <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/203900/subject/Oracle+Corporation">Oracle</a> and SAP (now known as the "megavendors") staked their claims in the BI market, spending billions on top-tier BI and performance management vendors such as <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/180755/">Cognos</a>, <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/159250/">Business Objects</a> and <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/29111/">Hyperion</a>.