The most common affliction among media executives, even more common than insufficient sleep and attention deficit disorder, is hubris. Over the past year or so, when old-media execs made their high-profile, well-funded new-media moves, the idea they tried to convey was that you can stop worrying, the grown-ups have arrived: Internet-based entertainment is now legitimate, we know what we're doing.
"If you can get an organization to move faster by creating a separate [Web development] group, then you should do it," says Brian Farrar, chief operating officer at the Chicago consultancy Xpedior Inc.
iWant's marketplace lets consumers dictate their needs online and gives sellers direct access to potential customers
When it comes to doing business on the Web the first rule is: please everyone, all the time. Shut the disabled out of your Web site and you not only risk legal action - you'll be missing out on one of the largest blocks of buying power the Internet has to offer
Financially battered, Novell Inc. is struggling to stay alive. Although the firm is abetted by what analysts say is a brilliant new product strategy and buoyed by a few legacy products that account for more than two-thirds of its revenues, it is thwarted by ineffective marketing and a daunting competitive landscape.
Companies use a wide range of technologies and products to generate what's known as business intelligence (BI).
On July 1, 1998, TransCanada PipeLines Ltd. and Nova Chemicals Corp. completed the biggest merger in Canada's history. But for their information technology organizations, the challenge was just beginning. Although the two giants of Canadian wholesale natural gas had complementary businesses, you'd be hard-pressed to find two more radically different IT shops.
It's another failing report card for IT. Last week, Boston Consulting Group Inc. released a study that says, in effect, we're butchering our enterprise projects. You know the ones: ERP and customer relationship management, supply chains and e-commerce. Two-thirds of our big projects were pegged as unsuccessful overall. That's despite the fact that more than 40 percent finished on time and on budget and that 60 percent of the executives who signed off on the projects said they were worth the cost.
The government should take a cue from the private sector and supply each federal employee with a laptop and Internet service, a top U.S. Army official said last week.
WORK IN PROGRESS
We all know things are changing fast in the world of enterprise network computing, but you are nonetheless charged with making technology decisions today that your company will have to live with tomorrow. Neal Weinberg reports
if ever you needed another excuse to start focusing on services, this week's front page report on IS budgets must be it. We all know that margins on hardware and software are shrinking. This report shows expenditure on hardware is falling dramatically too.
Staying on top in any profession is hard to do. And for leading IT vendors, sufficient products and services sometimes may not be enough
Information technology has truly become a global business. For any vendor to earn or keep its position on the upper rungs of the IT revenue ladder, it must ensure that it can not only deliver its products and services to all of the world's markets, but can also tailor those products and services to meet the specific needs of individual countries.
Out of the blue
