CenterBeam
Washington Internet Daily, 6/24/02: Internet People
New members of Internet Society board: Philippe Courtot, Qualys; Fred Baker, Cisco; Erik Huizer, SURFnet; Toshio Miki, DoCoMo Labs; Glenn Ricart, CenterBeam; Latif Ladid, Ericsson; Osten Franberg, Ericsson; Veni Markovski, Global Internet Policy Initiative.
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Outsourcing
Bank Systems + Technology, 6/3/02: The Right Fit
Steven Marlin
Bank outsourcing strategies abound, the trick is finding the one that works best.
In light of recent outsourcing developments, banks are re-evaluating their relationships with IT vendors with a view toward getting more value.
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Bank Systems + Technology, 6/3/02: Productivity Is Key To Outsourcing
David Henry, CTO, Alltel Information Services
It's not surprising that interest in IT outsourcing has grown over the past few quarters, considering one of the first targets for expense control is the IT budget. Few would argue that reducing IT cost through outsourcing is especially important during down business cycles.
Yet while it's tempting to focus on achieving the lowest cost IT infrastructure, it's important to remember that the primary reason for IT is to improve productivity. Therefore, the ideal IT infrastructure needs to be determined in light of overall business conditions.
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Computerworld, 6/21/02: Remote server management makes inroads
By THOMAS HOFFMAN
Managed services provider (MSP) Agiliti Inc. next week plans to begin offering remote monitoring and reporting services for servers, networks and applications located at customer sites.
The types of services being offered by St. Paul, Minn.-based Agiliti could catch on with corporate IT managers looking to lower the costs of running their IT infrastructures while maintaining ownership of their equipment.
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The Boston Globe, 6/23/02: Forces driving IT outsourcing up corporate ladder
By D.C. Denison, 6/23/2002
The analyst, from a major East Coast technology consulting firm, was nursing an after-lunch cup of coffee and describing one of the rock-solid revenue generators for his company.
''When our consultants start talking to a firm about outsourcing information technology, sometimes that company's IT department tries to protect it's turf,'' he said, shaking his head. ''That's fruitless.''
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Information Week, 6/24/02: Sharing The Risks And Rewards Of Outsourcing
If Accenture can cut AT&T Consumer's costs, both companies will profit.
By Larry Greenemeier
AT&T's consumer unit is a strong believer in outsourcing. In the past several years, the nation's largest consumer long-distance company has signed two large outsourcing deals with Computer Sciences Corp.: a 10-year, $300 million contract for application support and a seven-year, $1 billion deal for management of applications for billing, credit and collections, ordering, and provisioning. It also handed over its data-processing centers and 2,000 employees to IBM Global Services under a 10-year pact worth $4 billion.
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Management Service Providers
Infoworld, 6/24/02: MSPs forge software trail
By Brian Fonseca
ATTEMPTING TO capitalize on enterprise demand for large IT outsourcers, smaller MSPs (managed services providers) are taking an alternate route and are evolving into licensed software providers.
Last week, Loudcloud folded its hosting hand, opting to sell its managed services business to EDS for $63.5 million; instead, Loudcloud will develop and sell IT automation software as a new entity called Opsware.
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PC Industry
The New York Times, 6/24/02: Despite Slump, Niche PC Makers Are Flourishing
By STEVE LOHR
In 1996, when Alex Aguila quit his steady job as a medical technician to start a personal computer manufacturer, there were questions about his sanity, let alone his business sense. "People were constantly telling us `You're crazy and you're going to fail,' " he recalled.
Their skepticism was logical enough. After all, the personal computer business seemed to belong increasingly to the big PC makers, buying chips by the boatful and cutting costs with ruthless efficiency. As the industry matured, aggressive price-cutting to gain market share was the order of the day, and Dell Computer, the emerging powerhouse, was the master practitioner of that strategy — selling directly to customers online and constantly honing its marketing, manufacturing and procurement.
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IT Management
Forrestor Research, 6/24/02: Forrester Research Defines Organic IT, The Next Corporate Computing Revolution
Organic IT Presents CXOs With A New, Holistic Way To Think About Technology Investments And Deployment
Cambridge, Mass., June 18, 2002 . . . In 1987, Forrester Research (Nasdaq: FORR) presciently coined the term "client/server" to describe a massive shift in how companies would deploy technology. Fifteen years later, fundamental technology trends have already begun to create a new corporate technology architecture shift that Forrester calls Organic IT. Unlike the rip-and-replace nature of the client/server revolution, Organic IT will enable global companies to squeeze 50% more value from sunk technology investments inside their datacenter, commoditizing some technologies, lowering internal management costs, and increasing business flexibility and response. Meanwhile, the shift to Organic IT will drive brutal vendor transformations as vendors begin revamping their products now through 2004.
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CIO, 6/15/02: IT Parenting
At a recent conference, a CIO leaned over and confessed to me that he has a "terminal case of saying yes." My response? It's important to say yes—in the right way. The key to CIO success is figuring out how to focus the IT agenda while you gain the reputation of a yea-sayer.
As a rapidly aging parent of a 2-year-old, I will use an analogy near and dear to my heart: CIOs should manage business partner relationships as they would raise children. Your job is to create good IT citizens. Like children, the line managers in the business are self-absorbed—and rightfully so. They don't care a whit about being responsible consumers of IT assets; they know what they want from you and don't believe their personal desires may not serve the company's interests in the long term.
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Opinion-Making in High Tech
The Wall Street Journal, 6/17/02: Glowing Report on Firm X Isn't What You Might Think
Last year, Onetta Inc., a Silicon Valley fiber-optics start-up, wanted to call attention to its innovative communications products. So, it says, it told its story to Aberdeen Group, a market-research firm in Boston.
Aberdeen seemed to be impressed, because it soon published a very positive research report. The report said, for instance, that Onetta had a "commitment to high performance" and an "intelligent product roadmap," and that it "worked to build highly satisfied customer relationships."
But there was one little detail the report omitted: that Onetta had paid Aberdeen $8,000 to have it written.
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Microsoft
The Wall Street Journal, 6/24/02: New Microsoft Pricing Looms; Customers Consider Switching
By REBECCA BUCKMAN
The clock is ticking for companies to comply with Microsoft Corp.'s new software-pricing policy, a plan that has been criticized for raising customers' software costs while helping Microsoft's bottom line.
Microsoft's new policy, to take effect July 31, does away with many longtime discounts and encourages corporations to sign up for automatic upgrades to new products. The plan varies according to factors such as a company's size and the products they use; in general, large firms already signed up for subscription-like plans face fewer changes than smaller clients.
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Economy
Associated Press, 6/21/02: Expectations for technology recovery keep getting pushed back
BRIAN BERGSTEIN
When the dust cleared last year from the dot-com meltdown, many in the technology industry hoped for recovery by now. Later, with indicators still flagging, the talk was of a late 2002 rebound.
But here at the half-year mark, with earnings warnings from the likes of Intel Corp., Apple Computer Inc. and Oracle Corp., the tech sector might soon be adopting the attitude of baseball fans whose teams drop out of the pennant race: Wait 'til next year.
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