CenterBeam
Smallbusinesstech, 5/6/04: Outsourcing your IT Has Its Benefits - Customers Completely Protected Against Latest Internet Threat
CenterBeam's ongoing audit of computers and networks under its management shows the company successfully prevented the Sasser worm from disrupting the business operations of any of its customers.
CenterBeam is one of many companies that a business can turn to, to manage their entire technology infrastructure.
Companies have the constant choice and juggle of "do I manage my own technology, hire someone else to do it, or use a blend of both"?
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Outsourcing
The Wall Street Journal, 5/7/04: ACS Tries the Big Leagues
Computer-Services Firm Seeks
To Attract Larger Clients
By GARY MCWILLIAMS
Breaking into the big leagues is proving to be a mixed blessing for Affiliated Computer Services Inc.
Until recently, the Dallas-based computer-services firm was considered too small to tackle multibillion dollar outsourcing deals of giant corporations. Such long-term, big-dollar contracts were gobbled up by industry kingpins such as Computer Sciences Corp., International Business Machines Corp. and Electronic Data Systems Corp.
ACS focused on midsize companies, providing outsourced call centers, employee-benefit transactions and accounts-payables processing. That midmarket focus and a steady diet of small acquisitions fueled heady annual revenue gains: The company is forecasting sales of $4.1 billion for the fiscal year ending June 30, up about 8% from $3.79 billion the year earlier.
Now, the picture is changing. ACS's specialty in taking over labor-intensive corporate operations such as finance and human resources is being embraced by big corporations. Many big companies now don't want to rely too heavily on one outsourcing firm, opening the door for ACS.
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IT Doesn’t Matter
The New York Times, 5/6/04: How Much Does Information Technology Matter?
By HAL R. VARIAN
On May 2003, The Harvard Business Review published an article by a former editor, Nicholas G. Carr, titled "IT Doesn't Matter."
The reaction from industry chief executives was immediate. "Hogwash!" said Steven A. Ballmer of Microsoft. "Dead wrong," said Carleton S. Fiorina of Hewlett-Packard. Craig R. Barrett of Intel responded forcefully, "IT matters a whole lot."
Now, a year later, Mr. Carr has replied to his critics with a new book, "Does IT Matter?" (Harvard Business School Press).
It's a good book. Mr. Carr lays out the simple truths of the economics of information technology in a lucid way, with cogent examples and clear analysis.
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Otherwise
The Wall Street Journal, 5/7/04: The Horror: 'Van Helsing' Turns Hunt for the Undead Into a Dreary Monster Mush
Dracula Returns -- and He Wants You to Buy an Action Figure
A few moments into the interminable and monstrously awful "Van Helsing," there's an elaborate re-staging of the scene from James Whale's 1931 horror classic "Frankenstein" when the mad doctor shouts: "It's alive! It's alive!" But it isn't.
Nothing's alive in this trash-heap travesty of warm-weather entertainment, despite the frenetic pace. Everything is either deadening or dead, starting with the basic notion of Professor Van Helsing, the venerable vampire hunter from the Bram Stoker novel, chasing around Transylvania in pursuit of Frankenstein's monster and the Wolf Man as well as Count Dracula. Hugh Jackman, who was lively enough as Wolverine in "X-Men," is a dreary bore in the title role; he looks as if he'd been abandoned by his director from the very first scene. The same goes for Kate Beckinsale, a fine actor in normal circumstances; she plays Anna, a Romanian vampire huntress whose defining characteristics are cheekbones, breasts and boots, plus an accent located somewhere between Hedy Lamar and Ariana Huffington.
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The New York Times, 5/7/04: One Sings, the Other Doesn't (The Olsens Take Manhattan)
By A. O. SCOTT
What are you, some kind of monsters?" asks an exasperated commuter in "New York Minute." The query, addressed to Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, is surely meant as comic hyperbole, but just as surely, it will strike some in the audience as a rhetorical question.
Since they first appeared, sharing a single character, on the hideous sitcom "Full House," the Olsens have waged their assault on American pop culture with frightening discipline and demonic intensity.
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