June 27, 2006
Making sure end users benefit from strong application performance is an art -- one that requires many tools, IT executives say....
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June 26, 2006
Dashboards are all the rage among IT managers who want a quick way to see how the systems and processes that support the business are performing....
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June 13, 2006
Finnish airline Finnair is using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to streamline ground operations at Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport....
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June 08, 2006
The National Retail Federation encouraged retailers at its annual loss prevention conference to share information about their most damaging shoplifting incidents and fraud cases....
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May 23, 2006
There will be a sharp uptake in network activity among retailers over the next few years, but retailers are going to have to strengthen their network knowledge if they are to make the best investments, according to new research....
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May 16, 2006
German ERP vendor Infor is acquiring SSA Global in a deal worth an estimated $1.36 billion. When combined, the companies say Infor will be the third-largest applications vendor....
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May 12, 2006
Businesses have been looking for relief from Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, and it appears the governing bodies may be considering modifications to their rules and guidelines related to SOX....
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May 09, 2006
Last week Goldman Sachs predicted consolidation among vendors with service-oriented architecture (SOA) technology. This week SOA Software affirmed the trend by announcing its plans to purchase Blue Titan Software....
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May 05, 2006
Cast Iron Systems this week released two new versions of its integration appliances, which are aimed at helping companies complete straightforward application integration projects quickly and without breaking the bank....
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May 05, 2006
In its latest IT spending survey, released today, Goldman Sachs reports that adoption of service-oriented architecture (SOA) technology isn't yet mainstream, but it's consistent with deployment levels reported a year ago by survey respondents....
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May 01, 2006
The availability of a five-cent RFID tag has long been touted as a milestone necessary to make item-level RFID tagging an affordable option for retailers and consumer goods manufacturers....
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April 28, 2006
I wrote about Caribou Coffee and its new POS rollout this week. The company, which is based in my hometown, Minneapolis, is in the middle of a project to deploy new IBM terminals and kiosks in its 400 coffee shops....
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April 26, 2006
IBM this week unveiled a bundle of hardware, software and services aimed at putting grid computing technology within reach of small and midsize businesses....
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April 24, 2006
Hampton Products International is an early customer of software maker Mitrix, which offers a suite of hosted supply chain management software....
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April 21, 2006
Venture capitalists continue to commit funds to SOA vendors. The latest recipient is Cape Clear Software, which makes an enterprise service bus (ESB) designed to help companies assemble, deploy, integrate and manage composite applications....
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April 20, 2006
The telecommuting population is rising as traditional companies allow more employees to work from home. Adding to the trend is the emergence of businesses built around home-based employees, such as virtual call centers....
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April 18, 2006
Companies are looking for ways to centralize and automate more financial processes, but outsourcing finance operations isn't in the cards for many enterprises, according to new research....
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April 13, 2006
Qualcomm talked to Network World last year about its efforts to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Today the chipmaker talks about round two of SOX compliance....
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April 11, 2006
Human error was responsible for almost 60% of information security breaches last year, according to new research released today from the IT-focused association CompTIA....
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April 05, 2006
SAP this week announced plans to acquire Virsa Systems for an undisclosed amount -- a move that will help the ERP giant stake a bigger claim to the compliance software market....
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April 03, 2006
A familiar name from the mainframe integration market has been shifting its focus to the call center arena over the last couple of years....
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March 27, 2006
Oracle and SAP are working to move their respective software suites to an SOA model -- an effort one top analyst compares to climbing Mount Everest....
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March 22, 2006
SRS Technologies this week unveiled a product designed to make sure there's no hidden content accidentally buried in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents....
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March 21, 2006
In less than an hour, two e-mail messages arrived in my in-box this morning highlighting RFID applications that show just how diverse the technology is....
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March 20, 2006
Enterprise companies often turn to professional services firms for help implementing new software, but the experience isn't always worth raving about....
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March 17, 2006
IBM is buying name recognition specialist LAS -- an acquisition that bears some similarities to its purchase of SRD last January....
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March 16, 2006
Don't want to get caught watching a live feed of the NCAA men's basketball tournament while on the job? Push the "Boss Button," and you might get away with it....
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March 15, 2006
Companies in the computer game and music industry have some of the top Web sites, according to a new study evaluating 10 years of Web site development....
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March 08, 2006
Upgrading desktops to the latest and greatest operating system is never a simple or inexpensive task. Microsoft knows this and is taking steps to ease the Windows migration process....
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March 06, 2006
I'm a sucker for stories about buildings. Over the years, I've had a few chances to write about techie structures for Network World....
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March 03, 2006
A lot of attention is paid to the cost of complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, but that's by no means the only legislation driving corporate process improvements....
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February 27, 2006
David Vap of Software AG says he can gauge how serious an IT executive is about making a software purchase by the lingo the prospect uses....
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February 24, 2006
Nearly three weeks after its much anticipated beta launch, Zillow.com has proven -- at least in my case -- it's not just a visit-once-and-forget-it Web site....
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February 22, 2006
Everyone knows a lack of time and money can stand in the way of IT projects. I was surprised to learn recently about some of the other obstacles that can muss up rollouts....
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February 21, 2006
IT executives and analysts have differing opinions about whether the trend for IBM, Oracle, Sun and other big vendors to buy their way into open source development is a good thing or not....
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February 14, 2006
Oracle announced its acquisition of Sleepycat Software today, confirming one aspect of rumors that have been swirling since last week....
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February 14, 2006
Microsoft and open source CRM vendor SugarCRM will detail plans to get a little cozier at the Open Source Business Conference, which kicks off today in San Francisco....
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February 13, 2006
MySQL AB, developer of the popular open source database, has reaped $18.5 million in a Series C financing round, the company announced. Institutional Venture Partners of Menlo Park, Calif., led the round. Intel Capital, Red Hat, SAP Ventures and Presidio...
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February 10, 2006
Google this week released an upgrade of its free desktop search software, and with it comes the expected cacophony from privacy watchdogs....
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February 09, 2006
IBM picked up B2B specialist Viacore this week in a move to bolster its supply chain consulting and outsourcing business....
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February 08, 2006
"Business intelligence" is one of those ideas that's easy to understand but difficult to deliver. It's not hard to imagine how executives could benefit from a real-time glimpse of how inventory is holding up, or an alert about a competitor...
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February 06, 2006
The pool of people with access to critical corporate applications continues to get larger and more difficult to monitor as companies open up their systems to customers, partners and other external users. To augment enterprises' perimeter security defenses, vendors are...
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February 03, 2006
It's been a busy week in the world of hosted CRM. Salesforce.com users suffered through the second big outage to hit the service since late December. (This time around, many users got cranky and used blogs such as Gripeforce to...
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February 02, 2006
The wait is over. GM has gone public with the list of its new outsourcing partners, which include EDS, HP, Capgemini, IBM, Compuware Covisint and Wipro....
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February 01, 2006
It's been over three years since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was signed into law. Today many of the largest public companies in the U.S. have a year of compliance with one of the law's more onerous provisions -- Section 404 --...
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January 31, 2006
For the second time in just a few months, Salesforce.com suffered a serious outage that left users of the hosted CRM service with only intermittent access for most of the day yesterday....
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January 27, 2006
Informatica this week announced its $55 million acquisition of Similarity Systems, an Irish maker of data quality software. The purchase will help fill a gap in Informatica's data integration platform, called PowerCenter....
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January 26, 2006
New options and new players are changing the outsourcing market. Big vendors like IBM and EDS are facing increasing competition from smaller vendors, particularly as enterprises look to distribute outsourcing work among multiple providers....
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January 20, 2006
Success of the Mobile Speedpass and other similar wave-and-go devices has spawned a host of contactless payment projects around the globe....
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January 17, 2006
Ajax is one of those IT ideas on the popularity fast track. Its roots trace back to 1998, but interest in the programming technology has skyrocketed over the last year....
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January 12, 2006
IBM topped the list of patent-producing U.S. companies for the 13th year in a row. This time, Big Blue's annual tally was 2,972 patents, according to industry watcher IFI Patent Intelligence....
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January 06, 2006
Each year around the holidays I interview as many retailers as possible to find out what types of IT investments they made in preparation for the make-or-break holiday shopping season. In 2005, a lot of retailers went shopping for hosted...
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December 13, 2005
We all know there's talent inside enterprise IT shops. For those with an entrepreneurial bent, IT talent can lead to commercial success. It's a path many vendors can appreciate: MessageGate grew out of messaging technology developed inside Boeing, Kalido stems...
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December 07, 2005
SOX spending won't let up in 2006 AMR Research predicts companies will spend more than $6 billion in 2006 on initiatives to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, on par with the $6.1 billion spent in 2005. The biggest portion of budgets...
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December 02, 2005
Downloads of the newly released Firefox 1.5 topped 2 million within 24 hours of when the upgraded Web browser became available, according to Mozilla Corp.'s Christopher Beard. "Demand continues to be high, greatly exceeding what we saw last year with...
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November 21, 2005
The more companies work to divide application functions into components and build virtual infrastructures, the tougher the task of managing application performance becomes, experts say....
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November 21, 2005
TrueBaseline made its debut with software designed to monitor the conditions of applications and resources in an SOA....
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November 14, 2005
As retailers prepare for the holiday shopping surge, one security vendor has sobering news about online theft: Fraudsters will make away with $2.8 billion of online retailers' revenue this year, up 8% over last year....
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November 14, 2005
While enterprises are getting better about using the CRM licenses they've paid for, shelfware is still a significant problem, reports Gartner....
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September 06, 2005
A software integrator working with the open source application SugarCRM, a rival of Salesforce.com, has come up with an online calculator that compares the costs of the two CRM software offerings....
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August 05, 2005
Summit Strategies President Tom Kucharvy argues in a new report that the application service provider could pull it off. New Salesforce.com products are giving enterprise developers the tools to create entirely new applications atop the company's online, ondemand Salesforce and...
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July 25, 2005
RFID middleware spending is growing steadily, but mostly for pilots, and the software remains immature, with potentially serious weaknesses, according to a story by Frontline Solutions, citing data from recent reports by Frost & Sullivan and AMR Research....
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July 18, 2005
Barcoding Inc. has released several RFID kits that will allow companies to comply with RFID mandates, including those from Wal-Mart and the Department of Defense....
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July 11, 2005
Microsoft wants corporate developers and ISV’s to build presence and awareness information into their applications (think they want to foster more sales of Live Communications Server 2005?) and now they are making it much easier than the current set of...
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July 11, 2005
IBM this week is touting a 10-year contract it inked with Monroe County in New York. IBM says it's one of the first times that a New York government has handed off an ERP system....
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June 15, 2005
Advanced technologies such as server virtualization, grid computing and multicore processors help companies squeeze greater utilization from IT resources....
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June 15, 2005
As the bad guys keep thinking of new ways to try to infiltrate enterprise systems, the good guys keep pumping out security products....
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May 31, 2005
It's no secret companies are turning away from monolithic, app suites in favor of modular software components. These days outsourcing customers are expressing a similar taste for smaller deals instead of whole-hog outsourcing contracts. The desire to migrate internal infrastructure...
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May 31, 2005
With a comfortable lead over Oracle in the business applications market, SAP is continuing its efforts to break into the middleware market with its NetWeaver integration platform and broad vision for an Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA). The German software maker...
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May 31, 2005
Virsa Systems is among the latest software vendors to break out a new tool for helping companies come into compliance with regulatory initiatives such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The new product is called Confident Compliance, and it's geared for monitoring...
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May 09, 2005
After a rough first quarter, Big Blue is cutting out a layer of management in Europe and reallocating some of its services resources as part of a restructuring plan that will eliminate up to 13,000 jobs....
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May 09, 2005
The Java programming language has had its highs and lows and weathered a couple of nasty lawsuits during its first decade in existence. To commemorate the technology's 10-year milestone, Sun threw a birthday party for Java at its Santa Clara...
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May 09, 2005
It can be tough to figure out if software maintenance services are worth the hefty prices vendors charge. Check out this story to find out how savvy licensing shoppers make their decisions....
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May 02, 2005
The vast majority of customer service inquiries still come in over the phone, despite companies' efforts to get customers to use online channels. One way to keep call center costs in check is to roll out automated voice systems that...
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May 02, 2005
It's been a bumpy road, but RFID vendors have set aside some of their differences and come together to support an upgraded standard from EPCglobal that describes how tags and readers should communicate with each other. The new standard promises...
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May 02, 2005
Oracle execs took time out in late April to talk to analysts and customers about what the vendor plans to do following its recent acquisitions of PeopleSoft and Retek. On tap is a merged applications set, dubbed Fusion, that will...
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March 21, 2005
IBM is shelling out $1.1 billion for partner Ascential Software to help close a gap in its data integration lineup. Ascential brings data extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) capabilities, which IBM's WebSphere Information Integrator product family lacked. But the deal...
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March 21, 2005
It's become an all-out war for dominance in the retail applications market between SAP and Oracle, with Retek smack in the middle. SAP struck first in the fight for Retek, offering $8.50 per share two weeks ago for the maker...
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January 24, 2005
Starting next year the IRS is going to require certain large companies to electronically file income tax returns, the agency announced in January....
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January 24, 2005
The Army National Guard plans to deploy aftermarket service and support software from Enigma at five of its U.S. sites this year to improve the maintenance of combat vehicles....
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October 11, 2004
At its first user conference with new CEO J. Michael Lawrie at the helm, Siebel Systems emphasized business intelligence. The vendor is extending its analytic wares to back-office sources including financial, human resources, procurement and supply-chain systems. Siebel also tackled...
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October 11, 2004
ATG this week announced a new e-marketing module to add to its suite of CRM wares. Its Adaptive Customer Outreach software uses data gleaned from customers' Web transactions and behavior to create personalized marketing and customer service campaigns. Next up...
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September 13, 2004
Oracle just got one step closer to completing its 15-month takeover battle for PeopleSoft. A federal judge last week ruled that Oracle can proceed with its bid for PeopleSoft, saying the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that the merger would significantly...
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September 13, 2004
Outside the courts, Oracle is stepping up its efforts to woo midsize enterprise customers looking for infrastructure software. Last week Oracle unveiled a new application server for mid-market enterprises. Oracle Application Server Standard Edition One comes with a Web server...
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August 16, 2004
E-commerce vendor ATG is expanding further into the CRM realm with the acquisition of Primus Knowledge Solutions. With the deal ATG gets to plug some holes in its lineup with Primus' natural language search features, call center tools and e-mail...
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August 16, 2004
Oracle last week previewed a mid-market version of its application server, due out later this year. Oracle Application Server Standard Edition One will include an application server, Web server and portal software and is expected to cost $5,000 per processor....
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August 02, 2004
Companies are worried they won't be able to meet the requirements of corporate governance legislation, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, with the inefficient, manual-dependent processes they have in place today. At least that's what PricewaterhouseCoopers is reporting. What do you...
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August 02, 2004
The Jacobi Medical Center in New York recently outfitted 200 patients with wristbands that contain a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip. The wristband-wearing patients are part of a pilot project the center is conducting with help from Siemens Business Services....
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July 26, 2004
The market for customer management applications rebounded in 2003, growing 4%, and is projected to grow another 6% in 2004, says AMR Research in a new report....
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July 26, 2004
DataFlux last week announced a new version of its flagship data quality product. DataFlux 6.2 is all about long-term data quality -- it includes a new monitoring tool designed to track data quality over time, not just as it is...
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June 21, 2004
Information retrieval technology is getting better, but it still fails at finding information half the time, according to a new survey from Delphi Group. Among 300 respondents to Delphi's survey, 60% said it's easier to find work-related information today than...
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June 21, 2004
EmergeCore Networks makes all-in-one networking solutions for small businesses and branch office sites. Its latest box set bundles CRM software for managing customer information inside the IT-100 network appliance. EmergeCore's IT-100 is a combination Web, e-mail and file server with...
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June 14, 2004
Recently I wrote about a Gartner report that says hosted CRM services tend to cost more than they appear at first blush. This week there's good news for buyers of CRM software -- the kind that gets deployed onsite. Barton...
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June 14, 2004
A group of software vendors and consultants has gotten together to launch the Compliance Consortium, an organization designed to help companies fine-tune the way they deal with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, the USA Patriot Act and Basel II. Founding members...
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Does Verizon's Voyager stack up to the iPhone? Keith checks out the Verizon Wireless Voyager multimedia phone, and compares it to Apple's iPhone.
Watch now
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