Enterprise IT

House C'tee Chair Tells Consumer Protection Chief to Take a Hike
April 24, 2013

If CFPB Director Richard Cordray ever imagined that House of Representatives Republicans would eventually warm up to the bureau, that hope has surely been dashed by now. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, on Monday sent a letter to Cordray, saying that he would be barred from testifying before the committee because his appointment as director was invalid.

Salesforce Slips Social Ads Into Its Cloud Atlas
April 24, 2013

Salesforce.com expanded its advertising initiatives this week with the launch of Social.com, a platform designed to help brands tie ad campaigns to what's trending on social networks. The new platform bundles Salesforce.com features that resulted from the company's acquisitions of Buddy Media, a provider of Facebook ad software, and social media monitoring firm Radian6.

Report: State-Sponsored Cyberattacks Heat Up in 2012
April 23, 2013

State-sponsored cyberespionage incidents tripled over last year, according the 2013 Verizon Data Breach Report. 96 percent of those attacks were attributable to East Asia. Verizon's study, which analyzed 47,000 security incidents, expanded its contributors this year to 19, including a wider range of worldwide law enforcement agencies. Three key types of cyberattackers were identified in the report.

Fed Budget Makes Room for Cloud, Cybersecurity Upgrades
April 23, 2013

From partial unpaid furloughs of personnel to travel cutbacks, U.S. government agencies are scrounging to come up with ways to save money. In that light, the Obama Administration's proposed 2014 federal budget for information technology resources is good news for agency IT shops -- and for vendors serving the market. The administration has proposed spending $82 billion for information technology in fiscal 2014.

Microsoft Catches Activist Investor's Eye
April 22, 2013

Activist investor ValueAct Capital has invested US$2 billion in Microsoft, according to a report on CNBC Monday morning. Wall Street immediately reacted, driving the company's share price to $31.18 from its usual perch at $30.27 per share. That is the highest level the stock has since in the last seven months.

Transforming an Enterprise From Sluggish to Sleek
April 22, 2013

When it comes to the enterprise, thin is in -- as in slimming down business processes and reducing the level of complexity that comes with running organizations in the 21st century. That goal would be challenging enough without the arrival of trends like Big Data and mobility. There are also the continuing struggles to secure company data, manage risk and meet compliance deadlines.

Improving IT Ops Service Levels and Efficiency
April 22, 2013

New tools are available to help with service level management, but they require a new perspective on how IT infrastructure components should be managed. The key is to embrace a new ideal of managing every infrastructure component from the perspective of how it impacts end-user service levels. To do this, IT operations teams must understand the three laws of service-oriented IT operations management.

Google Grooms Chrome for the Office
April 19, 2013

Google this week introduced two new features for its Chrome browser in a move to bolster demand in the corporate sector. "There is a massive concern surrounding Google and privacy that generally has corporations avoiding this browser officially in favor of Firefox or Internet Explorer," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

CISPA on Collision Course With Obama Veto
April 18, 2013

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, which faces a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday, may end up vetoed by President Obama. CISPA encourages private companies to share security information among themselves and with the government. The House Rules Committee on Tuesday rejected a bipartisan amendment that would have addressed user privacy.

Microsoft Invites Amazon to IaaS Brawl
April 18, 2013

Microsoft this week announced general availability of Windows Azure Infrastructure Services. The Infrastructure as a Service offering previously had been in limited release. The cloud service lets users deploy full virtual machines created from a gallery of pre-populated templates built into its management portal. Users also have the option of uploading and running their own custom images.

DDoS Attacks Hammering Targets Harder
April 17, 2013

The number, size and impact of distributed denial of service attacks increased sharply in the first quarter of this year, according to a new report from Prolexic. The average attack bandwidth in this period was 48.25 Gbps, 718 percent more than the 5.9 Gbps chalked up by attacks in the previous quarter. The average packet-per-second rate hit 32.4 million, and the average duration of an attack increased 7.14 percent.

Immigration Bill Would Open the Gates to More Tech Talent
April 17, 2013

A group of senators known as the "Gang of Eight" on Tuesday introduced a bipartisan immigration bill that could permit an increase in H-1B visas for high-tech workers. The group is led by Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and John McCain, R-Ariz. Another notable member is Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., the GOP's latest rising star. Of particular interest to the tech industry, the new bill would raise the current caps on H-1B visas.

Mystery Computer Problem Grounds All AA Flights
April 17, 2013

American Airlines created a nightmare for its customers for at least two hours Tuesday. Its electronic reservation system went down in the middle of the afternoon, forcing the carrier to hold all flights until after 4:30 p.m. ET. The incident may have exposed a rift between AA and Sabre, the company managing its computerized reservations system, which used to be part of the airline.

CenturyLink Hauls DoI to Court
April 17, 2013

The U.S. Department of the Interior has big plans to implement a major cloud-based information technology program, with a potential investment of $1 billion over 10 years. However, those plans will have to be put on hold a little longer. One of the potential contractors for the project, CenturyLink, is taking the department to federal court in a challenge to the contracting terms for the project.

Kana Adds Context, Subtracts Search
April 16, 2013

Kana Software on Tuesday debuted its next generation of Kana Enterprise, a multichannel customer service application with functionality for both the agent-based desktop and self-service. Its features include case management; Web self-service; mobile chat; co-browsing; social listening, analytics and community engagement; email, campaign and white mail management; and advanced knowledge management.

Report: Big Biz Shakes Off Hack Attacks
April 15, 2013

A lot of noise has been made about the consequences of data breaches for companies, but a recent survey of some of the largest U.S. businesses may have wrapped those noisemakers in a muffler. Of the 27 largest companies reporting cyberattacks in their most recent filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, none said they sustained any major financial losses from those net assaults.

The 6 Secrets of Highly Successful M-Commerce
April 15, 2013

If we take a page out of our not-so-distant past, we can see that on the web, both commerce applications and functionality have contributed to the demise or success of mobile apps. The success of business models, return on investment and viability of mobile initiatives all depend on how well m-commerce is managed and handled.

Blackbaud Gives Fundraisers New Tools, Then Gets Out of the Way
April 15, 2013

Blackbaud, a CRM vendor that specializes in the nonprofit sector, has rolled out a new release offering additional social and mobile functionality. The end goal of the various upgrades -- which range from social scoring to the ability to run on a number of different tablets -- is to allow users to be able to spend more time with donors, said Eric de Jaeger, VP of product management, enterprise CRM solutions.

Civilian Oversight Overlooked as CISPA Clears House Committee
April 12, 2013

A revived version of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act -- with provisions for civilian oversight absent -- passed by a vote of 18-2 Thursday in the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The committee adopted six amendments, but removed others aimed at privacy protection. Three of those were proposed by Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., with one offered by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

Using Cloud Analytics to Corral Big Data
April 12, 2013

Strategic Big Data and Actionable Analytics are two of the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2013, according to Gartner. Yet only 12 percent have a big data strategy that governs their daily operations, a recent survey of 339 data management professionals by SAS and SourceMedia found. In my view, this gap is the result of years of unfulfilled promises from a previous generation of business intelligence and data integration vendors.