Most high-tech vendor roadmaps, if customers can get their hands on one, are usually paved with good intentions.

Before Oliver Bussmann took the job of CIO of SAP in September 2009, he Googled the terms "SAP" and "CIO" in hopes of finding out about the top tech role as it existed then.

Greenpeace International released the fourth version of its "Cool IT Leaderboard" on Tuesday, and Cisco, Ericsson and Fujitsu ranked atop the list of 17 global high-tech companies.

CIOs have finally emerged from the dark days of budget-slashing, cost-cutting and headcount-reducing. The metaphorical knives, axes and saws can all be put away.

We take so much technology for granted today, but it wasn't that long ago that laptops, ATMs, cell phones and the Internet didn't exist-and hold enormous sway over our day to day lives.

For most people in the United States and several million others around the globe, Sunday, Feb. 7, 2010, was a day to sit back on the couch and enjoy another Super Bowl Sunday chock full of overeating and morning-to-night football coverage.

So much in the high-tech world that should be factually airtight-as in: it's either 4G speed or it's not-is, instead, always up for marketing's misappropriation, your CEO's hyperbolic exaggeration or a sales rep's truth bending.

Every Thursday afternoon at 1:30 p.m., Tom Uva's senior IT team gathers in his office. They do not assemble to shoot the breeze or grumble about the potent weather in Syracuse, N.Y., where their company, Sensis, an aerospace and defense manufacturer selling to a host of three-letter acronym U.S. government agencies, is headquartered.

One critical shortage in the supply chain right now has nothing to do with Apple iPhones, Nintendo Wiis or Zhu Zhu Pets being out of stock for the holidays: It's the people who manage companies' supply chains.

Business analytics is atop most companies' apps wish lists. The business goal, of course, is to make sense of the enormous amount of data and information housed in their servers -- and stop making critical decisions from the gut.

What's atop CEOs' agendas for 2011? Gartner analysts recently outlined the top CEO concerns that CIOs will need to identify, understand and address.

Everyone loves it when the tech engineers at iFixit or iSuppli tear down new and old technologies to see the tech that's under the proverbial hood.

Of the many consequential effects of the "App Store" phenomenon, there is one staring down IT departments today: Not only does your average consumer now expect application selection, purchase and delivery to be pretty darn seamless, so too does your smartphone-toting knowledge worker and line-of-business manager.

In CIO.com's article In-Flight Wi-Fi Turbulence: Travelers Reluctant to Pay, research from In-Stat showed that airlines are investing heavily in Wi-Fi systems-estimated at nearly half a billion dollars by 2013-while passengers now expect the service to be as free as the pack of nuts and half can of Diet Coke.

Best Practices: It's an often overused term that can apply to literally any decision-making process: parenting quandaries, personal finance questions, buying a house, getting a job, or selecting a puppy breed.