Stories about: ADVENT

Sun Microsystems plans to detail on March 18 its grand entrance into the cloud computing space, Sun officials said Tuesday morning.

Mobile user interfaces and a new version of Bluetooth top Gartner Research's list of mobile technologies to watch in 2009 and 2010.

If you listen to the Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 evangelists, you'd think that the IT world as we know it is about to come to an end, to be replaced by systems run according to the demands of the so-called Generation-Y who are entering the workplace. If you listen to the propeller heads, you'll be advised to install a mixed bunch of best-of-breed collaboration solutions that will transform your business prospects at a stroke. Except they won't. Effort and thought are required.

Derek Gannon has a state-of-the-art Apple MacBook Air on his desk when we meet at Guardian News & Media's London offices on the busy Farringdon Road. "I like to play with new things," Gannon says, while agreeing that, like the newspaper group that employs him as chief operating officer, Apple has a brand seen as fashionable, liberal and, some would say, design-led.

Green IT is about retooling business processes and the ICT environment to reduce energy consumption and the organisation's carbon footprint. Happily, this coincides with increasing pressure to improve operational efficiencies and reduce processing costs. Thus, an improvement at the bottom line can also enhance a company's green credentials - a development that is becoming both a legislative requirement and a competitive differentiator.

Canberra-based knowledge economy and social computing evangelist Stephen Collins heard a quote earlier this year that perfectly describes the Enterprise 2.0 dilemma: "If you want to find out what tools your staff are finding most useful at the moment, just go and see what your IT department is blocking"

Oh, it must be nice to be the CIO of a FedEx or a GE or a Credit Suisse. Places where IT and the business are so tightly aligned you can barely tell the two apart. Where corporate leaders understand that IT is a strategic asset and support it as such

With the emergence of regulatory laws borne out of experience from a variety of embarrassing security breaches, today's corporate leaders face a myriad of repercussions. These range from serious fines to jail time when found not in compliance with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Gramm-Leach-Bliley (GLB), and Payment Card Industry (PCI), etc.

Information technology training for IT managers and systems analysts may seem superfluous - these folks are usually well-learned in their areas of expertise. But, do they understand how a company's technology fits into the bigger picture from a business perspective? That's where management training becomes important. Every manager who plays a role in researching, selecting or implementing enterprise technology needs to have a firm grasp on the basics of emerging technologies, as well as how they serve a larger business purpose, to ensure that technology is being used to the company's best strategic advantage.

Some CIOs are better than others at executing an IT strategy. Their secret: A simple plan that helps business leaders make the right technology decisions