Stories about: Excel

When two Boston-area organizations rolled out an interactive data visualization website last month, it represented one of the largest public uses yet for the open-source project Weave -- and more are on the way.

Why the fuss? What's so important about Apple support in the enterprise? To say that nearly all business applications today are written for and developed specifically for the Windows operating environment is an understatement.

Toshiba's AT1S0 may have a strange name, but it's a relatively straightforward Android tablet. It's a smaller version of the Toshiba Tablet (AT100) but lacks the same unique features as that model.

Salesforce.com will include some new analytics capabilities at no additional cost with the Enterprise and Unlimited editions of its CRM (customer relationship management) software, following complaints from customers who argued that the features should have been used to fill long-standing gaps in the products' core functionality, not sold separately.

For such a small device, the plastic, handheld USB flash drive can cause big security headaches. Even if you have robust end-point security and establish rigid policies about employee use of these drives, employees still find a way to copy financial reports and business plans for use at home.

When developing and integrating cloud systems, the public interfaces and external "contracts" among services mean that design and architecture can evolve rapidly and in parallel. But when they do and the teams are not in the same room, this speed is an invitation to chaos.

It's been a big year for Apache Hadoop, the open source project that helps you split your workload among a rack of computers. The buzzword is now well known to your boss but still just a vague and hazy concept for your boss's boss. That puts it in the sweet spot when there's plenty of room for experimentation. The list of companies using Hadoop in production work grows longer each day, and it probably won't be long before "Hadoop cluster" takes over the role that the words "crazy supercomputer" used to play in thriller movies. The next version of the WOPR is bound to run Hadoop.

BI (business intelligence) vendor Tableau Software on Wednesday announced the availability of Tableau 7.0, a release that boosts speed and scale as well as providing what the company calls "human-oriented" design and accessibility.

You know the Sisyphus drill: gather all your receipts and type them into an Excel Spreadsheet or Web portal, in order to get reimbursed for corporate expenses. Next month, same thing. After a long business trip, expect to spend up to two hours performing this task.

Self-service procurement. Self-service business intelligence. Self-service recovery. User provisioning in private clouds. It's a wondrous world for end users today as IT departments roll out tools that hand them the reins to the data and services they desire, whether it's instant access to their employee benefits accounts or a deep dive into corporate data stacks that were once off-limits.