Tuesday | 7 October, 2008
CRM's Integration Blues
On-demand applications like Salesforce.com have many advantages, but can they integrate easily with your other core apps? Results still vary
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Process Trip 04 February, 2008 13:07:03
Why Maritz Travel revamped key business processes — and how business and IT came together to make it workWhen Rich Phillips became COO OF Maritz Travel about two and-a-half years ago, he sat down and took a hard look at the big industry picture - +
Ticked Off at Tick the Box Mentality 04 February, 2008 13:01:15
Does your executive search firm know the difference between an MIS manager and a CIO, and if it does, can it explain that difference to its corporate clients?Does your executive search firm know its MIS managers from its elbow? Does it even know the difference between an MIS manager and a CIO, and if it does, can it explain that difference to its corporate clients? - +
How to Get Real About Strategic Planning 04 February, 2008 12:50:59
Everyone agrees that having a strategic plan for IT is a good thing but most CIOs approach the process with fear and loathing. In fact, the majority of CIOs (and the enterprises they work for) are faking it when it comes to strategic planning. Isn't it time we all got real?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 - +
Strategies for Dealing With IT Complexity 24 December, 2007 10:30:47
Every innovation, every business process improvement, comes with an IT complexity tax that must be paid by CIOs in time, money and sweat. Here are strategies to mitigate the increasing complexity of IT as it enables new business.Every innovation, every business process improvement, comes with an IT complexity tax that must be paid by CIOs in time, money and sweat. Here are strategies to mitigate the increasing complexity of IT as it enables new business. - +
9 Paths to Higher Performance 10 December, 2007 14:09:23
When an organization brings together talented people in a creative, collaborative environment it fosters a culture of high performance, which in turn leads to superior business resultsLike high-achieving individuals, some organizations seem to have the Midas touch. Virtually every initiative they touch earns them gold and even those that fail never seem to cost them much of anything at all
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Adobe launches hosted services, adds Flash to Acrobat 03 June, 2008 09:02:44
Adobe to launch Web site offering users free hosted services for document creation, sharing and storageAdobe this week is set to unveil the next version of its Adobe Acrobat software, which adds support for the company's Flash multimedia technology. The company also plans to launch a new Web site offering users free hosted services for document creation, sharing and storage. - +
Can Macs conquer the enterprise? 11 January, 2008 10:55:53
The field is wide open for a Macintosh insurrection on the business desktop. It could happen, but probably won't. Here's why.If Apple were a football team, the New England Patriots would have had some serious competition this year. - +
Clean up your SOAP-based Web services 27 November, 2007 13:16:14
The Test Center inspects five worthy tools for keeping your services squeaky cleanSOAP is the currency of the SOA marketplace -- for now, anyway. Though SOAP's significance may diminish as Web services evolve, its importance for the time being is unquestionable. Therefore, a substantial portion of the QA work by Web service providers and consumers must entail verifying the accurate exchange of SOAP messages. Not surprisingly, several SOAP-focused Web service testing tools have appeared. - +
10 things we hate about laptops 16 November, 2007 12:40:09
Sure, laptops have revolutionized the way we compute. That doesn't mean they don't drive IT bonkers.Damaged. Lost. Stolen. Too big, too small. Insecure and unreliable. And just plain annoying. If you're in IT, there's just not much to like about laptops. - +
Five ways to roll out SOA 06 November, 2007 10:15:14
Big name companies from Comcast to United Airlines are jumping into SOA, changing the way organizations plan, develop, and deploy enterprise applicationsBack when SOA first started getting traction, the goal was simply to make application functionality available as a shared service. Companies made up their architectures as they went along -- and of course, they're still doing that. The difference today is that, in the last couple of years, the business side has a better sense of the strategic value of IT, while IT has learned more about the competitive pressures business must endure. As a result, SOA now offers the possibility of greater alignment between IT and business than ever before.
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Software as a service (SaaS) has gone beyond the realm of rogue deployments, and CRM software, most notably Salesforce.com, has led the way through the enterprise front door. IT pros have learned plenty about the pros and cons of on-demand CRM. Among the lingering concerns: Can you make Salesforce.com and other on-demand CRM apps play nicely with your ERP and other core systems? How much work and what arrangements will this integration require? Results still vary.
Calvin Do, CIO of colour equipment manufacturer EFI, knows firsthand the limits of SaaS integration to enterprise processes. For example, he's discovered that SaaS providers don't typically support single sign-on, an obvious enterprise need. And they often don't support APIs of other enterprise applications, at least not out of the box. For example, connecting Salesforce.com to Oracle and SAP applications requires buying additional connector software or creating your own connectors via Web services. The limited cross-vendor integration is why Do initially restricted his SaaS deployments of Salesforce.com and talent management application SuccessFactors to department-level applications. (He later added an enterprise-wide deployment.) In the department-level applications, integration is handled at the data-exchange level and via simple API calls to trigger, for example, a data upload and the related process.
The trick: Don't let on-demand CRM's advantages blind you. Enterprises must carefully consider the scope of their on-demand CRM goals and whether potential software has the integration capabilities to fit with the larger software portfolio.
"You can't simply outsource CRM. It will ultimately need to integrate into your people, processes and technology," says Isher Kaila, research director for CRM at Gartner. "Only a minority of implementations out there have got this [trade-off] right," he adds.
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CIO Live Podcast #79: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires Part II 05 October, 2007 06:00:00
For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders. - +
CIO Live Podcast #78: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires 28 September, 2007 17:34:25
For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders. - +
CIO Live Podcast #77: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part III 21 September, 2007 07:00:00
Part three in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance. - +
CIO Live Podcast #76: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part II 14 September, 2007 07:00:00
Part two in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance. - +
CIO Live Podcast #75: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part I 07 September, 2007 07:00:05
Part one in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
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10 steps to loading dock security 07 October, 2008 11:30:00
Companies in all industries struggle to secure the loading dock, that sensitive spot where goods come in and go out. Follow these best practices and sleep better tonight.It's the stuff of CSO nightmares. Early on the morning of September 2, while most folks were home sleeping off the hot dogs, thieves used bolt cutters to break into an Alltel Communications warehouse and four of its loading docks in Fort Smith, Ark. Sources say they escaped with an estimated US$10 million worth of cell phones, not a bad haul for their Labor Day efforts. - +
Corporate security and the climate crisis 03 October, 2008 11:21:00
How to adapt security and risk management policies - including IT security - to deal with climate change.US military strategists, CIA analysts, international agency officials and Nobel Prize winning economists concur with the consensus of the world's scientific community: the Climate Crisis is a planetary security issue, as well as a national security issue for each of the one hundred ninety two countries that belong to the United Nations. But the Climate Crisis is also, by extension, a corporate security issue, as well as, yes, a cyber security issue. - +
Companies own up to virtual security blind spot 02 October, 2008 11:05:00
VMWorld attendees reveal vast majority of companies have little or no security in place for their virtual systems.The vast majority of companies have little or no security in place for their virtual systems. That is a scary statistic revealed in a survey of attendees at the recent VMWorld 2008 conference in Las Vegas. - +
How to minimize the impact of a data breach 01 October, 2008 08:54:00
ID Experts' Rick Kam describes a customer-centric action planThirty-one percent of customers--nearly one-third of a company's client base and revenue source--are terminating their relationship with organizations following a data breach, according to a recent study by the Ponemon Institute. - +
Five mistakes security pros would make again 30 September, 2008 10:18:00
Whether it's getting fired for standing up for what's right or making a network configuration mistake that leads to better security, there are some mistakes worth making. Five security pros offer personal examples.Ten years ago, Michael Riva was network administrator for a top-five American consultancy. Employees were downloading graphic pictures and videos onto the network. Riva told his boss a proxy server with content filtering might be in order; his boss laughed and suggested they put in a bigger file server instead.
Symantec State of Spam Report - October 2008 07 October, 2008 11:58:00
AIIA to Reward Sustainability and Green IT Champions at the 2009 iAwards 07 October, 2008 11:56:00
Yellowfin Achieves BI Success with Asia Pacific Telcos 07 October, 2008 09:46:00
Frost & Sullivan Gears up for Annual IT Industry Gala Awards Event 07 October, 2008 08:29:00
Multimedia Technology & EVERKI sign exclusive distribution agreement. 06 October, 2008 14:34:00
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Whitepaper
Still Sneaking In: The Threats Your Security Tools Aren't Telling You About
Web 2.0 applications are all the rage, offering us tremendous value when it comes to collaboration and communication. They also open us up to new kinds of attacks however, and can cause problems in keeping systems and data secure. Read on to learn about the new attack methods and how you can defend yourself and your business.
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