Read this article to learn -Why no company can afford to be without a Y2K contingency plan -Why Y2K contingency planning should be led by senior business executives -Specifics of real-world contingency plans

In the US, economic woes and a downturn in IT spending have put CIOs firmly in the driver's seat when they're dealing with vendors. Also the rising competitive temperature makes vendors all the more interested in hearing what customers and potential customers have to say. Do local IT CIOs wield similar power? Kind of. Sort of. Maybe . .

"Carefully." That was the one-word response from a high-profile CIO about how to chart and survive the political waters of a large enterprise. He did not want to elaborate, even anonymously.

Six megatrends that are driving government ICT strategy

CIOs say they want more than the traditional "your mess for less" relationship with their outsourcing providers. And the providers want to market themselves as partners in innovation. So why isn't it happening?

It's May day 2000, and the county of san diego is just six months into its landmark, full-scale IT outsourcing contract with the Pennant Alliance, a four-vendor partnership led by Los Angeles-based Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC). It's the beginning of the end of the deal's 180-day transition period, and the eyes of the outsourcing world are watching. But frankly, some of the early sights are scary. Staffing is down. Before the seven-year, US$644 million pact was approved by the county's board of Supervisors on Oct. 26, 1999, the county had 350 employees and 100 contractors providing IT services. When the deal was done, the county expected that about 275 IT employees included within the deal's scope would pick up tools and transfer. But instead, only 220 made the move. Of those left, 42 employees quit early in the outsourcing discussion, 25 transferred to other county jobs, and 63 took advantage of a severance/retirement package that gave employees 20 percent of their annual salary or credit for two additional years of service toward retirement. The contractors all found work elsewhere--some of them with the Pennant Alliance partners. But this instant staffing shortage left the Alliance in the position of hiring roughly 100 replacement workers unfamiliar with the county and its antiquated systems. With this higher-than-expected turnover came a huge loss of institutional knowledge.

If there were any lingering doubts that we are in the post-PC era, several big stories this year should have cleared them up.

Until last week, it seemed that Computer Associates International (CA) shareholder Sam Wyly faced impossibly long odds in his battle to shake up the company's board of directors. Analysts said his attempt to oust CA's entire board and install 10 nominees of his own choosing was almost certain to end in failure; a pair of influential investor advisory firms recommended against supporting Wyly's planned coup.

If there were any lingering doubts that we are in the post-PC era, several big stories this year should have cleared them up. The sale of IBM's PC business to China's Lenovo Group, and the death of Comdex, were powerful reminders that IT is in a transitional stage. When one of the hottest business stories of the year involves an IPO of a company whose technology helps people find information on the Net, it's certain that the network, to paraphrase the well-known dictum of Sun Microsystems, has become the computer.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit to block Oracle's attempted hostile takeover of PeopleSoft.