ERP

An Information Security Policy is the cornerstone of an Information Security Program. It should reflect the organization's objectives for security and the agreed upon management strategy for securing information.

Pizza isn't typically a topic of conversation in company meetings at Caterpillar, the world's largest maker of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, and industrial gas turbines. But a recent unfortunate incident involving Domino's Pizza had a special team tasked with protecting Caterpillar's brand integrity taking notes and buzzing about how quickly a simple video can suddenly drag a massive corporate name through the mud.

It's been almost 15 years since David Kent first came to Genzyme, a biotech firm headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., that develops medical treatments for ailments such as certain genetic diseases and some forms of cancer. In 1994, the company had less than $200 million in sales, and only about 1,000 employees-a stark contrast to its worldwide workforce of 11,000 today and the $4.6 billion in revenue it reported in 2008.

Ubuntu Server is a fast, free, no-frills Linux distribution that fills a niche between utilitarian Debian and the GUI-driven and, some would argue, over-featured Novell SUSE and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The business model used by Oracle and SAP is fundamentally flawed and will lead to their downfall within the next decade, said Technology One chairman Adrian Di Marco.

Computerworld's investigations into the most widely-used programming languages continues as we chat with Giancarlo Niccolai the creator of the Falcon programming language.

M&A industry veteran Paul Deninger, a vice chairman at Jefferies & Co., has made a living advising companies on mergers, acquisitions, IPOs and the like. But even he acknowledges that too much industry consolidation isn't a good thing for technology innovation. I spoke with Deninger this week about the state of the M&A market and whatÂ’s likely ahead.

Dilip Sarangan tracks physical security companies for Frost & Sullivan. He expects the industry's "need to have" products to weather the economic storm well, with the big players (now including IBM and Cisco) looking for value-priced acquisitions.

Two experts break down critical considerations in merger and acquisition activity.

Service-oriented architectures are helping companies do everything from automate business processes to increase agility, but implementing the technology is not necessarily forthright.

With LinuxWorld showcasing the popularity of the open source operating system, and with open source in general finding its legs in the enterprise, Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president of open source and standards, made a slate of predictions for Linux and open source during his keynote address on Wednesday at the Black Hat conference.

Reformed hacker-turned-security-consultant Kevin Mitnick served five years in federal prison for breaking into phone and software company networks. He talks about his past hacking exploits, computer security, and how he turned an illegal hobby into a useful career.