Archive for April, 2004

Get Up to Speed on Utility Computing

by eleanor on 28 Apr 2004 @ 9:53 am in Emergent   ++

Get Up to Speed on Utility Computing | CNET News.com - a good reference article to get started.

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Dell has $60 billion in sight

by eleanor on 22 Apr 2004 @ 6:49 pm in Enterprise IT   ++

Dell has $60 billion in sight | CNET News.com
Back in 2002, the company announced that it wished to hit the $60 billion mark within the next few years. It was a fairly ambitious goal for Dell, which at the time had revenue of about half that–$31 billion. Dell garnered $37 billion in fiscal 2003 and $41 billion in fiscal 2004, growth rates of 17 percent and 20 percent, respectively.

“I’m pleased to note that we’re tracking ahead of our plan,” CEO Dell said Thursday.

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McNealy: Don'’t dismiss us in data centers

by eleanor on 20 Apr 2004 @ 7:22 pm in Enterprise IT   ++

NetworkWorld Fusion, Interview with Sun’s Scott McNealy:
On SW strategy:

WaveSet and a bunch of the other acquisitions are part of our Java Web services stack, the platform on which you write and launch executable content and Web services content through a portal. N1 is where stuff like Pirus, CenterRun and TerraSpring come in. They are all about virtualizing and provisioning CPUs, disk drives, switches and services.

On web services infratstructure:

And with Java runtimes everywhere, you can create executable content and execute that on any microprocessor operating system. It allows people who write to the Java Enterprise System to do static and nonstatic content and run it on a portfolio of microprocessor architectures and implementations without having to change one bit of their user interface.

With N1 they don’t have to change their network administration and systems management, and with Java they don’t have to rewrite their applications. Some day the customer is not even going to know [what microprocessors they’re using]. Do you know there are about 100 microprocessors in your automobile today? How many of them can you name? How many of the operating systems [on them] can you name, and does it matter to you? ….

There will always be different kinds of loads placed upon the Web services infrastructure. Some will require 64-bit; some will require 32-bit; some will require high clock rates; others will require absolute failover and retry and other kinds of availability measures. There will be all kinds of different parts of that infrastructure that will require different load optimization, and there will be no one chip or no one architecture that will provide all of the general-purpose and specific capabilities that a Web infrastructure would want to offer. So we’ll use whatever engine and just bury it into that infrastructure in a way that the customer doesn’t have to deal with it and they won’t have to rewrite their applications.

The overall vision:

So when you look at putting all of the pieces together - the edge servers, the back-end servers, the storage, the switches and load balancers, the clustering software and N1, the services and support, the applications, tuning, loading and configuration, the upgrading and remote monitoring and all the rest - we can put all that together, and we are the low-cost producer in terms of delivering a complete, assembled environment. There are a lot of folks out there that think it’s cheaper to go out and buy the piston ring, the camshaft, the carburetor and the engine block and get all of the pieces cheaper than you can buy a complete engine. But by the time you get through assembling it, it ain’t cheaper. We’ve got a pretty interesting and compelling story, unless you’re going out for the cheapest piston ring and then Dell’s got an advantage - maybe.

Source: McNealy: Don’t dismiss us in data centers

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Pharma Retail Group Forms to Jumpstart RFID Adoption

by eleanor on @ 6:28 pm in Emergent   ++

Absent a government mandate or a channel master demanding compliance, a cross-functional group is a reasonable way to explore the potential of RFID technology. The members are not the industry’s largest players, but are significant manufacturers, distributors and retailers: Abbott Laboratories, Barr Pharmaceuticals, Cardinal Health, CVS Pharmacy, Johnson & Johnson, McKesson, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble and Rite Aid. In addition, two major industry associations, the Healthcare Distribution Management Association and National Association of Chain Drug Stores, are providing educational support and industry information to their respective memberships. Accenture is lending its professional services organization to manage the effort.

Source: Computerworld Accenture Leads Initial RFID Rollout for Drug Supply Chains, Commentary by GartnerPharma Retail Group Forms to Jumpstart RFID Adoption

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IT ‘Shadow Spending’ Has Doubled - Computerworld

by eleanor on 14 Apr 2004 @ 7:12 pm in Datapoints   ++

Computerworld has a piece, IT ‘Shadow Spending’ Has Doubled, discussing an undercurrent within IT spending that could have a large impact upon how sales are made.

In the late 1990s, shadow IT spending was estimated to be 10% of the formal IT budget. Most of the shadow IT spending was due to support and training shortfalls from formal IT. Business-unit resources often provide informal support for various technologies and applications as users seek “how to” or technical assistance from local peer experts rather than the service desk. This informal support mechanism was estimated to be four times more costly than formal support. By improving service levels and running public relations campaigns to improve the image of the service desk, CIOs sought to reduce this hidden cost and, in turn, reduce shadow IT. Such best-practice efforts were effective for many companies — often resulting in 40% reductions in shadow IT costs.

But today’s new form of shadow IT spending is much more costly and extremely difficult to manage. Recent research estimates that shadow IT spending has doubled from 2000 to 2003 to consume 20% of total IT spending in the average organization. According to our research, the average U.S. company spent around 3.7% of revenue on IT in 2003, or $10,283 per employee. With rogue spending at 20% of the official IT budget, shadow spending adds more than $2,000 per employee. In several organizations where the business was rapidly changing (typically because of mergers and acquisitions) and formal IT spending was severely constrained, we found shadow IT expenses as high as formal IT spending.

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Salesforce.com Adds Customization Tools to CRM Suite

by eleanor on 13 Apr 2004 @ 4:57 pm in Emergent | Enterprise IT   ++

The spring ‘04 release of Salesforce.com’s CRM suite allows customers to create custom tabs to fit their specific businesses and industries with simple point-and-click selections….
Business administrators can use Salesforce.com Studio, a point-and-click tool, to create new tabs, forms, objects or applications. Security features allow administrators to hide tabs from certain users and to control which users can enter data into fields. The tool also allows administrators to define relationships between objects and to view those relationships in the user interface…..
Salesforce.com released the latest edition to all 9,500 companies that subscribe to its hosted CRM service. The service allows customers to access all of Salesforce.com’s CRM applications on the Internet rather than buying and installing software at their own sites. Benioff said the company will continue to upgrade its suite every four months…..
For developers, Salesforce.com unveiled Version 3.0 of sforce, the San Francisco-based company’s hosted application development environment. New in Version 3.0 is support for IBM’s WebSphere application server, originally announced in February. Salesforce.com already supported BEA Systems Inc.’s WebLogic application server and development tools from Sun Microsystems Inc., Borland Inc. and Microsoft.
Sforce 3.0 also includes new database mirroring APIs, enhanced query capabilities and increased management of relationships between object.

Source: Salesforce.com Adds Customization Tools to CRM Suite

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Bank of America Taps Fidelity For Human-Resources Work

by eleanor on 12 Apr 2004 @ 6:25 pm in Enterprise IT   ++

Fidelity Investments said it has been chosen by Bank of America Corp. to provide administrative services for its human-resources operations, payrolls and benefits programs covering about 250,000 employees and retirees.

Fidelity will provide the services under a seven-year contract with Bank of America, Charlotte, N.C., which recently completed its purchase of FleetBoston Financial Corp. Fidelity began providing such services to FleetBoston earlier this year.

As a result of the Bank of America deal, and its earlier arrangement with FleetBoston, Fidelity expects to create 375 new jobs in its Marlborough, Mass., and Merrimack, N.H., operations…
Peter J. Smail, president of Fidelity Employer Services Co., called the arrangement “a significant milestone” in the company’s fast-growing benefits-outsourcing business. Fidelity, the nation’s largest mutual-fund company with about $1 trillion under management, has been making a big push in the area to make the firm less reliant on the swings of the stock market.

Source: The Wall St. Journal Bank of America Taps Fidelity For Human-Resources Work

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Why your mass e-mail requests get ignored | CNET News.com

by eleanor on @ 5:25 pm in Strategy-Marketing | Datapoints   ++

Interesting research from Greg Barron, a research fellow at Harvard Business School, and research partner Eldad Yechiam, a postdoctoral research fellow at Indiana University’s Department of Psychology (primarily on email yielded this insight:

In biology, and more recently in economics, the theory of honest signaling provides some possible insights. According to the theory, signals that are costly to produce and send provide a mechanism by which two parties can have reliable communication, despite conflicting interests (Zahavi’s handicap principle). Examples include male peacocks that use costly ornaments to display quality to potential mates and baby birds that use costly begging calls to display hunger.

Interesting for what impact it has on corporate signalling, specifically what IBM is doing with Linux and On Demand, and HP with its Adaptive Enterprise.
Sources: originally read on CNET Why your mass e-mail requests get ignored | CNET News.com, more infomation available on the HBS website at

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Unisys CEO to step down

by eleanor on @ 5:04 pm in Enterprise IT   ++

Lawrence Weinbach will leave as CEO of Unisyz in January 2005 and has stepped down from his position as president. However, Weinbach, who has been CEO, president and chairman of the company since 1997, will stay on as chairman through January 2006.
Unisys also announced that Joseph W. McGrath, previously corporate executive VP and president of Unisys’ Enterprise Transformation Services unit, has been named president and chief operating officer. George R. Gazerwitz, head of the Systems and Technology practice, has been appointed vice chairman.

Source: Unisys CEO to step down | CNET News.com

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Gateway in the News

by eleanor on 2 Apr 2004 @ 4:08 pm in Emergent | Enterprise IT   ++

Two news items from Gateway this week:

On 26 March, Gateway announced a new leadership team, incorporating many executives from eMachines into their senior management. They’ve segmented sales into retail/consumer channels and professional. The “Professional” group will be headed by Scott Weinbrandt, previously Gateway’s SVP/GM of enterprise systems and professional business services. In the new structure, he will run sales activities in the Professional segment, which includes public sector, SMB and corporate/strategic accounts.
It’s unclear who will be picking up the enterprise systems and prof svcs business, or if Gateway will manage and sell those products through this vertical approach. This is important because Gateway’s Utility Computing initiative was run from the old group. This new go-to-market plan might strengthen Gateway’s ability to sell and serve enterprise customers.

On 1 April, Gateway announced that it will close its retail stores on 9 April and will shift its retail strategy behind the strong relationships that eMachines (acquisition completed 11 March) has with retailers. They will lay off all store employees, affecting about 2,500 people. The impact of this may be positive, allowing Gateway concentrate on it its core businesses of design and production, and pssibly focus more on enterprise customers and services.

Sources: Gateway Computers - Press Releases

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Delta’s 2nd test of RFID baggage

by eleanor on @ 11:31 am in Emergent   ++

Pat Rary, manager for baggage planning and development at Delta, said the Atlanta-based company plans to test every bag checked in on its Jacksonville, Fla.-Atlanta route during the 30-day test. Rary, speaking here at the RFID Journal Executive Conference, said Delta would use 20,000 RFID tags from Alien Technology Corp. in Morgan Hill, Calif., and another 20,000 tags from Matrics Inc. in Columbia, Md. The tags operate at a frequency of 915 MHz, the same frequency that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to use in its supply chain.

RFID bag tracking offers a “significant ROI” for Delta, Rary said. He declined to provide details, except to say the airline spends “tens of millions of dollars” in locating 800,000 misdirected bags a year. Delta handles 70 million pieces of luggage annually.

Even so, installing RFID bag-tracking systems at all Delta locations to serve the airline’s 7,000-plus daily flights remains a very expensive proposition, he said, and the airline has no plans to launch it systemwide.

Anthony “Buzz” Cerino, communications security technology lead at the TSA, said international airlines such as Delta face a standards problem when they send RFID-tagged bags to international destinations. That’s because different countries have approved different frequencies for RFID use. Japan uses 955 MHz for RFID tags, Cerino said, while U.S. tags operate at 915 MHz.

Later this year, Cerino said, TSA plans to test tags programmed at one frequency to see if they can be read at another frequency in the relatively narrow 900-MHz band. If these tests are successful, it would demonstrate “international interoperability,” Cerino said.

Source: Delta begins second RFID bag tag test - Computerworld

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Wal-Mart RFID pilot: Detail about timings, deadlines and success

by eleanor on @ 11:27 am in Emergent   ++

Gus Whitcomb, a spokesman for the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer, declined to identify which of Wal-Mart’s 18 pharmaceutical suppliers will make the RFID deadline or say how many won’t do so. But he said Wal-Mart expects noncompliant suppliers to meet its directive by the end of June.

Whitcomb declined to provide further details, citing a commitment to security that was made with the pharmaceutical suppliers.

The March 31 date marks the first in a series of deadlines facing Wal-Mart’s suppliers. Wal-Mart has told its top 100 suppliers that it expects them to comply with a January 2005 deadline to affix RFID tags to pallets and cases they ship to its three distribution centers in Texas. The remainder of the suppliers are expected to comply by the start of 2006.

Next month, eight of the top 100 suppliers will begin a test involving selected products shipped to one of Wal-Mart’s distribution centers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Whitcomb said. The test will ultimately expand to Wal-Mart’s other two distribution centers in the Dallas-Fort Worth region, but Whitcomb said the timing will depend on how the first test goes.
Source: Some pharmaceutical suppliers won’t meet Wal-Mart RFID deadline - Computerworld

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