Anne Chen

With the economy still sagging, many retailers dont know exactly how much business to expect this make-or-break holiday shopping season. Fortunately for them, they can expect a major electronic partner, Visa International, to be ready to handle its usual peak load of 10 million-plus transactions per second, thanks to the recent successful completion of a […]

Imagine this: a consumer surfing the Internet logs on to the Travelocity.com site and books a vacation. The consumer then jumps to your site to book or check the status of an order. Having already been authenticated on the Travelocity site, the user is automatically logged on. Free from the need to remember and enter […]

CEOs and other corporate executives perceive their companies as unprepared to contend with, and are vulnerable to, security breaches, according to a study by KPMG LLC. In the report released today, 41 percent of those executives interviewed feel their firms are not equipped to handle a serious security attack. The conclusion of this survey of […]

Sometimes, first-mover advantage is not much of an advantage at all. Just last spring, Wall Street was punishing FedEx Corp. for missing out on the business-to-consumer-dominated first phase of the e-revolution. Then, Atlanta-based archrival United Parcel Service of America Inc. was delivering 55 percent of merchandise sold online compared with FedExs 10 percent, according to […]

If you build it, so the saying goes, they will come. But what if you lack the in-house expertise to build it in the first place? This was the dilemma facing Catherine Roth, CEO of Medepass Inc., a San Francisco company that was formed by the California Medical Association two years ago to verify the […]

In light of a weakening economy, corporate spending on e-business is going by the wayside. Executives polled by Forrester Research Inc., in Cambridge, Mass., expect their e-business budgets to decrease by nearly 6 percent. That is about 19 times greater than the 0.3 percent average budget cuts executives were expecting in May. And while only […]

You might think that Tony Scott, chief technology officer for IS and services at General Motors Corp., would be kissing fancy wireless initiatives goodbye. After all, the news released by the automotive company to Wall Street on Oct. 18 wasnt good. Hit by the slowing U.S. economy and the soaring cost of consumer incentives, the […]

Despite highly publicized security breaches this year such as Code Red, a surprising number of organizations are not planning to increase security spending over the next 18 months, a recent survey says. According to a report released Tuesday by Jupiter Media Metrix Inc. in New York, more than 46 percent of security budgets will shrink […]

Say youve spent millions of dollars and four years deploying and upgrading an ERP system, only to emerge from the trenches to find out that the rest of the world has moved on to wireless technologies. What do you do? If youre Chuck Hennon, CIO at The Lamson & Sessions Co., you start developing a […]

Youve just spent $280 million and the last six years executing an ERP-centric IT strategy only to find that, in some important ways, its incompatible with the companys e-business push. Meanwhile, the slowing economy is producing softening demand for your companys products and a need to cut costs. Oh yes, and lawsuits and restructuring charges […]

“Enrich your sex life!” “Receive a free listing on the International Executive Guild CD-ROM!” “Accept credit cards today!” If theres one thing Mark Yankowskas doesnt need, its another e-mail message trying to sell him some must-have product. Thats why, after too many mornings spent wading through spam in search of legitimate e-mail, Yankowskas, IT director […]

At RoTech Medical Corp. the decision came down four years ago: Let the penguin in. “Were always looking for better, faster and cheaper,” said Chief Technology Officer Albert Prast, in Orlando, Fla., who decided to use Linux to run a number of applications, including purchasing and billing. “By using Linux, we were able to use […]