Larry Dignan

When Home Depot chief executive Robert Nardelli met with Wall Street analysts in January, he said the best way to judge the companys technology overhaul was to listen to the silence that surrounded it. “In 2004 alone, we completed several significant infrastructure projects including HR PeopleSoft and the largest SAP platform in the world,” Nardelli […]

AARP runs television spots panning the idea of allowing tens of millions of U.S. citizens to establish private accounts for their retirement, as part of the federal Social Security program. President Bush travels the country pitching these accounts as a way to modernize the system. Meanwhile, think tanks are busy trying to weigh the policy […]

School wasnt even in session, and Dartmouth College CIO Lawrence Levine was penning the kind of letter technology executives dread. To the College Community: Late Wednesday, July 28, [Dartmouth] confirmed that an unauthorized user had gained access to eight computer servers in the Berry Machine Room and apparently installed an unauthorized program … Because sensitive […]

Kristine Schmidt plays a lot of roles depending on what the day has in store for her: project manager, logistics and operations analyst, information-systems expert, or interpreter between top Waste Management Inc. executives and the folks driving the companys trash collection trucks. As fleet optimization manager for the New Jersey market area, her job is […]

Tony Scott, the chief technology officer of the worlds largest automaker, General Motors, is never shy about using his companys roughly $3 billion annual spend on hardware and software to bring change to how technology is procured. The latest inadequacy he intends to rectify: Buying complex pieces of code with little assurance that it will […]

Procter & Gamble chose a simple strategy for the first year of its $3 billion technology services outsourcing pact with Hewlett-Packard: Dont screw it up. No major restructuring of services or staff out of the gate. No high-cost implementations of new services or software. And, in particular, no interruption or degradation of the technology for […]

At a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Denton, Texas, a hallway leading to the retail floor has two pairs of gray and black, 6-foot-high silhouettes with yellow eye-like lights within 10 feet of each other. The mission: Detect and record goods that contain tags emitting radio waves. Down the road at a Hickory Creek store, printers from […]

Change your address for your Sports Illustrated subscription via phone, and you will “converse” with a robotic voice that cant understand how two towns can share a ZIP code. No amount of pressing “0” for an operator will get you help. The obvious fix: Provide an escape to reach an attendant. Or ring Comcast during […]

Wal-Mart expects to have more than 100 suppliers shipping products to the retailing giant with radio wave tracking devices by January, according to a top executive. Simon Langford, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.s manager for RFID (radio frequency identification) strategies, told Baseline that the retailer will have 137 suppliers in compliance with its RFID requirements by its […]

Are you ready to declare your company secure against attacks from cyberterrorists? If youre not, get moving. The odds are increasing that in the not-so-distant future, legislators will make corporate America adhere to yet-to-be-defined best practices in cybersecurity. Just as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 is designed to assure investors that corporate financial records are […]

Autumn Bayles, chief information officer for Tasty Baking Co., expects the May 11 Web services alliance between SAP and Microsoft to make it easier for the $250-million-a-year Philadelphia snack cake company to become more efficient. “Its definitely good for the future,” says Bayles, whose widely dispersed users operate SAP software, using Windows computers on their […]

Are you ready to declare your company secure against attacks from cyberterrorists? If youre not, get moving. The odds are increasing that in the not-so-distant future, legislators will make corporate America adhere to yet-to-be-defined best practices in cybersecurity. Just as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 is designed to assure investors that financial records of a […]