Matthew Hicks

Not long ago, Internet visionaries such as Sun Microsystems Inc. Chairman and CEO Scott McNealy were confidently predicting the emergence of smart, Web-connected consumer appliances. You remember the idea: Smart refrigerator detects critically low milk level, sends urgent e-mail to Webvan Group Inc. and, boom, fresh milk on the doorstep the next morning. Breakfast saved. […]

Consider this: each year, more people in the United States die from medical errors in hospitals than from highway accidents, breast cancer or AIDS. This statistic, issued in 1999 by a private Washington-based research organization, the Institute of Medicine, startled health care providers throughout the country. But officials at CareGroup Healthcare System, a network of […]

On Wall Street, a week after the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, it seemed almost like business as usual. Traders returned to their trading desks and logged on to trading systems that, because of well-executed disaster recovery plans, in most cases returned online with no losses of data. Behind the scenes, however, it […]

Having a disaster recovery plan that covers alternative work space is one thing, but knowing that it will work when you need it is another. The only way you can know for sure is to test the plan before a disaster strikes. Too often, though, testing of business continuity plans is an afterthought, experts say. […]

Executives at Motorola Inc. were stunned last March when vitriolic e-mail messages began pouring in to the companys customer service department and even the CEOs office. Motorolas supposed crime? Sending out spam, according to angry customers who had received multiple unsolicited e-mail messages from a company that appeared to be a Motorola distributor or retailer […]

When, in June, independent e-marketplace ChemConnect Inc. announced plans to merge with chemical industry consortia-backed exchange Envera LLC, it could have easily been seen as an act of desperation, an admission of defeat. But it was far from that. Although the consortia behind Envera included industry giants, it was actually ChemConnect that came out on […]

Theres no doubt about it. Once the darlings of investors and New Economy gurus, business-to-business e-marketplaces have fallen on hard times. Analysts expect their numbers, estimated at about 1,000 or more last year, to plunge to a few hundred this year. Among the hardest hit have been the early independent players—those e-marketplace companies launched as […]

Even today, with vendors touting web services as loudly as street corner newspaper hawkers, their success will depend largely on the ability of those competitors and software developers to develop more standards on which they can agree, experts say. Its standards, after all, that allow Web services to overcome the barriers of different programming languages, […]

Give Tim Hilgenberg some new toys, and like any good IT leader, hell find a way to build a better e-business. Just recently, Hilgenberg, chief technology officer of applications at Hewitt Associates LLC, has begun toying with the emerging concept of Web services. And already, he said, hes found just enough blocks to begin to […]

The year 2000 started with a New Years resolution at GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corp. that sent the IT department scrambling. The Horsham, Pa., companys chairman and CEO, David Creamer, issued a mandate that the commercial lenders internal processes become paperless by years end. With the company planning to expand its international operations by adding a […]

Youve got to feel for Gene Bolmarcich. As trademark counsel at Caterpillar Inc., in Peoria, Ill., Bolmarcich already spends huge chunks of his time as a watchdog, protecting the companys online brand—and its 600 registered .com, .net and .org URLs—from cybersquatters. Now, with two official new top-level domains—.biz and .info—set to go live this fall […]

Enterprises trying to navigate domain names are discovering that a little help from service providers can send them in the right direction. Assistance is coming from more and more registrars that once simply served as the middlemen in registering a Web address. Now they are designing services to help corporations do everything from consolidate and […]