Peter Coffee

More information enables better decisions. Isnt that the premise behind almost every IT pitch? Yet adding data can actually worsen the decision-making process. Understanding how this can happen and knowing how to avoid it is the kind of thing that makes someone a real CIO—instead of just being a head of IT with a CxO […]

One might think Id be delighted to report last weeks OASIS Standard acceptance of the Web Services Security specification set, including the much-needed SOAP Message Security 1.0. Previous absence of security from the Simple Object Access Protocol has been on my personal radar for almost four years. Because SOAP messages have the form of ordinary […]

A little less than a year ago, I remarked in this space that seat belts werent always standard equipment in cars but that we expect them today as a basic safety feature. Its nice to be able to note that the same sort of transition is finally gaining momentum in mainstream IT, with crucial platform […]

Many IT security efforts fail in the short run by ignoring or even conflicting with IT users, or fail in the long run by burying IT operators under an avalanche of bewildering and disorganized details. We were therefore pleased when two new books that avoid these errors crossed our threshold, within days of each other, […]

WINNER Celequest Corp.s Celequest 2.0 Activity Suite Celequest Business Activity Suite, winner of this years Excellence Award for Analytics & Reporting, attracted the judges attention with its event-driven approach. It abstracts information from operational systems and data warehouses to put time- sensitive numbers in context, and it combines developer-friendly tools with user-friendly monitors and alerts. […]

WINNER Microsoft Corp.s Visual Studio .Net 2003 Considering Microsofts dominant role in tools and languages, its surprising that this is the companys first Excellence victory in this strategic category. Looking back at judges comments over the last several years, we find that previous entries have triggered concerns about whether the company was pushing too quickly […]

Now making their fourth annual appearance, the eWEEK Excellence Awards have become the gold standard for recognizing value in enterprise infrastructure innovation. Considering only products and services that are genuinely new and genuinely available, each years screening of hundreds of entries produces a valuable shopping list—not only a guide to whats good but also an […]

Is speech recognition a stupid computer trick, or a much-needed feature that finally works? Thats the question that developers need to answer in the wake of last weeks launch of Microsofts Speech Server 2004. The question must quickly be narrowed down into more specific terms. Speech recognition can mean almost anything. At one extreme, it […]

Steve McConnells 1993 book, “Code Complete,” is one of the few software development titles that a huge fraction of programmers claim to have read. Its second edition is due in June, and impatient coders overfilled a ballroom at the Santa Clara (Calif.) Convention Center when McConnell previewed his updated thoughts at the Software Development West […]

IT buyers expect CRM efforts to unify customer contact processes and sharpen their competitive edge, help them retain customers, and identify and acquire new customers. So said several hundred participants at a Ziff Davis Media eSeminar, “Best Practices for Customer Relationship Management,” convened earlier this month and available in archive form at www.webseminarslive.com. Alternative CRM […]

“BDUF-YAGN” is not yet a popular acronym, but it characterizes the pendulum-swing behavior of software development fads. So suggested Steve McConnell, chief software engineer at Construx Software and acclaimed author of “Code Complete” and other highly regarded books on development practices, during his standing-room-only keynote speech at the Software Development West conference earlier this month. […]

This weeks European Union ruling, concerning charges that Microsoft has abused its market power, has resurrected questions about the companys conduct that have been largely ignored for more than a year. Looking back over columns and news analyses that I wrote at various points of the U.S. antitrust case against Microsoft, I find that some […]