Peter Coffee

The task of it project planning and portfolio management depends on financially sophisticated assumptions and calculations, and benefits from experience in thinking about how to structure and present comparisons and conclusions. That sophistication and experience are clearly reflected in the design and function of the ValueIT Version 3.21 suite from Alinean LLC. Merely by looking […]

The job of information technology is to inform. This means that IT professionals must be involved in the debate over how IT tools shape the presentation of data and steer decision-making processes. The coming years IT budgets are sure to see proposals for the cinematic video and other multimedia technologies that were prominent on the […]

Like the stars of the night sky, project spending stands out in the enterprise technology budget: Both are obvious targets for observation and analysis but represent only the smallest and most obvious fraction of whats happening out there. Maintenance, upgrades and other efforts are the “dark matter” of the IT universe—difficult to measure but powerfully […]

When off-the-shelf Mac G5s are assembled into the worlds third-fastest computer, as Virginia Techs Terascale Cluster is currently ranked, its clear that once-exotic levels of supercomputing power are available to anyone who wants them. Whats more, that so-called Big Mac 2,200-processor system, which took six months to build at a cost of only about $5 […]

Sun Microsystems Inc. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., have had their challenges over the past couple of years, but last week the heads of each Silicon Valley stalwart announced news that could lead to brighter days. Sun, of Santa Clara, Calif., unveiled a major customer win with China, along with innovative new technologies, and AMD, […]

The worst thing that could happen to Web services technology is that it becomes defined by a single vendor. Enterprises that want to retain platform choice must demonstrate a preference for multivendor standards, such as the Basic Profile definition of service interoperability that was put forth by the Web Services Interoperability Organization and that gained […]

With Mondays announcement of the Java Card 2.2.1 specification, Sun Microsystems Inc. demonstrates that the fundamental issues of next-generation IT apply across the entire spectrum of devices—from the largest server farms, to the richest desktop and portable clients, all the way down to the most minimal device that can still carry executable content. No matter […]

LAS VEGAS—Opening a Comdex that badly needed proof of the shows continuing relevance, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates delivered his traditional Sunday night keynote. /zimages/6/28571.gifClick here for more coverage of Bill Gates Comdex Las Vegas 2003 keynote address. Remembering his first appearance in 1983, Gates declared that the PC industry at that […]

This is the first year in my 16 years of November trips to the desert that people actually seem surprised Im making time to go to Comdex. The show wont be painfully crowded this year, but neither will it be a ghost town, and the floor will feature long-absent logos including those of both Intel […]

When people say “wireless,” they usually mean infrared or radio for connection over distance. The capacitive coupling used by IBM, in its Collective Intelligent Brick storage prototypes, is wireless, but it is not for remote control. CIB depends on actual contact between the faces of stackable enclosures. Capacitive coupling lets engineers push an electrical signal […]

If Microsofts professional developers conference were a baseball game, Microsoft would have gone three for three: good base hits, though none of them home runs. The portfolio of technologies shown at the conference in Los Angeles late last month was substantially standards-based, appropriately compatible with what has come before and capable of changing the way […]

Concurrent with last months release of other components of Microsoft Corp.s , the company released a 2003 version of Project that is aimed at improved interaction with mainstream Office tools and data stores. In eWEEK Labs review of Project 2003, which starts at $599, with upgrade prices beginning at $349, we found an impressive effort […]