Robert Hertzberg

The biggest technology companies have been pouring resources into product development, but dont look for a burst of innovative new business applications anytime soon. A lot of the industrys recent R&D spending has been on consumer products—things such as games and Internet services. To the extent that companies are developing business applications, their focus is […]

The surge of online buying around Valentines Day has begun, and 1-800-Flowers.com is prepared. More precisely, it has been prepared for weeks. On Valentines Day and the two days leading up to it, the number of transactions handled by the Carle Place, N.Y.-based retailer jumps to 10 times its usual level. Its like the accountant […]

Technology mergers and acquisitions jumped 48 percent in 2006, helped by high liquidity worldwide and an increase in buyouts outside the United States. Technology M&A grew to $244.1 billion from $164.6 billion in 2005. That made 2006 the biggest year for technology mergers since 2000, according to Innovation Advisors, a New York-based investment bank that […]

Most enterprise technology companies had strong growth in the fourth quarter, with IBM and Microsoft benefiting from strong sales of software, and EMC and Citrix from acquisitions. The average sales growth among technology companies was 16 percent, according to an analysis by Baseline. The magazine looked at 17 companies with market capitalizations in excess of […]

Gartner analyst French Caldwell has been covering governance, compliance and risk management since 2002. In a recent conversation with Baseline, he spoke about the regulatory developments affecting information-technology executives. Those include Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley, which requires public companies to have certain internal controls in place, and indications that the Securities and Exchange Commission and […]

In parts of the business world, the term “Sarbanes-Oxley” has become synonymous with overbearing and counterproductive regulation. But the legislation itself may have improved things for some top information-technology executives. Five years after the U.S. Department of Justice began investigating Enron, the changed legal environment of which SarbOx is the most visible part has given […]

Technology mergers and acquisitions are forecast to jump 40 percent next year, as private equity companies flush with cash increase their activities in the sector. That increase would follow this years projected increase of 50 percent, says Eric Gebaide, a managing director at Innovation Advisors. The New York-based investment banking firm recently released a report […]

The enterprise version of Windows Vista is now available, but many companies will not immediately discard XP and upgrade to Microsofts latest operating system. Thats the consensus of chief information officers and consultants who have been evaluating Vista in recent months. Most big companies will wait at least a year before deploying Vista to make […]

With the Nov. 7 midterm elections nearing, computer experts are sounding an alarm about possible problems with the electronic systems that two in every five voters will be using. And more recently, there has been criticism of the Defense Departments decision to let some overseas military personnel send in their votes via E-mail. The Defense […]

Most big technology companies had strong sales growth in the third quarter, with the search giant Google and the Indian outsourcing firm Wipro leading the way. On average, sales at big technology companies advanced 19% in the quarter ended Sept. 30. Baseline looked at 17 companies with market capitalizations in excess of $1 billion. The […]