Stan Gibson

United Parcel Service of America Inc. is on the march, expanding into new markets globally and developing new lines of business, such as outsourced supply chain management solutions. At the same time, the company is not neglecting its core package shipping business and last week announced an enhanced shipping system called Package Flow Technologies, which […]

The New York Board of Trade has come home. Two years after losing its trading floor and primary computer facilities to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the NYBOT, the commodities exchange that specializes in coffee, sugar, cocoa and other soft goods, has returned to its old neighborhood of lower Manhattan. The official opening of the […]

Our government must get its digital act together. Right now, it has a long way to go. Consider Caron Carlsons report on government data gathering practices. Not many of us would want our personal data to be obtained and sold for profit to the government by a data broker. And yet, the FBIs use of […]

Its certainly nice to know that Oracle has been working on more than just new ways to annoy PeopleSoft. We editorialized recently that Oracle should get back to the job of building a better database, so its encouraging to note that Oracle is doing just that. As Lisa Vaas reports, Oracle will announce in September […]

Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive of IBMs Software Group, is in the software integration business—integration not only in the sense of expanding the companys current $13 billion software business but also in the sense of integrating the companies acquired as part of the software strategy. eWEEK Editor in Chief Eric Lundquist and […]

In their willingness to pay top dollar for top talent, Bill Gates and George Steinbrenner have a lot in common. They also have a tradition of winning that brings out resentment from frustrated opponents. Some see in Microsofts current hiring push, reported by Darryl Taft, an attempt to corner the market for programming talent, just […]

If you want something done right, do it yourself. Just ask Jerry McElhatton. MasterCards president of global technology and operations says the global payments companys information technology is too strategic to outsource. “Our products and services are so key to us that we have to control them,” he told me in an interview. The reason: […]

MasterCard International Inc.s investment in IT is paying dividends, particularly in the companys race with archrival Visa International Service Association. “What [MasterCard is] trying to do is turn a cost center into a profit center. Thats a good thing to do considering what theyve spent on IT,” said Avivah Litan, an analyst with Gartner Inc., […]

With 65 percent of corporate revenues derived from IT initiatives, MasterCard International Inc.s systems are highly strategic, especially in its ongoing quest to best archrival Visa International Service Association. But getting to this point wasnt easy. It entailed a massive eight-year rearchitecting of the global payments companys data center and ne twork. The recently completed […]

Coopetition is alive and well. that 90s buzzword is back in circulation if this weeks Web services roundtable is any indication. Although the roundtable participants—with eWEEK Technology Editor Peter Coffee acting as referee—bob and weave, professing cooperation and interoperability around standards above all else, they each bring something distinctly different to the table. That means, […]

Handing everything over to outsourcers would seem like the ultimate in hands-off management. Not at General Motors Corp. On the contrary, the GM way is to outsource everything and yet control everything. Its not a contradiction when you have the muscle of a $3.5 billion IT budget on your side. Wielding that immense buying power […]

In the auto industry, the watchword used to be “Follow the General.” In the months and years ahead, well see if the maxim still applies. If it does, the way IT services are consumed by the worlds largest companies will never be the same. For General Motors to exert the influence that Ralph Szygenda and […]