Articles by Laura DiDio

Maintaining and increasing research and development (R&D) spending in the COVID-19 era is critical for high technology vendors to deliver new solutions and services, continue to innovate, and position their businesses to rebound from the negative effects of the global pandemic COVID-19 has been disastrous for business around the globe. The novel co...

We have met the enemy and he is us Pogo's philosophical observation perfectly describes the way IT and security professionals view their end users' attitude toward data security.

Lenovo Group's US$2.3 billion deal to purchase IBM's low-end, commodity x86 Server portfolios, related resources and operations is an all-around win for everyone involved The sale of the IBM x86 servers has been rumored for well over a year, as Big Blue grappled with continuing pressure on its low-margin x86 servers....

Pardon the pun, but there's nothing elementary about IBM's Watson Business Unit. IBM's Watson initiative takes cognitive computing to the head of the class IBM last week announced it was committing US$1 billion and 2,000 employees -- as well as its considerable research and development talents and marketing muscle -- to Watson. This effectively pu...

This story was originally published on Aug. 4, 2012, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series. It was a busy summer for Microsoft and chief executive Steve Ballmer....

To say that Microsoft has a lot riding on its imminent Windows 8 launch is to have a magnificentgrasp of the obvious. By now, most of us have heard the reports that Microsoft will spend a whopping US$1.5 to $1.8billion in an all-out Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT Surface tablet marketing blitz. Microsoftdeclined to confirm the figure, saying it never comments on such matters. Just this week, however, thecompany did release two pertinent numbers: $39.99 and $499; that is the introductory list priceof Windows 8 and the retail price of the Windows 8 Surface Tablet, respectively...

Is Microsoft Bottoming Out? - Part 1 You'd think that Microsoft was all but dead, judging by some of the industry scuttlebutt. Microsoft'stactical and strategic technology and business missteps are well publicized and dissected adinfinitum.

It's been a busy summer for Microsoft and chief executive Steve Ballmer In recent weeks, the software giant released customer previews and ship dates for the newestversions of its flagship Windows and Office products; purchased Yammer, a cloud-basedenterprise social networking company; hosted its annual Worldwide Partners Conference (WPC)in Toronto...

The honeymoon is over for Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. In fact, it ended before it began Facebook's long-awaited and much-hyped IPO is just over a week old, and the blame game is onas the company has lost 16 percent of its value since the initial offering. Wall Street's take on Facebook has gone from jubilant to jaundiced....

It pays to advertise, right? Not necessarily, as Oracle found out when it tangled with IBM recently over advertisements in which Oracle claimed its servers were faster and much less expensive than IBM hardware. Unlike Oracle's ongoing Java copyright and patent infringement suit against Google, which has been grabbing a lot of headlines in the pa...

Let's be frank: The main reason Oracle's latest quarterly revenues nosedived was backlash from users fed up with two years of price hikes on products, technical support, maintenance and licensing contracts -- and not because of a correction in the overall server hardware market Yes, it's true that the latest quarterly financials of other high-techn...

It's time for corporations to wise up and use the latest, most effective weapons to safeguard and secure their data. High-tech devices, software applications, emails, user accounts, social media and networks -- even those presumed safe -- are being hacked with alarming alacrity and ease. ...

2011: The Year to Date, Part 2 Google is facing growing and well-deserved criticism from the Humane Society, the ASPCA and animal rights activists who are outraged over an Android app called "Dog Wars." The video game, built by Kage Games, glorifies dog fighting and depicts a bloodied pit bull next to the game's logo on Kage's website.

2011: The Year to Date, Part 1 In contrast to Apple's stunning success, the first calendar quarter of 2011 was a revolving door for other Silicon Valley companies and executives. There were management shifts, shakeups and ousters at AMD, Google, HP and Microsoft. They were variously aimed at jump-starting product momentum (AMD, Microsoft), polish...

It's hard to believe, but the first quarter of 2011 is now a memory and we're well into spring. The tone for the year in high technology was set in early January: fast, bold, aggressive action and sweeping management changes. In the first four months of the year, high-tech vendors moved quickly and decisively to seize opportunities in established ...

Don't look now, but Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 R2 tied with IBM's perennially bullet-proof AIX v7. Both were rated by corporate users as the most secure among 18 major server operating system distributions Nine out of 10 -- 90 percent -- of the 468 respondents to ITIC's 2010-2011 Global Server Hardware and Server OS Reliability survey rated th...

It's thinner. It's faster. It's here. It's... sold out "It" is the iPad 2. With about 600,000 iPad 2 units sold in the first three days of shipment -- a pace of sales roughly twice as fast as last year's initial product launch -- the iPad can now officially take its place in the pantheon of celebrated phenomena alongside the hula hoop, the Rubik's...

Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla have a lot in common with Apple, Google, HTC, Motorola, and Research In Motion. They are all warriors in the ongoing war to see who can amass the largest number of the most lucrative technology patents. Edison and Tesla waged their battle from the late 1860s through the 1920s, and the stakes were just as high then as they are now. ...

Memo to Larry Ellison: The Roman Coliseum halted gladiator combats around 435 A.D. SAP has thrown in the towel and has no interest in continuing a court battle. HP executives are refusing to accept service on your subpoenas, and HP's newly named chief executive Leo Apotheker is lying low, presumably dodging your increasingly vituperative verbal assaults. You've got no takers for the bloody, bare knuckles brawl you crave. What does that tell you? ...

Windows 7 is now officially a year old. Since it was released October 22, 2009, Microsoft has sold more than 200 million copies of the operating system -- approximately seven copies per second. That makes it the fastest-selling operating system in Microsoft's -- or any vendor's -- history. Windows 7 sales could top 300 million within the next six to eight months.