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A while back, someone convinced U.S. businesses that if they outsourced work overseas, costs would fall off a cliff. The Wall Street lemmings jumped, believing they could fly, but instead plummeted to the depths of a global recession. Many of them are still falling, yet they continue to outsource their work offshore. "Many companies are looking to...

Part 1 of this two-part series takes a look at the increasing use of robotics systems to "man" the supply chain, along with some of the benefits and challenges this operational shift entails Recent developments in robotics are promising to reshape supply chainfundamentals. Specifically, robotic devices are improving warehouse operations to a degree...

Aberdeen's research shows a 16 percent increase in the number of organizations that are satisfied with the performance of business-critical applications since March of 2008. However, the disparity among respondents is profound. Ninety-three percent of Best-in-Class organizations are satisfied with their application performance, and only 48 percent...

Google is now field testing its PowerMeter software with over 10million customers of eight large utility partners in threecountries Google on Wednesday announced it's lining up energy companies so it canenlist the utilities' customers to start using the home energyconsumption software. PowerMeter helps consumers monitor their energyuse through data...

Smartphone sales worldwide grew 12.7 percent in the first quarter of 2009, according to recent figures from research firm Gartner Growth was led by Apple's iPhone, which doubled its market share, and by Research In Motion's BlackBerry phones, sales of which grew by almost 50 percent. While Nokia again topped smartphone unit sales, its share of the ...

The business and national security implications of a Global Positioning Satellite system failure would be too enormous to bear, and as a result, the prediction made in a recent U.S.Government Accountability Office report is unlikely to come to pass, a Gartner research analyst who follows the industry told TechNewsWorld on Wednesday However, busines...

It's difficult to imagine Google -- the market maker and breaker of allthings online-search related -- ever being dislodged from its perch as king ofthe hill. If there were a company that could do so, it would most likely beanother market maker -- say, Microsoft To be sure, Microsoft has made a number of attempts to crack thesearch market, to limit...

As the frequent news reports of data breaches attest, maintaining data security is a tough row to hoe -- even for large enterprises. It's even harder for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), which don't have the money or IT resources their larger counterparts have The plethora of threats is daunting, and new forms of attack have made the situa...

Today's column is a little different from the usual fare. Beagle Research Group has once again recognized a handful of companies with its annual WizKids award, this time for their innovations in front office computing. The idea behind the award -- and a report that goes with it -- is that innovation is happening all the time, and the best ideas can change our world. The 2009 WizKids all have that capability.

Though it's struggled when it comes to kicking in doors in the consumer market, Linux has clearly found a welcome home in the enterprise, and it appears to be making itself more comfortable with each passing day "It's the fastest-growing server-side operating system of any of them that are out there -- Unix, Windows, you name it," Jim Zemlin, execu...

Somewhere in the middle of the laptop/netbook/smartphone explosion, IT lost control. The days of IT issuing the same mobile device to all employees are all but gone. These days, different types of workers need different kinds of devices. Sometimes employees bring their personal devices into the workspace, adding another layer to IT's burden. On top of all that, there's the fact that underlying technologies in devices and apps are constantly changing. It's no wonder the IT world of neat little silos has all but vanished.

Dell's new education-themed netbook may look like it's aimed at kids, but it's really educators the Texas-based computer manufacturer is hoping to lure with the Latitude 2100 The 10.1-inch netbook is designed specifically for school environments, with rubbery non-slip surfaces, an optional antimicrobial keyboard and a telltale network activity ligh...

Napster's choice of a headphone-wearing cat for its logo has turned out to be quite appropriate. The grand-tabby of all digital music services enters its second decade apparently intent on using up every one of a feline's nine lives, with the latest reincarnation coming Monday in the form of a new business model The Los Angeles-based company -- pur...

Facebook is adding support for OpenID to its Web site, allowing usersaccess to the social media sign-on platform. Facebook is the standard's largest relaying party -- that is, the largest Web site accepting log-ins from OpenID The move is beneficial to Facebook because a great many of its users arelikely active on other social media sites, Sterling...

Device maker Palm and wireless carrier Sprint announced on Tuesday that the new Palm Pre handset will be made available on June 6 for US$199 after a $100 mail-in rebate Much has been expected from the Pre ever since it first surfaced in January. Both Palm and Sprint are in need of a hit -- the former's sales have experienced significant slowdowns i...

Zappos, online shoe emporium extraordinaire, has been expanding itsline of merchandise in recent years -- offering clothes, watches and otherjewelry, and even housewares. For the consumer, the shift has appearedeffortless -- just more categories to explore on the Web site.Behind the scenes, though, Zappos had to realign its warehouseoperations to accommodate the new items. Specifically, thesophisticated automated conveyor-based technology that routed the shoepurchases so well didn't work so well for anything else...

Mozilla on Monday announced the first alpha release of its Fennec mobile browser for the Windows Mobile 6 operating system (OS) This alpha is available only on the HTC Touch Pro from Sprint. Versions for other smartphones will be unveiled later.

Nowadays, being in IT means dealing with audits -- this is true regardless of whether you do business in a regulated industry (e.g., financial services, healthcare), whether you provide service to clients in those industries, or whether your organization has a non-vertical need for audit (i.e., you're a publicly traded company responsible for SOX compliance, or a retailer responsible for PCI compliance)...

For the past few weeks, the arrival of the new search engine Wolfram|Alpha was hyped as the next stage of search engine technology -- a "Google-killer," a new way to ask the Internet a direct question. So naturally, a few enterprising technology writers and bloggers wanted answers to some very specific queries when the Web site finally went live over the weekend...

AT&T is expanding its cloud computing product line with a storage play aimed at enterprise users who want to access data via their laptops, smartphones and other Web-accessible devices. Called "Synaptic Storage as a Service AT&T," it is a joint offering with EMC. Synaptic Storage as a Service gives users access to the AT&T network cloud to store, ...