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The concept of five nines availability has its roots inserver deployment. That standard demands that the IT department orthe service provider hired by an enterprise deliver access toapplications and data 99.999 percent of the time Even with today's migration to cloud storage and SaaS (Software as aService) product delivery, much can happen to exten...

The reported acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle makes a ton more sense than IBM's earlier failed bid. This new compact, if it succeeds, will bring as good an end to an independent Sun as the pioneering (yet long flagging) IT vendor could have hoped for at this sorry stage in its history However, there are much larger implications in Oracle's...

Partner relationship management has an intriguing business case: It applies the concepts and tools of customer relationship management to the business relationships that also affect a company's customer base. The problem with PRM is that it hasn't caught on -- for myriad reasons, starting with its expense and difficulty in implementation. Enter th...

With the release of Ubuntu 9.04 last week, it's not too surprising that few other topics got much attention on the Linux blogs in the ensuing days Yes, there was a rather intriguing discussion of porn and piracy over on DaniWeb and LXer; and yes, a moderately active conversation fired up the Slashdot community following Keir Thomas's post about "Go...

Apple was having a good month until last week. Sales were up explosively -- at least, for the iPhone and iPod -- but all of that good news was trashed when the company first allowed a questionable application onto the iPhone and then killed it without explanation. Already, the tone surrounding Apple appears to be changing. It often seems as thoug...

Apparently, all that small type that recently appeared at the top of your Facebook page -- directly above the "What's On Your Mind?" status box -- was actually about something important That may sum up the feelings of many of the social network's members after Facebook on Thursday announced the results of a community vote regarding site governance....

Google has rolled out a mobile-friendly version of its Product Search feature for iPhone and Android-powered devices Google Product Search is a search engine that works much as the name indicates: Users type in keywords relevant to what they're seeking -- "garnet rings," for instance -- and the feature delivers likely prospects from various shoppin...

Nothing is as heart-wrenching to an e-tailer as watching a customer abandon a full cart just seconds before consummating the deal. To be so close yet so cashless is more than frustrating; it's harmful to an e-tailer's health. A virtual armory of tools are in use to woo, cajole, prompt and push consumers to make the buy -- but are they working, or are they turning even more customers away?...

Josh Nankivel of PMStudent.com recently polled project managers (PMs) about how the current economic climate is affecting them, and he found that 27 percent had experienced project cutbacks, 14 percent had experienced PM layoffs, 11 percent had experienced financial scrutiny of projects, and 10 percent had experienced project staff reductions The f...

It's a bad time to try to grow a startup -- unless of course your overhead is low. Fortunately for Ryan Born, CEO of AudioMicro, his company falls in that category. Last year, Born launched his crowdsourced music and sound effects platform to good reviews. Customers range from amateur videographers who want background music to accompany what they ...

Journalism has a glass jaw these days, threatening to shatter into a million pieces with the next right hook that lands courtesy of another layoff, another closing of a daily newspaper, another inane, biased utterance from a cable news host. But journalism could have landed its own body blows this week by showing it can handle the jump to hyperspace and the digital future...

The music and entertainment industry didn't even have a week to fully savor its victory against the four proprietors of The Pirate Bay before they filed an appeal Though the move was expected, the grounds for the appeal may have caught the plaintiffs by surprise. The Pirate Bay contends that the judge hearing the case should have disqualified himse...

The woman who conducted a 60-day, top-to-bottom review of U.S. cybersecurity policy has said there needs to be more leadership on the issue from the very top -- the Obama White House Melissa Hathaway, acting senior director for cyberspace for the National Security and Homeland Security Councils, provided plenty of discussion material Wednesday for ...

Profits dropped at eBay last quarter, but the online marketplace still delivered a solid earnings report for Q2 that beat analysts' expectations. eBay's results provide a welcome boost to the tech sector,whose performance has been all over the map this earnings cycle. They also validate the direction CEO John Donahoe has been taking the company: away from its small-garage-sale roots and toward large-scale sellers and buyers...

It's been a tough week for the gaming industry. NPD reported a 17 percent decline in console video game sales for March, and the "Grand Theft Auto IV: Chinatown Wars" debut was not so grand. Activision's upcoming "DJ Hero" stirred up legal issues, while "Fallout" developer Bethesda Softworks got busy with a new addition to the franchise.

When poet John Donne wrote, "No man is an island," he suggested that that all human beings are bound by the experiences of others. This timeless notion can also be applied to the business world: "No marketing channel is an island." When online information is examined on a larger scale across several thousands of customers, trends emerge that lead not only to Web site optimization, but also to the improvement of offline marketing campaigns.

Moving a company into cloud computing changes a lot more than just where the servers happen to be located. For instance, tech support might move out the door as well In some cases, tech support workers may still have their desks, but they will nolonger be their company's go-to guys when a problem develops. Instead,they will have to talk to their ow...

"HI TWITTERS. THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21stCENTURY." So read Oprah Winfrey's first tweet last Friday....

The Congressional Oversight and Government Reform Committee hasreopened hearings on possible privacy and security risks posed byusing LimeWire and similar peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing applications The committee on Monday sent letters to Mark Gorton, chairman of TheLime Group, which owns LimeWire; U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.; and Jon...

Yahoo announced Wednesday that first-quarter earnings fell by nearly 80 percent and that it will cut 675 jobs as CEO Carol Bartz struggles to revive the ailing Internet company The news was not generally jeered by investors, however. Between opening time Tuesday, when they stood at US$13.94, and mid-day Wednesday, when they stood at $14.88, Yahoo s...