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The importance of creating synergies between the deliverance of business-critical data over the wide area network (WAN) to support remote employees is increasingly important to business because more than half of the total workforce works outside the corporate headquarters' structure. According to Aberdeen's February 2008 Benchmark report, "The Roa...

After more than a decade in the software privacy and antipiracy space, Keith Beeman, general manager, Worldwide Anti-Piracy, Small and Midmarket, Solutions & Partners for Microsoft, says he has been able to gain a first-hand view of software piracy issues on a global scale Piracy is a pervasive issue that can often catch enterprise customers by sur...

As Wall Street unwound last week, RightNow CEO Greg Gianforte watched from a vantage point an ocean away. As it happened, he was in London, making a stop on his self-assigned global tour to visit the company's top 50 users Like many people, Gianforte is viewing the events with a combination of uncertainty and cautious hope that the turmoil has rea...

You have to give Oracle credit for persistence. The software giant has been trying to build out its groupware business for nearly 10 years, and has as yet modest success Now, with Beehive, the next generation of its collaboration suite, Oracle may be sniffing some fresh and meaningful blood in the enterprise messaging waters....

A week -- even a day -- can make a world of difference in a presidential election. Witness the fact that nearly right up to the minute the still-unfolding Wall Street crisis came to a boil, the issue getting the most play in campaign speeches was oil prices. There was even a fair amount of speculation that one of John McCain's primary motives for placing Sarah Palin second on his ticket was her geographic proximity to the Alaskan oil fields and her support of the effort to allow further exploration of them...

The unveiling Tuesday of HTC's much-anticipated G1 handset for T-Mobile, the first device running Google's Android mobile operating system (OS), looks to be the opening salvo in a battle for smartphone consumers between Google and Apple Although the first-generation G1 and second-gen iPhone are not exactly the same, the two handsets offer consumers...

IBM has announced a new corporate strategy regarding its participation in the hundreds of standard-setting organizations relevant to its products. Simply put, it only wants to work within an environment that is open and transparent. "Standard-setting is too important -- for business, for government, for citizens and consumers -- to be anything but...

Cisco has made countless billions selling switches and routers -- the network equipment that monitors and directs Internet traffic and keeps data flowing smoothly Now, the San Jose, Calif.-based hardware giant is moving into another market: corporate communications software....

October is the expected release date for the next version of the PCI Data Security Standard, 1.2. Since the PCI Standard's creation -- to serve as a guideline to help organizations that process card payments, prevent credit card fraud, hacking and various other security vulnerabilities and threats -- much hype has surrounded each PCI update. Version 1.2 is no different, and we can expect commentary from analysts, journalists and a host of others touting the benefits that the extended guidance for compliance in 1.2 holds for the industry.

The other day I had a conversation with some nice people from the market research company Coleman Parkes Research. They wanted to tell me about a study they have recently concluded about social networking. I have to say it was pretty interesting stuff. I will leave it to you to search for them and to download their full report. What was intere...

To a lot of computer users, the concept of biometric authentication is limited to thumb drive reader devices, eye scanners and voice pattern recognition. Such technologies still face stiff competition in most enterprise circles, where passwords and user tokens seemingly work well enough and are quicker and cheaper to deploy Existing security strate...

Microsoft on Monday announced its latest software release, Windows HPC Server, at the 2008 High Performance on Wall Street Conference in New York. The application, aimed at industries like financial services, marks Microsoft's latest entry into the high-performance computing (HPC) market The software is designed to give firms an easy-to-deploy, cos...

Adobe's long-awaited Creative Suite 4 has made its public debut. As the company has demonstrated with previous releases of Creative, as well as other products, it is advancing a Web 2.0 agenda. For example, Adobe has integrated Flash throughout Creative Suite 4 to facilitate collaboration among designers and developers as they craft digital work products...

Online movie rental company Netflix has signed distribution deals with two heavy hitters from the TV world -- the CBS Television Network and the Disney-ABC Television Group Los Gatos, Calif.-based Netflix will soon have a stable of new and syndicated television shows that Netflix users can stream over the Internet -- "CSI," "NCIS," "Hannah Montana,...

Viviane Reding, Europe's info-media commissioner, has skillfully staked out her position as champion of consumers who want it cheap and now (rather than better, if later). Her Europe-wide caps on roaming charges for mobile voice services are popular, and now Reding wants the same relief for consumers downloading data and text-messaging across the ...

Oracle OpenWorld wasn't a day old before Twitter-like blog posts began peppering the Internet Mike Gotta from the Burton Group posted notes encapsulating his essential gleanings from Charles Phillip's keynote: ...

Barack Obama announced his running mate by text message. John McCain's putting up YouTube videos. Mayoral candidates are doing robocalling. And just about everyone running for public office has a blog. Clearly, the campaign landscape has gone high-tech. New technologies are helping candidates to connect with voters, and voters to connect with cand...

What do Metallica and SanDisk have in common? For both, the memory remains. The metal band was singing about faded rock stars trapped in their glory days. The data storage company, however, is hoping that music-filled 1 GB microSD memory cards will lure in consumers who fondly remember when their favorite songs were purchased on albums preloaded o...

Intel began shipping its Atom Processor 330 Friday. The chip is the latest addition to the Atom product line and has been specifically designed to run on so-called nettops -- desktop computers built primarily in order to surf the Web, send e-mail and perform basic Internet tasks, the company said. "Intel always intended these for netbooks/nettop c...

Microsoft announced plans to buy back US$40 billion of its own stock, increase its dividend by 18 percent, and tap the debt markets for the first time in its 33-year history The moves come at a time when many companies are battening down the hatches in anticipation of an ever-tightening credit market as a result of the recent turmoil on Wall Street...