Enterprise IT

The burgeoning market for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets is not only affecting consumer use of information technology, but also having an impact on the private sector workplace. The mobile IT market is clearly hot. Worldwide shipments of major brand smartphones increased by 50 percen...

A technical error that affected 28 million Windows users in Europe could cost Microsoft billions in penalties. The glitch, which disabled the display of a browser choice screen in Windows, violates an agreement between Microsoft and European Union regulators. The maximum penalty for such a violation...

Microsoft unveiled the new versions of its Office suite and and Office 365 subscription-based service on Monday. The updated Office has an intuitive design that makes it touch- and stylus-compatible, and usable across a variety of devices running Windows, including tablets and smartphones. It's also...

Personal computer sales are down across the industry as consumers turn toward newer devices such as smartphones and tablets and await the arrival of system upgrades like Windows 8, according to reports from Gartner and IDC. PC sales for the second quarter in the U.S. were down between 6 and 11 perce...

To listen to Microsoft's Steve Ballmer talk, you'd think he was the prime minister of a besieged nation, rather than the captain of one of the largest software companies in the world. In an interview Tuesday with CRN, a website for VARs and technology integrators, the flamboyant head of Microsoft pl...

Following a 30-day period in which the company lost $2 billion in value, Research In Motion executives faced shareholders Tuesday at the company's annual meeting. On the positive side, CEO Thorsten Heins reportedly told shareholders the company remains strong in some market segments. However, he adm...

Good customer relations management involves a two-way process -- making sure that customers are consulted as well as targeted. In fact, it is far more likely that a vendor will hit the target if consumer input is part of the marketing process. Two recent surveys have taken the measure of the ultimat...

Dell's announcement of its planned Quest Software acquisition seemed more inevitable than surprising. Quest had been in play since March, when it said investment firm Insight Venture Partners offered $23 per share, or about $2 billion, for the company. The price jumped when an unidentified player en...

The U.S. government's push to utilize cloud-based technology will eventually lead to some blockbuster contracts -- many well over $10 million and others for even more than $100 million. Consider that just one contract in the current batch -- a cloud deal for email services at the U.S. Interior Depar...

Google announced this week the launch of the Google Compute Engine, an Infrastructure as a Service product that lets users run Linux Virtual Machines on Google's servers. It promises to provide resources to businesses and other organizations that need intensive, short-term computing power to solve h...

Research In Motion reported quarterly results that fell below investors' already meager expectations Thursday, adding that it plans thousands of further layoffs as well as another delay to the release of its BlackBerry 10 platform. RIM announced a $518 million net loss on the quarter, or about 99 ce...

Microsoft's rollout of Windows 8 represents a new era for operating systems and for Microsoft in general. It also represents the probable end of the Windows desktop OS that most consumers now know, according to a report from Gartner, although the firm expects its demise to be long-unfolding. "The re...

Google's new Nexus 7 is the company's first attempt to push its line of Nexus Android devices into the tablet realm. However, instead of launching a head-on attack on tablets like the Apple iPad and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Google has designed the new Nexus as a smaller slate measuring seven inc...

Most don't realize it yet, but Microsoft is completely reinventing itself right before our eyes. It is expanding from software to hardware and even to the cloud, starting with tablets and wireless smartphones. It is fundamentally transforming the company we have all known and used for decades. This ...

Research In Motion is issuing pink slips as part of a massive cost-cutting effort that could save the company $1 billion in expenses. RIM is reportedly laying workers off in small batches, starting with the quality control, operations and parts departments. The company is also looking to cut costs b...