Baseline articles from April 2002

Baseline archives from April 2002

x.(choosing a set of tools and technologies to write business applications)
April 1, 2002... When choosing a set of tools and technologies to write business applications, which matters more to a typical information technology manager: (A) a magical encounter with Bill Gates at a trade show a decade ago, or (B) a terrific deal on the...

You are Your Own Identification Card.
April 1, 2002... The furor last month following the issuance of student visas to suicide hijackers Mohammed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi is wholly misplaced. As was the furor last October over the proposal by software magnate Larry Ellison that the United States...

'Federated' Web Services Next Battle for MS, Sun.
April 2, 2002... No Web service is an island. But at least until recently, Web-services vendors have said little to customers about how they plan to build secure bridges across them. Sources said Microsoft later this month is expected to detail its plans...

Java vs. .NET: How Companies Make the Call.
April 5, 2002... When choosing a set of tools and technologies to write business applications, which matters more to a typical information technology manager: (A) a magical encounter with Bill Gates at a trade show a decade ago, or (B) a terrific deal on the...

FAA Player Roster.
April 8, 2002... Inside the Agency Jane F. Garvey Administrator Role: Since she was sworn into office in August 1997, Garvey's most significant course change at the 49,000-person agency has been to try to establish collaborative decision-making, involving...

Spiral Development Beats Spiraling Costs.
April 8, 2002... There is more to the FAA's spiral development process than an iterative, try and try again methodology. "It is being commonly practiced--and in some cases, commonly malpracticed," says Barry Boehm, Director of the Software Engineering...

When Air Traffic Control Became National Defense.
April 8, 2002... After Sept. 11, a key piece of FAA technology was deployed at the Colorado Springs headquarters of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Inside the military agency's Cheyenne Mountain facilities now sits a duplicate version of...

Can FAA Salvage Its IT Disaster?(Federal Aviation Administration)
April 8, 2002... Delta Air Lines Flight 705 from Atlanta to Salt Lake City was at cruising altitude on Feb. 27 when a female passenger began to complain of severe chest pains. Fortunately, the tool was now in place that could help an air traffic controller...

Union Conflict Leaves FAA Seeing STARS.
April 9, 2002... The FAA's Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System (STARS) project echoes those corporate ERP war stories in which the benefits of a packaged software purchase prove elusive because of the need to customize it to match the organization's...

The Ugly History of Tool Development at the FAA.
April 9, 2002... One participant says, "It may have been the greatest failure in the history of organized work." Certainly the Federal Aviation Administration's Advanced Automation System (AAS) project dwarfs even the largest corporate information...

SPC: Building Better Software.(Software Productivity Consortium)
April 10, 2002... The simple mission of the Software Productivity Consortium (SPC), an 18-year-old nonprofit group, is to help companies make better software. The idea is to transform a development shop into a factory that adheres to the Capability Maturity...

Inside ParaSoft's Sales-Force 'Boot Camp'.(Company hires unemployed, trains them, provides employment security)
April 11, 2002... The want ad seeking "sales-minded people" is vague. But if you call and set up an appointment, you get hired. The advertiser is ParaSoft of Monrovia, a southern California company building a niche for tools that automatically prevent errors...

Spiral Development Tools.(Brief Article)
April 11, 2002... Is the prototype-oriented approach best for your next technology initiative? Baseline has put together these files to give you an overview of how the spiral approach works. The Project Planner compares the costs and outcome of using the...

Fleet: Turning on a Dollar.
April 12, 2002... With financial news channels hinting that the Federal Reserve Board would reverse course and announce it was leaning toward higher interest rates at its March 19 meeting, Peter Benham began looking for ways to capitalize on that possibility....

Turning Knowledge Into a Collective Asset.(Brief Article)
April 15, 2002... Imagine your colleagues' knowledge could be digitized, made searchable and delivered at the exact moment you need it and in the format you require. Customer-satisfaction levels would skyrocket--because not only would your call-center staff...

Spin Unspun - How Productive Is Software Really?
April 15, 2002... In its marketing, Inktomi, the search and content management software vendor, is shouting, "Productivity is 1% effort and 99% software." The company points to a study from IDC which, among other things, found that "for every 1,000 knowledge...

Now Can the Candy Man Sell on the Web?
April 15, 2002... It's hard to execute a technology project effectively when most of the vendors who could help you are on death row. That's the situation the Jelly Belly Candy Company, the family-owned California candy maker, found itself in last year as it...

Tricky Software Transplant at McKesson.
April 15, 2002... At an Alabama health care network, putting data and images from various labs and departments together into a single electronic record for a patient crashed the computer system. At a similar New England network, hospitals found they could not...

The Bottom Line Per ... Agway's Bill Parker.(Interview)
April 15, 2002... Agway's Bill Parker started at the Syracuse, N.Y.-based agricultural cooperative 21 years ago, as a project manager in the insurance division before tackling business process re-engineering. He's been CIO since September 1994, responsible for...

Rule No. 1: Be Thorough, No Matter What It Takes.
April 15, 2002... My launch pad to becoming Federal Express' chief information officer was an assignment I got in 1986, 10 years after I joined the company. I was asked to head up a project to place PCs with our large customers. Only 250 of our customers had...

Bayer: The Drug Development Clock is Ticking.
April 15, 2002... In a computer lab behind locked doors in Cambridge, Mass., Anthony Caruso oversees a staff of 15 scientists who are a rare mix of information technology and biology experts. These workers, called bioinformaticians, spend their days hunched at...

RadioShack: Ups and Downs of Extranet Success.
April 15, 2002... Pragmatism still tugs at Todd Cook, manager of a Colorado RadioShack franchise. RadioShack's corporate chiefs insisted last fall that he try new extranet technology to get information on pricing changes, product introductions, promotions and...

Sifting a Riverbed of Data for Insight.
April 15, 2002... Pizza-flavored cheddar cheese--good business opportunity? Yes, as Cabot Creamery determined. Does osteoporosis more often hit wine drinkers or teetotalers? Imbibers, as Kaiser Permanente can tell you. Will women who buy lace dresses by mail...

Voice of Experience: Jon Dell'Antonia, OshKosh B'Gosh.
April 15, 2002... Jon Dell'Antonia VP, Management Information Systems Oshkosh B'gosh Oshkosh, Wis. www.oshkoshbgosh.com Manager's Profile: Dell'Antonia has put in 37 years in information technology and business management, 12 of them at OshKosh B'Gosh,...

SAS Institute: Great for a Reason.
April 15, 2002... The world's biggest privately held software company, SAS Institute is almost a way of life. That's true for SAS employees, who get free health care, recreation facilities, subsidized daycare and time off for their kids' soccer games. But the...

Cognos: Pragmatic Player.
April 15, 2002... Cognos isn't flashy. CEO Ron Zambonini hasn't bought an airline, like SAS Institute's Jim Goodnight. Cognos has steadily grown during its 33 years and top managers are all long-time company veterans. The company laid off 300 people this time...

Hyperion: A Company in Transition.
April 15, 2002... Eleven-year-old Hyperion is in flux. The company is restructuring after losing $31 million last year and laying off about 400 employees. It has installed new management and is again turning a profit. But customers don't seem rattled....

Turning Knowledge Into a Collective Asset.
April 15, 2002... Imagine your colleagues' knowledge could be digitized, made searchable and delivered at the exact moment you need it and in the format you require. INTERACTIVE TOOL Project the costs and benefits of your next knowledge-management...

The Low-down on Digital Presence.
April 15, 2002... What is it? The digital existence of a user--that is, a person, device or application--on a network. Being "present" ranges from simply being registered to actively participating with others. What underlies it? Presentities and a...

How to Innovate When the Budget's Tight.
April 15, 2002... The Davos Forum. The Daisy Cutter bomb. Six Sigma. People use a noise meter to evaluate innovation. The bigger the bang, the more important the innovation is presumed to be. But innovation isn't the province of just world economic...

By the Numbers: April 2002.
April 15, 2002... Download the PDF file for this month's charts and statistics, including: *Upgrading the Enterprise *Manufacturers' Online Usage *Enterprise upgrades Can Cost More Than Planned *Companies Still on Security Defensive

Why Mellon Left the SPC.(Software Productivity Consortium)
April 25, 2002... Mellon Financial Corp. has chosen not to renew membership in the Software Productivity Consortium. Its decision reflects the difficulties SPC has had in attracting corporate members outside its traditional coterie of technology services firms,...