Baseline articles from June 2003

Baseline archives from June 2003

The End of the Big Bang.
June 1, 2003... No matter what a vendor claims, it's hard to neatly prove customer relationship management (CRM) software generates a return on cost. Even so, the reality is that keeping readily accessible records of interactions with customers has become...

Failure Is Nothing to Be Afraid Of.
June 1, 2003... Technique follows technology. You may not know right away what to do with what you have, but one thing's for certain--it's not all going to work. What matters is what you do with those failures--and how quickly you do it. At Travelocity (a...

Calculating Return: What Security Can Do for You.
June 1, 2003... The cost to businesses from the SQL Slammer Worm ran into the billions of dollars, according to many analyst estimates. The 376-byte packet of code slowed network traffic to a crawl in January by forcing unpatched installations of Microsoft SQL...

Primer: Application Switching.
June 1, 2003... *What is it? A way of handling network traffic by identifying and analyzing packets of information before they reach the server. Also known as content switching or request switching, application switching can identify legitimate requests, deny...

Calculating Costs: Spending on Smarter Storage.
June 1, 2003... DAS vs. NAS vs. SAN. It's not a German lawsuit. It's an evaluation that technology managers must make when deciding which architecture should manage company data. In direct-access storage, or DAS, drives are connected directly to the...

By the Numbers.
June 1, 2003... For full infographics, please download the PDF at left. Open-Source Knowledge: Stuck in Neutral? A survey of software developers in North America found that 56% are using at least some open-source code in their applications today, according to...

PeopleSoft: Dominant or Distracted?
June 6, 2003... Arlyn Richards doesn't want a spate of proposed enterprise software mergers to become an implementation headache for him. Richards, manager of information systems at Gallatin Steel based in Ghent, Ky., is a two-year J.D. Edwards customer and...

Eckerd Takes It To The Next Level.
June 9, 2003... When Eckerd decided in 2001 to bring technology operations in-house, Chief Information Officer Ken Petersen bet his job that he and his staff could do it better than IBM. It didn't take a lot of looking for the team to find places where it...

CIO Takes Insourcing To The Bank.
June 9, 2003... Austin Adams believes he can run an information technology organization more efficiently than any hired gun. "Experientially and philosophically, I am opposed to meaningful outsourcing," says Adams, the chief information officer at Bank One...