Baseline articles from June 2005

Baseline archives from June 2005

Customer Resurrects Bankrupt Software Maker.
June 9, 2005... Three years ago, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide's strategy for buying supplies online was dead in the water. To resuscitate it, the company bought the software of a failed vendor. How's that again? The hotel chain had struck an...

Homeland Security Struggles with 'Extraordinary' Turnover.
June 9, 2005... Michael Chertoff is putting the final touches on a review of operations at the agency responsible for protecting the United States from terrorists. This review, coming in Chertoff's fourth month as secretary of the Department of Homeland...

Sears, CSC Launch Word War.
June 9, 2005... Sears Holdings Corp. and Computer Sciences Corp. are at war over two words: "cause" vs. "convenience." This is no mere dictionary debate. Millions of dollars in termination fees are at stake as Sears ends a $1.6 billion, 10-year agreement...

Danaher Corp.: Leaner Machine.
June 10, 2005... Tom Mathis had the job of taking a "lean" organization and making it even "leaner." As vice president of supply chain management at Danaher Sensors and Controls, a division of the $6 billion industrial conglomerate Danaher Corp., Mathis...

Cirque du Soleil: Juggling Act.
June 10, 2005... Danielle Savoie can't fold herself into a pretzel or spin around on her head. But she walks a tightrope every day managing the information systems that make it possible for the Cirque du Soleil to entertain more people each year than the...

Kia Motors America: Lemon Aid.
June 10, 2005... When Korean car manufacturer Kia Motors arrived on the North American automotive scene in 1995, it promised to make Japanese-quality vehicles at Korean prices. Buyers got the discount prices, but Kia failed to match the quality. In fact,...

Acquired Taste.(Interview)
June 10, 2005... Ameritrade chief executive Joe Moglia had a clear choice after E*Trade offered $5.7 billion to buy his Omaha, Neb.-based online brokerage: Be the hunter or the hunted. Moglia is choosing to continue to be a hunter-for now. On May 12, E*Trade...

The Art of the Deal for Tech Execs.
June 10, 2005... Dianah Neff is a chief information officer with a marketing degree from San Jose State. That's good because Neff, CIO of the city of Philadelphia, has been pitching a citywide wireless network as a way to revitalize neighborhoods, create...

Don't Become Awash in Useless Metrics.
June 10, 2005... Every month, my predecessor distributed a 30-page report to each executive and manager about the information-technology infrastructure at Rohm and Haas. He fed everyone a slew of results on performance metrics such as how well the processors on...

Data Security's Hidden Problem: Us.
June 10, 2005... Steven Calderon has been raked over the coals enough. You will discover this in John McCormick and Deborah Gage's report, "Blur,'' which starts on p. 32. Calderon was arrested in front of co-workers at a Fry's Electronics store in...

Project Map: Data Cleansing.(Brief Article)
June 13, 2005... Your database may be full of valuable information, but it's difficult to realize this value if your data is incomplete, inconsistently formatted, inaccurate or unreadable by your applications. Data cleansing identifies and corrects these...

The Rising Threat from Bad Data.(Brief Article)
June 14, 2005... Steven Calderon had a clean record, a clean conscience and no reason to think that his new employer's routine background check would cause any problem at all. Then the sheriff showed up at the office and took him to jail on warrants for child...

June 2005 Online Extras.
June 16, 2005... BASELINE ONLINE Calculating Costs of Integrating All Your Customer Data (p.37) Dowload our Premium Project Planner to calculate how much it will cost your company to integrate all its customer data. Is an ERP Switch Worth the Money?...

Ameritrade to Acquire TD Waterhouse USA.
June 22, 2005... NEW YORK (Reuters)--Online broker Ameritrade Holding Corp. on Wednesday said it agreed to buy rival TD Waterhouse USA from parent Toronto-Dominion Bank for $2.9 billion in stock, consolidating the struggling online brokerage sector as analysts...

Symantec Admits to 'One Enormous Mistake' with Veritas Buy.
June 27, 2005... Symantec made "one enormous mistake" in its pursuit of storage software supplier Veritas, according to statements Symantec CEO John Thompson made on Monday, in his first public comments since the merger of the two market leaders was completed...

Bank of America to Buy MBNA for $35 Billion.
June 30, 2005... NEW YORK (Reuters)--Bank of America Corp. on Thursday said it agreed to buy MBNA Corp., the world's largest independent credit card lender, for $35 billion, making the No. 2 U.S. bank one of the world's biggest card issuers. The...