Baseline articles from November 2002

Baseline archives from November 2002

Bristol-Myers Squibb Taps Grid Computing.
November 1, 2002... You can't see it from the country road in western New Jersey, but in a brick building behind a dairy farm and across a corn field, a group of Bristol-Myers Squibb scientists and technology project managers are working on one of the largest...

GM's Digital Turnaround: Phases 1-8.
November 1, 2002... Month 0: Requirement phase Data Types: Planning documents and draft bill of materials Storage Requirement: 2 MB GM's advanced vehicle development center sits a short distance away from the company's old Fisher Body Plant on the company's...

Gotcha! Inter-Company Development.
November 1, 2002... Did you know that: The first choke point is bound to be your network plumbing. Especially when replicating large files for engineering and design. In such cases, collaborators can be exchanging hundreds of billions of characters of...

GM: A 'Virtual' Automaker?
November 1, 2002... While automakers long have relied on suppliers to help them design and deliver parts, the Cadillac CTS is the first GM vehicle where a supplier has acted as a systems integrator. Intier Automotive of Aurora, Canada, did not deliver some...

Major Changes at Mini.
November 1, 2002... Adrian Van Hooydonk talks about the Mini Cooper as a "jewel in the box" that BMW bought when it paid 800 million pounds for Britain's last major car company, the Rover Group, in February 1994. The car had gone virtually unchanged for four...

Wal-Mart Dictates Technological Terms.
November 1, 2002... It would be as if the guy who runs the town's biggest market started telling farmers which roads they had to take to get to him. Like the farmers, suppliers accustomed to developing their information-technology strategies around what they...

Spin Unspun: Did Sun's VP Misspeak?
November 1, 2002... "We can support 2,000 users with one system administrator at Sun. It requires in the neighborhood of one administrator for every 50 users in the Windows world." --Sun Microsystems Executive software VP Jonathan Schwartz, as quoted in The...

There Is Such a Thing as Too Much Speed.
November 1, 2002... When I became the chief information officer for Governor Christine Whitman in 1998, New Jersey was in the dark ages in its use of the Internet. We were 32nd in a national survey on "Where the States are in Digital Government." Two years later,...

The Bottom Line Per...Jean Holley.
November 1, 2002... Imagine setting tech strategy at a company in bankruptcy. USG, a 100-year-old building products company--makers of Sheetrock-brand wallboard--filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June 2001, under the weight of massive asbestos...

Tool: ROI on RFPs.
November 1, 2002... This tool is under construction! Thanks for your patience. Please check back soon, or send an e-mail to Baseline Tools to be notified when the tool is posted.

Don't Drive Ahead on Automatic.
November 1, 2002... Pretty soon, you will be driving an information system. You might think you're already there. Your car today may have 50 microprocessors hidden inside it, helping regulate everything from its speed to the sound coming into your ears. ...

Empirix: A New Spin on Testing.
November 1, 2002... In 1960, former MIT classmates Alex d'Arbeloff and Nick DeWolf discussed the need for better equipment to automate the testing of electronic components. The pair rented space above Joe and Nemo's hot dog stand in downtown Boston and founded...

BMC: From Soup to Nuts.
November 1, 2002... With $1.3 billion in annual revenues, BMC's core strength is its software to monitor and manage enterprise systems, applications and databases. For over a year now, it's been offering products to monitor Web applications and sites as well with...

Mercury Interactive: Aiming at Bigger Picture.
November 1, 2002... For years Mercury Interactive has been pigeonholed as a provider of testing and measurement software, winning an estimated 50% of the market. Now, the company wants to expand beyond that category and move to offer tools to help companies...

Disruptive Technologies Can Be Useful.
November 1, 2002... Attention, all you technology project managers: it's no longer just cool to be disruptive. Now, it's a business mandate. Thanks to the popularization of the term by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christiansen, the delivery of a...

When Data Threatens Privacy.
November 1, 2002... What if your refrigerator knew too much? More specifically, what if the company that made your refrigerator knew too much, automatically sucking in data about food purchases you make? And what if that company, in a move originally...

Voice of Experience: Brian Whitehead, S&P.
November 1, 2002... Brian Whitehead Standard & Poor's VP, Chief Technology Architect New York, N.Y. http://www.standardpoor.com Manager's Profile: Whitehead started at S&P in 1995 as vice president and became the company's chief technology architect in 1999. He's...

By the Numbers: November 2002.
November 1, 2002... Enterprise Applications: What Returns May Come Are companies getting what they wanted out of their enterprise projects? Only if they put enough resources into them, says a recent Accenture report. The yearlong global study analyzed 163...

What's In Store for 7-Eleven?
November 1, 2002... You wouldn't know it to look at 7-Eleven's famous Slurpee, a cup of frozen mush consumed with a combination spoon-straw, or a Super Big Gulp soda, a 44-oz. liquid homage to American excess. But 7-Eleven is mostly Japanese. The convenience...

HON Industries Furnished With Linux.
November 1, 2002... Up until about two years ago, employees working the assembly lines at HON Industries showed up for work each morning wondering whether they'd be building office furniture and fireplaces, or wasting their shifts on make-work projects such as...

Krispy Kreme's Essential Ingredient.
November 1, 2002... The opening of the first Krispy Kreme doughnut shop in a new market has become something of a pop-culture event. In October, it was New England's turn, as people slept outside and lined up in the dark at a Krispy Kreme in Newington, Conn....

Community: Test and Measurement Software.
November 1, 2002... AIM Funds Management, a mutual fund company, developed online investment tools to help in the battle to attract and retain customers during the stock market downturn. The service--designed for financial advisors to work with clients--could have...

Silicon Graphics: Feeling the Pressure.
November 4, 2002... Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) has owned the market for systems to create computer-intensive simulations, animations, and 3-D visualizations. Its customers include major automotive and aerospace companies, and the company can lay claim to more...

GM Plans Digital Turnaround.
November 4, 2002... Once upon a time,General Motors sold three out of every five cars and trucks in North America. Now, it's less than half that. For GM, passing the competition now is its job 1. So, instead of clay, metal and wires, it now builds new cars out of...