CIO Infrastructure Refresh

Burberry CEO puts faith in IT whilst warning of lower profits

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:40:00 GMT

SAP is delivering savings as US slow-down hit classic British clothing company Burberry

Luxury clothing manufacturer Burberry has warned its shareholders that profits for 2008 will be lower than expected, but in a statement to the stock exchange CEO Angela Ahrendts said the existing IT and supply chain rationalisation initiatives will deliver efficiencies in the “near term”.

Netbooks set to challenge laptops

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Small wonders

The growing use of powerful and compact mobile devices for personal use makes their appearance in business IT development plans inevitable. Faced with the option of pocketing an ultraportable device or lugging around a hefty laptop and its associated power supply in a carrying case, most people would opt for the former. IT has to acknowledge this and start to plan for a broader range of devices connecting to the network in future.

Time to reappraise speech recognition systems?

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:00:00 GMT

Speak and spell

One April, 11 and a half years ago, Hollywood actor Richard Dreyfuss presented a new type of software that was going to ‘revolutionise business’. He had been paid to host the launch of Dragon’s NaturallySpeaking application, which could faultlessly translate spoken words into text. If this worked, we could chuck away our keyboards. Productivity would multiply. Dragon would become the new Microsoft and a new era of IT would dawn.

Emails reveal HP's anger at Vista marketing

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:35:00 GMT

Blame game begins over bloated OS.

An HP executive was furious at Microsoft over the company's decision to loosen the requirements for its "Vista Capable" marketing campaign, internal emails unsealed by a federal judge have shown.

NHS IT offered SOA update with new Lorenzo software

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 09:10:00 GMT

Core system for health service computer project gets a makeover

ISoft has released its Lorenzo health-care platform, elements of which are already in use as part of the U.K.'s National Health Service's IT modernisation programme.

Google adds video/voice chat to GMail

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Streaming add-ons for free

Google is adding free streamed video and voice chat to its hugely popular GMail free email programme that is also built into the Google Apps suite of tools. The service will be available from tomorrow, 12 November.

Cleveland police in £7.9m mobile systems roll out

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:55:00 GMT

Reduces paperwork for officers on the beat

Cleveland Police has signed a £7.9 million deal for mobile working solutions across the entire force of 1,400 officers.

UK businesses 'struggle with software asset management'

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:42:00 GMT

Federation Against Software Theft tries soft cop approach

UK businesses are struggling with software asset management, according to a new survey from analyst group IDC.

London hospital trust loses £7.2m in upgrade debacle

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:34:00 GMT

More NHS computer trouble as BT installs Cerner system

The Royal Free Hospital in London has lost £7.2 million over six months as a result of its implementation of new Cerner-based IT systems.

Google Apps lands another win with Westminster University

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:52:00 GMT

Search giant lands desktop tools on another 25,000 seats

The University of Westminster is to deploy Google Apps to over 25,500 users, marking another stage in Google’s encroachment onto the desktop space owned largely by Microsoft.

Trade sharing start-up sings open source praises

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:49:00 GMT

No-brainer in a downturn says CEO

Covestor, an online real-trade sharing service launched this year, is using open source software to drive its challenge to professional fund managers.

Citrix plans next revolution

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:00:00 GMT

After reinventing Windows computing, the software pioneer wants to make a splash in virtualising desktops and servers, says CEO Mark Templeton

Citrix Systems might not be the first company that comes to mind when CIOs think about the most influential business IT vendors of the last 20 years, but even if it doesn’t quite stand alongside Microsoft, it has a solid claim to fame as the firm that reinvented the possibilities of Windows computing.

Mike Altendorf: Search will outshine KM

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Enterprise search will be a new software layer that lets firms exploit their digital assets. And Microsoft has its foot in the door, says Mike Altendorf

Some people might be a bit confused by Microsoft’s recent $1.2bn acquisition of Norwegian enterprise search company Fast Search & Transfer, but it makes sense given that everyone is looking to see what the next generation of search is going to look like, and with Fast, Microsoft might have the answer.

CIO's Steve Ballmer interview transcript

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Microsoft CEO on cloud computing, SaaS, Google, chimpanzees, Zune, Seinfeld (and reprising the 'developers' rant)

Early in October, CIO magazine interviewed Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in London in front of about 700 IT professionals and managers. This is the transcript, also available on web video . CIO: I’m just going to run through these questions now because we have literally just 20 minutes. I’m going to fire them off – is that OK for you?

London Olympics will be totally wired (and wireless)

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 10:00:00 GMT

BBC, BT, ISPs and local communities grapple with the technology and the legacy

London is preparing for what will be the most demanding multimedia Olympics ever in 2012.

Procter & Gamble CIO: improved supplier dialogue vital to our success

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 09:16:00 GMT

$600m cost savings from more productive relationships, he says

The chief information officer at Procter & Gamble said that a dramatic change in the way the company interacted with suppliers has meant IT delivers better business results.

VMware denies Microsoft gained market share at its expense

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:18:00 GMT

Microsoft's Hyper-V product has barely made a dent in sales, they argue

VMware officials have objected to an assertion by IDC that VMware has lost some of its industry-leading market share to Microsoft. They claim that Microsoft's new Hyper-V product has barely made a dent in sales.

Sun is a software company, new top shareholder says

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:59:00 GMT

Moving away from background as a server company

Southeastern Asset Management, who this week announced that they have taken a 21 percent stake in Sun Microsystems, believes that the market needs to view the workstation and server vendor as predominantly a software company.

EU companies excluding open source vendors

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:55:00 GMT

Tenders continue to name Microsoft as preferred supplier

Despite European Commission draft guidelines urging government departments to choose software based on open standards, some tenders are still excluding open software.

Data centre rethink needed, warns analyst

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 06:14:00 GMT

CIOs must demand tatical data centre changes

CIOs need to fundamentally rethink their data centres in order to ensure that they become much more dynamic and less rigid, according to analyst house Burton Group.

Ferrari test drives HPC Server 2008

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 10:24:00 GMT

Can Microsoft deliver the winning advantage over the McLaren team?

Ferrari hopes its bid for Formula 1 glory and performance car success will get an extra boost from using Microsoft’s newest high-performance computing technology, Windows HPC Server 2008, in its automotive engineering, design and development process.

Marketing agency halves website design time by virtualising servers

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:46:00 GMT

Managed virtualisation service adds flexibility and capacity, it says

Rufus Leonard said it has halved the time needed for developing client websites by using a managed virtualisation service.

CIO News View: Plates shift but US remains world's IT Titan

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:20:00 GMT

America still generating most despite meltdown

It hasn’t been too hard to detect a note of schadenfreude in reporting on global finance recently. For scions of the Left, the irony of emergency nationalisation measures at the largest Western capitalist states has afforded rich pickings. And the barely submerged contempt and bewilderment at the machinations of bankers has finally surfaced: even if we never understood how they made their millions, at least it turned out that they didn’t know what they were doing either.

Windows 7 codename becomes official

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:01:00 GMT

But is it actually the seventh version?

Microsoft announced today that the code name for its next operating system, Windows 7, will be the product's official name.

Microsoft Live Labs releases politically minded Web app

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:12:00 GMT

Obama and McCain battles tracked on app

Just as the US is in its last weeks of a heated presidential campaign, Microsoft's Live Labs group has launched a web-based application that surfaces what it considers the recent political articles and documents that are getting the most attention and discussion among web users.