At the heart of Union Pacific Corp.'s railroad operations is an IBM mainframe-based transportation control system that's been chugging along like a hardworking locomotive for nearly 40 years. According to industry experts, it was a pioneering system when first introduced, and it made the Omaha-based transportation giant one of the first companies in the world to make extensive use of online transaction processing technologies.
Technologies that might seem passé at some organizations are considered quite cutting-edge at others. Here's a look at a pest control company and a local government agency that are pushing the envelope in their respective industries.
In 2006, just as the first tweet was being Twittered, BT Global Services launched an effort to keep its customers and 112,000 employees safe in a new world of Web-based communities and other interactive sites.
Once IT leaders agree that they want to form a shared services outfit, the first thing they should do from a legal standpoint is determine the corporate structure that best fits the business model that participants have in mind, says Rob Scott, managing partner with the technology law firm Scott & Scott.
The world's top hotel companies have collectively invested tens of millions of dollars to implement their own customized reservation systems--considered the heart of their operations. Each hotelier views the capabilities of these systems as providing them with some competitive advantage over how they calculate rates and room availability.
It's not easy for IT professionals to make a wholesale switch to a different technical discipline, but it's not impossible, either. You just have to take the initiative.
During his keynote speech at the Society for Information Management's SIMposium 08 conference in the US, author Nicholas Carr drew an analogy between cloud computing and the transition that manufacturers made from generating their own power to relying on utilities in the early 20th century.
What steps do IT executives need to take to get on the "A" list for a high-profile job opening? Is it bad form for IT managers to reach out to an executive search firm?
Five years ago, Jean Ritala was dating a businessman who started to demonstrate Jekyll and Hyde-like behavior. Well-spoken, charismatic and successful, he could also be manipulative and bullying, telling her that it was "his way or the highway."
When Jeff Steinhorn joined global energy firm Hess Corp. as CIO of its marketing and refining division in 2006, he discovered within the first two months of his tenure that the IT organization had historically taken a short-term approach to project planning.
Merrill spoke to us before he announcing his move from the search giant.
When Jeff Steinhorn joined Hess Corporation as CIO of its marketing and refining division in the summer of 2006, he discovered within the first two months of his tenure that the IT organization had historically taken a short-term approach to project planning.
In an interview last month, Douglas Merrill, Google's CIO until he was hired Thursday as president of EMI's digital business division, talked about how the Internet search pioneer's IT organization is configured (not structured), how CIOs need to evolve and the most exasperating question that people ask him at cocktail parties.
When CompuCredit began feeling the sting of the subprime mortgage mess and resulting credit crunch toward the end of last year, CIO Guido Sacchi's IT organization was forced to absorb a 20 per cent year-over-year hit to its annual IT budget.
For nearly 30 years, John Hagel has advised corporate executives on how to use IT to push business strategies or create new business models. So when the renowned author and management consultant was recently approached by officials at Deloitte & Touche USA to help launch a research center for technology and business strategy in Silicon Valley, he leaped at the chance. But Hagel isn't taking the plunge alone. He will share the role of co-chairman of the as-yet-unnamed research center with his long-time cohort and co-author John Seely Brown. The center was started in San Jose a few weeks ago and will eventually move to Palo Alto, California.