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News

• Alfresco: An open-source ECM alternative for SharePoint

  In any business organization, the need to effectively communicate and collaborate in a timely manner is very important. Contending with mobile workers and shifting schedules, many businesses look toward enterprise content management (ECM) systems such as <a href="http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/Pages/default.aspx">Microsoft's SharePoint</a>. Their purpose is to allow users within organizations to collaborate and share work inside of a commonly accessed website framework.

• IBM Quietly Names a New CEO

  IBM Doesn't like drama -- and it proved that late last month when, without fanfare, its board of directors named 30-year company veteran Virginia Rometty to succeed Sam Palmisano as CEO.

• Talking to the Business: Our Problems, Their Visions

  The first meeting for a project is a tense affair. There can be a lot of new things coming at you all at once. New co-workers. New technology. New processes. And, perhaps most problematic, new business partners.

• Big data goes mainstream

  We've all heard the predictions: By 2020, the quantity of electronically stored data will reach 35 trillion gigabytes, a forty-four-fold increase from 2009. We had already reached 1.2 million petabytes, or 1.2 zettabytes, by the end of 2010, according to IDC. That's enough data to fill a stack of DVDs reaching from the Earth to the moon and back -- about 240,000 miles each way.

• Oracle's best-of-breed strategy, as described by president Mark Hurd

  It used to be easy journalistic shorthand to write 'database-giant Oracle Corp.', but that labeling no longer fits a company that's now a key player in applications, appliances, servers, development tools, operating systems and, yes, even cloud computing. How do all these components gel into a coherent plan for IT customers? What makes Oracle better than the other big integrated systems players like HP and IBM? In this latest installment of the IDG Enterprise CEO Interview Series, Oracle President Mark Hurd spoke with IDGE Chief Content Officer John Gallant about Oracle's strategy and why the company is uniquely positioned to help IT leaders deal with the difficult challenges they're facing today. Hurd also clarified Oracle's stance on cloud -- a position clouded -- sorry -- by some earlier comments from CEO Larry Ellison -- and what makes Oracle's approach better than 'very old' cloud solutions like salesforce.com. He explained more about customer migrations to Oracle's new Fusion applications and discussed how Oracle plans to win in the evolving server market.

• Holiday shopping with personal devices at work could pose security risk

  Workers are planning to do more online holiday shopping this year while on the job, with many using their own personal smartphones and tablets, a new survey shows.

• How CIOs build bridges with other C-level execs

  Technology runs the world these days, but CIOs don't. More often than not when a business's mission is on the line, CIOs instead encounter the type of reaction Toyota Motor Sales USA VP and CIO Zack Hicks got from one fellow executive during the height of the company's vehicle recalls in 2010: Our hair's on fire; we don't have time for an IT project.

• 7 ways to do big data right using the cloud

  There's a wealth of data out there companies can use to better understand customers and identify emerging business opportunities and threats. But how to access and work with all that data? An emerging type of service called data as a service, or DaaS, promises to help.

• How IT Helps Nissan Beat Chevy in the Electric Car Game

  The all-electric Nissan Leaf had the potential to woo eco-conscious shoppers away from the Chevy Volt when it was launched last December. But from a customer service and sales perspective, the Japanese automaker was at a distinct disadvantage. Chevrolet consistently scored four stars on J.D. Power's five-star customer service and sales experience scales; Nissan earned just two.

• Prevent your systems from being hijacked: A quick guide

  It's time to rethink some old, and now outdated, security truisms that enable a very scary kind of attack.

• Windows 8: The InfoWorld Deep Dive report

  It's not the Windows you know and love. Microsoft has revealed a "reimagined" Windows -- code-named Windows 8 -- that boasts a very different, tile-centric user interface called Metro taken from Windows Phone that is touch-savvy, runs on ARM processors as well as Intel x86 chips, takes fewer system resources so it can run on a wider variety of hardware platforms, and works on both tablets and traditional keyboard-and-mouse PCs. It's not mobile versus desktop, it's mobile and desktop together.

• IT Consultant Resume Makeover: How to Land IT Management Jobs

  There comes a time in many IT consultants' careers when they decide to exchange the trappings of their jet-set professional lives for a corporate IT job with more stability. For Sevin Straus, an IT consultant based in Chicago, that moment came at the height of the financial crisis in 2009.

• Why physical security matters, even in the cloud

  At the Business of Cloud Computing Conference, I caught a presentation by Marlin Pohlman, who noted that No. 3 on the <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/357789/The_Race_to_Cloud_Standards_Gets_Crowded">Cloud Security Alliance</a> 's "Top Threats to Cloud Computing" list is malicious insiders. This serves as a good reminder that old-fashioned physical security issues require a lot of attention when you're considering a <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/topic/158/Cloud+Computing">cloud</a> service provider.

• iPad 2 vs. business class tablets

  Tech lovers have been flocking to the <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/111910-apple-ipad-resources.html">iPad</a> 2 and other tablets in order to watch movies, read books, surf the Web and make video calls on the latest, greatest, thinnest, lightest, coolest devices. But where do tablets fit within the enterprise?

• Test Aims to Disprove Data Center Dogma

  Since January, David Filas, a data center engineer at Trinity Health, has been running decommissioned servers, networking gear and storage systems in a simple generator shed on the grounds of the healthcare provider's headquarters in Novi, Mich.