Eric Lundquist

Will Linux supplant Unix and Windows? Will you replace your servers with blades? What about changing the corporate browser from Internet Explorer to Firefox? All those are legitimate corporate technology questions as the year nears its end. However, those questions were also legitimate at the end of last year. Here are four IT issues that […]

What is your complementary technology investment strategy for next year? Technology investments that are not in accord with business goals are doomed to failure. The converse is true as well. Setting business goals without considering what technology investments are needed to support those goals will also leave you with your wheels spinning as competitors move […]

The reasons to invest in technology can be summed up in one word: leverage. A wise technology investment lets you combine people skills and technological capabilities to produce a powerful financial engine for your company. The focus on leverage does not lend itself well to detailed return-on-investment calculations, contracting your technology future to an offshore […]

Optimism in the CIO ranks? Yes, and lots of it—at least in the ranks of the three CIOs speaking recently at a breakfast held by the Massachusetts Software Council. The program provided a good counterpoint to the general monotone message Ive heard from many technology executives. That monotone monologue usually mentions flat spending plans, unrealistic […]

The folks in marketing want to develop a direct mail campaign that can target with pinpoint precision certain households, certain income levels and certain geographies. They want to know the likelihood of success, and they want to know the exact costs and make sure all the right stuff gets mailed. And, by the way, they […]

“This is a great time to be in technology. I love these times.” Not a comment youd expect from someone in corporate IT in this era of budget cuts, outsourcing and general technology wariness. However, Sherra Pierre, vice president of IS for Sesame Workshop (yes, the Big Bird folks), was sincere in her observations about […]

If you could, you would have a computing infrastructure that is simple. Youd be able to check the system status whenever you wanted, you could upgrade seamlessly and add computing resources as required, and words such as “patches” and “vulnerabilities” would be relegated to the dictionary of historical terms. Youd no more worry about the […]

You are what you store. In your personal life, your decisions about what to keep, discard and store securely define what you consider important. The same is true in the enterprise. Storage—a subject that once seemed permanently relegated to the technology backwaters—is now among the top IT topics. Consider the following options. If you had […]

Agendas can be altered to fit the circumstance, but long-term strategies should be just that: long term. And ethics are not pliable but need to be stated and adhered to regardless of events. Two recent episodes demonstrate why these principles should be followed. The first example is the ouster of Craig Conway from PeopleSoft. Under […]

How do you allocate your technology resources most efficiently? With a limited budget, limited expertise and a world of business demands standing outside your door, you need to know how to get the most bang for your IT dollar. When you follow a fad, invest in technology for technologys sake, or exhaust yourself and your […]