Stan Gibson

With 65 percent of corporate revenues derived from IT initiatives, MasterCard International Inc.s systems are highly strategic, especially in its ongoing quest to best archrival Visa International Service Association. But getting to this point wasnt easy. It entailed a massive eight-year rearchitecting of the global payments companys data center and ne twork. The recently completed […]

Coopetition is alive and well. that 90s buzzword is back in circulation if this weeks Web services roundtable is any indication. Although the roundtable participants—with eWEEK Technology Editor Peter Coffee acting as referee—bob and weave, professing cooperation and interoperability around standards above all else, they each bring something distinctly different to the table. That means, […]

Handing everything over to outsourcers would seem like the ultimate in hands-off management. Not at General Motors Corp. On the contrary, the GM way is to outsource everything and yet control everything. Its not a contradiction when you have the muscle of a $3.5 billion IT budget on your side. Wielding that immense buying power […]

In the auto industry, the watchword used to be “Follow the General.” In the months and years ahead, well see if the maxim still applies. If it does, the way IT services are consumed by the worlds largest companies will never be the same. For General Motors to exert the influence that Ralph Szygenda and […]

Give General Motors Corp. credit for one thing: the worlds largest automaker is not afraid to break new ground. Now the company is seeking nothing less than to rewrite the rule book that outsourcers and their customers will follow for years to come. Group Vice President and CIO Ralph Szygenda calls it the “third wave” […]

To eavesdrop on this weeks eWEEK Corporate Partners roundtable on corporate networking is to get an earful about feverish activity—quite at odds with the perception that IT initiatives have been cryogenically frozen for the foreseeable future. The partners are tasked with building not only high-bandwidth networks but also networks that make bandwidth available 24-by-7—and that […]

Just when IT execs were beginning to get the idea of how to pitch their operations as profit rather than cost centers again, along comes the chore of retrofitting systems to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Its a task that, as Dennis Callaghan points out in his story, promises to bring about as much fun—and […]

How would you like to have an adaptive enterprise? Hewlett-Packard is betting that most customers will choose the obvious reply and answer yes. There is a dark side to the HP message, though, embodied in its choice of the name, Darwin Reference Architecture, for its framework for creating business-process-oriented IT. Adaptation was, of course, critical […]

Congratulations, spammers. Youve just superseded smokers as the most universally loathed social outcasts. Worse, you could soon be on the receiving end of more lawsuits than the tobacco companies. And if youre ever taken to court, you may have a hell of time finding a lawyer willing to take on your case. Its rare when […]

If you havent already, you should make your companys privacy policies your business. As Cameron Sturdevant reports in eWEEK Labs Special Report on privacy, you should get involved in privacy efforts and help mold them using your technology expertise. Adhering closely to strict policies can build a unique competitive advantage: trust. In a Face to […]