Spotlight Features

Open-source database deployments rose dramatically in the last half of 2005, and as one might expect, as more IT pros get acquainted with these non-proprietary systems, security is a chief concern. Open-source database makers like MySQL and PostgreSQL simply must answer some of the most prevalent se...

Times are changing. Microsoft's Windows operating system, which was originally designed for desktop PCs, is being retooled to support supercomputer applications. With the hope of becoming a key player in that space, Microsoft has poured millions of dollars into its Windows Super Computer Cluster, wh...

This is the final installment of my three-part series covering this year's Consumer Electronics Show, so this week let's focus on the future. There are only a few companies I see as having the breadth to succeed in the battle for the digital home, among them HP and Sony. HP stands out slightly ahead...

The world economic landscape is rapidly changing. Assuming that you regard the European Union as one economic entity, as of this writing, there are two economic superpowers. Those two superpowers are the U.S. and the E.U., which have roughly equivalent gross domestic products. If your definition li...

The debate over "network neutrality" recently heated up with the release of seemingly conflicting poll results from two consumer organizations. Of course, the devil is always in the details, and much of the debate is about whether or not to regulate the Internet preemptively. Survey results release...

Increasingly, users are working with cell phones and PDAs to access data. Because finding desired information can be a challenge, companies such as America Online, Google and Yahoo developed search services specifically geared to mobile users. "Mobile search is an area of keen interest to both users...

If corporate managers have Sarbanes-Oxley compliance to blame for late nights and lost sleep, those in the livestock and poultry industries have plenty of compliance worries of their own, triggered by NAIS, which stands for the National Animal Identification System. NAIS is a multi-year, phased-in p...

Many sales forces seem to be stuck in a time warp. Selling with a transaction focus to customers who require a consultative or even enterprise approach is driving the cost of supporting these misaligned sales forces to the point of being unaffordable. Conversely, there are companies out there that ...

Anyone who purchased clear sunscreen or wore stain-resistant pants during the holidays was probably enjoying the benefits of commercialized nanotechnology. While nanotech advances are exciting, some observers dangerously press for greater government oversight in the sector. Nanotechnology, the mani...

Corporations are in need of quick and serious shock therapy to prod them out of the complacency of owning a few flashy Web sites. The exuberance that attended these early achievements fueled the false notion in many corporate boardrooms that their firms had become "the master players of global e-com...