Spotlight Features

PayPal is the de facto market leader in the person-to-small business payment universe, but change is in the air. Since eBay purchased it in 2002, PayPal has become a revenue unit of the world's most successful e-commerce venture -- eBay's secret weapon, as it were. But is this weapon double-edged? P...

Big enterprises are obvious sales targets for technology vendors. For both hardware and software providers, landing a big installation that affects thousands of workers is like hitting a home run. But the current economic climate is a stiff wind blowing in from the outfield, turning those prospectiv...

In today's tightly budgeted IT environment, security spending is likely to be squeezed even more than other areas, because expenditures may appear to be unnecessary until a break-in occurs. Of course, no company wants to see its name in lights after a cyber attack. But neither do companies have coun...

Some of the biggest names in technology -- including Amazon, Google and Yahoo! -- share something in common: At least at first, they grew to become household names with little, if any, help from traditional advertising. Instead, they used word-of-mouth, publicity and other relatively low-cost approa...

Web services is arguably the most important IT initiative of our time. Enterprise back ends, which have been cobbled together over decades with application-specific components from a variety of vendors, now can be (and increasingly must be) integrated and delivered to customers with a universality a...

While sometimes warranted, changing databases is a huge undertaking for almost any enterprise. An IT department embarking on such an endeavor should plan for a major upheaval, with sizeable up-front costs, a host of compatibility issues and the need to retrain key employees. Still, some companies se...

The e-tail universe has seen tremendous consolidation since the dot-com bubble burst. But more people are buying online every day. Air travel, consumer electronics and apparel are three of the hottest categories of consumer products sold online, IDC research manager Jonathan Gaw told the E-Commerce ...

So, you have a product or two. You want to expand your reach. The Internet sits at your fingertips. If you build it, will they come? Not necessarily. That is the big lesson of the bubble years -- and a quandary for small e-commerce companies at a time when venture capitalists are not feeling adventu...

The phrase "Real Time Enterprise" (RTE) is a siren song of unquestionable allure for many enterprises. Whether a company wishes to respond to customer data more quickly or communicate better internally, having a back end that responds immediately to the rapid flow of corporate information represents...

It is a common business scenario: A new CEO takes over a struggling company and vows to put it on more solid financial footing. He assures investors that he will cut only the fat from the ailing organization, leaving the muscle and bone the company will need to thrive intact. But when it comes time ...