Utility Computing

For something billed as the hot new model in business computing, it’s got a distinctly unsexy moniker. Maybe that’s why everyone calls utility computing something else.At IBM, it’s “E-business on demand.” At Microsoft, it’s “the dynamic systems initiative.” At Hewlett-Packard, it’s “the adaptive ...

By Anne Stuart • Feb. 4, 2004

Investment Banks Outsourcing to India

The offshoring trend has taken another surprising turn. Having successfully outsourced to India such back-office functions as IT, investment banks are now sending some of their financial analysis and research overseas. In recent months, firms including J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley have quietly ...

By Don Durfee • Jan. 31, 2004

Explore the Trendline➔

The CFO Strategy for Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence’s impact on the office of the CFO continues to evolve, and finance chiefs must be aware of the opportunities it will create for growth. 

By CFO.com staff

Sir Bill and His Dragons — Past, Present and Future

The announcement this week that Microsoft’s founder, Bill Gates, is to receive an honorary knighthood from Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II seems fitting. For Bill Gates KBE (only British citizens can take the honorific “Sir”) combines knightly philanthropy on an unprecedented scale with a long and i...

By Economist Staff • Jan. 30, 2004

Business Intelligence

By computer industry standards, the business-intelligence sector has reached full maturity. Many software makers have been around for more then a decade, and many of them, Information Builders, is even celebrating it’s 26th year. But the market is rife with change and innovation, most of which sh...

By John Verity • Jan. 27, 2004

Storage Systems

The good news: analysts expect storage prices to continue their double-digit declines, thanks to commoditization and competition. And given that storage is an area of the IT budget that has felt keen pressure lately, that should please most CFOs. The not-so-good news: storage requirements are inc...

By Russ Banham • Jan. 21, 2004

Battling the Property Pirates

More American companies these days are fighting in court to protect the intellectual-property rights of patents, trademarks, and copyrights. Indeed, roughly 2,700 patent lawsuits were filed in 2002, more than double the filings a decade ago, according to intellectual-property-management consultin...

By Ronald Fink • Jan. 20, 2004

Data Visualization

Companies are always looking for answers. Maybe it’s the looking that counts.Although the computer is often compared to the human brain, the brain has something that almost all computers lack: sight. After all, our eyes are merely the interface between brain and world, a hard-wired conduit for pr...

By John Verity • Jan. 20, 2004

Risks of Rogue Technology

At Forrester Research, analysts get to try out the latest “cool” technology for themselves: PDAs, Wi-Fi laptops, nifty storage devices. They also have the opportunity to try out some technology that many people would consider much more mundane: network “sniffing” software and intrusion-detection ...

By Russ Banham • Jan. 14, 2004

Up All Night

For all the corporate exhorting of workers to cut costs wherever possible, employees remain a decidedly wasteful group. This is particularly true when it comes to using office equipment. Copier machines, expensive appliances to operate under the best of circumstances, are treated as personal prin...

By John Goff • Jan. 13, 2004

64-Bit Computing

Copernicus, Newton, Kepler, and Einstein all developed “laws” or theorems so fundamental to our understanding of the universe that they are known to every schoolchild. Moore’s Law isn’t quite up there with E=mc2 on the greatest-hits list, but it isn’t far behind. The notion that computing power w...

By Peter Krass • Jan. 8, 2004

The New New Economy

Except for Xerox and FedEx, few corporate names ever make it into the lexicon of action verbs. The latest entry, however, appears to be search-engine specialist Google, which is now invoked routinely by users of the Internet (“How did you find me?” “I just Googled your name.”).While Google’s migr...

By John Edwards • Jan. 7, 2004

Will Bush Go to Bat for Intellectual Property?

General Motors executives are likely to be taking a keen interest in Chinese premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to the White House this week.Days before the premier’s arrival, the Chinese government agreed to talk with the U.S. automaker about GM’s charges of intellectual property piracy by a company in ...

By Ronald Fink • Dec. 10, 2003

Analyze This

In the early 1950s, Harry Markowitz began formulating his groundbreaking theories on modern portfolio management. Applying the concepts of variance and co-variance, Markowitz showed that a diversified portfolio of financial assets can be optimized to deliver the maximum return for a given level o...

By Edward Teach and John Goff • Dec. 1, 2003

Whose Life Is It, Anyway?

Like most virtual retailers, Guess.com—the online outfit of clothier Guess Inc.—proudly displays its privacy policy right on the Website. Six months ago, the pledge read: “This site has security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information under our control.” R...

By John Goff • Dec. 1, 2003

Software Licensing

With customers eager to strike better deals, IT firms have responded with a spate of new licensing options. But analysts say that can sometimes resemble a shell game. “When you look at the details, less has changed in the licensing market than people might believe,” says Scott Lundstrom, CTO at A...

By Julie Sturgeon • Nov. 17, 2003

The 20/20 Issue

This issue caps the first full year of CFO IT, a year in which we received many encouraging words from readers, won several awards, missed a typo or two, and, most important, sought to bring a fresh and relevant perspective to IT strategy as viewed from the CFO’s office. We’re not unhappy with ou...

By Scott Leibs • Nov. 17, 2003

Electronic Payments

Moving money by wire must qualify as the original form of E-business: its roots can be traced back more than 100 years. But the relatively new field of E-invoicing, plagued by the clunky terms electronic bill presentation and payment (EBPP) and electronic invoice presentment and payment (EIPP), h...

By Julie Sturgeon • Nov. 17, 2003

Grid Computing

A number of surveys, including our own, have revealed the unsettling fact that many companies have bought more technology than they need. To grasp the magnitude of this waste, look no further than the powerful computer on your desk. What does it do most of the day? It waits…and waits…and waits. E...

By Peter Krass • Nov. 17, 2003

Collaborative Computing

Collaboration used to be simple: stock a meeting room with soda, coffee, and a whiteboard, add workers, and shake until done. No longer. Today collaboration involves not only your co-workers but also members of dispersed “virtual” work teams: salespeople, distributors, retailers, suppliers, custo...

By Peter Krass • Nov. 17, 2003

Linux

Long synonymous with “free,” at least in the minds of CFOs, Linux will acquire new associations in 2004 as the New Age mysticism that surrounds it gives way to significant momentum, increasing possibilities and strategic decisions aplenty. Linux, the computer operating system architected by Linus...

By Russ Banham • Nov. 17, 2003

Enterprise Suites

It doesn’t get more “core” than ERP. Enterprise resource planning software is at the heart of most large companies today. It also tends to be at the heart of their IT budgets, with price tags running from hundreds of thousands to hundreds of millions of dollars.Major ERP vendors enjoyed boom time...

By Russ Banham • Nov. 17, 2003

It’s Who You Know

There was a time in the early ’90s when “expert systems” were heralded as a breakthrough in knowledge management. The goal was to capture and forever reap the rewards of a company’s best and brightest. The systems took various forms, but all in essence sought to extract, through interviews and ot...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Nov. 17, 2003

Drowning in Data

Recently, a major technology vendor sent out questionnaires to senior business managers about data and decision-making. A number of them came back with additional comments, most of them variations on a theme: “Data is buried in a sea of noise.” “Swamped in information.” “I’m drowning.” Despite—or...

By John Goff • Nov. 1, 2003

Corralling Costs

A black hole. That’s how most finance chiefs like to describe their marketing departments. Taking up much of a company’s discretionary spend, marketing departments have come under fire for years for being free-wheeling spenders that shirk any attempts to instil the sort of financial rigour and an...

By Jason Karaian • Nov. 1, 2003

Do Not Call Waiting

It seemed to be going so smoothly, too. After years of debating and months of preparation, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) finally had a rollout date for its much-ballyhooed Do Not Call Registry. The list, which contains more than 50 million phone numbers that would be off-limits to most telem...

By Esther Shein • Nov. 1, 2003