Stories about: PricewaterhouseCoopers

New Year's is a great occasion for taking pause to reassess priorities, needs, and wants. As we enter what looks to be a trying 2009, such a pause is even more critical. IT resources will be limited and business pressures higher. But that doesn't mean you withdraw or go into reactive mode. In tough times, being clear on your priorities is even more important, as everything you do is more critical. So InfoWorld asked its CTO Council member and its cadre of expert contributors for their top New Year's resolutions to give the tech industry a list that we hope will help you make the most of your 2009 priorities.

Given all the pressures IT is under, another compliance initiative may seem to be one too many. There is such a mandate: to submit financial reports using XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) tags. How much will the XBRL mandate add to IT's burden? At first, the burden will be small, but it will increase over time -- as will the opportunity to use XBRL for better internal operations, not just for reporting compliance.

The global financial crisis so visible this past month is beginning to take its toll on information-technology spending, though IT security spending is expected to be spared in what many think will be a dismal coming year.

The tech sector is experiencing a crash -- not of stock prices, which rebounded somewhat on Wall Street on Tuesday -- but in its ability to take new companies public.

IT has gotten a bad rap when it comes to energy consumption. Walk into any datacenter, and you can almost feel the carbon emissions leaking into the atmosphere. However, research shows that the datacenter actually accounts for a very small percentage of a company's overall energy usage. And businesses are missing the other significant opportunities where they could cut energy usages -- and costs. Ironically, the same IT department that is reducing energy usage in the datacenter could lead the energy-savings initiatives across the enterprise.

Venture funding for networking companies took a small dive in the second quarter, but a few innovative Internet, wireless and hardware vendors raised boatloads of cash from investors.

What do Xerox printers, Fenway Park, green creatures and an executive zipping around with a personal jetpack have in common? Are you stumped? You might not be if you had an avatar.

French bank Societe Generale expects to have remedies in place by year end for the technical and procedural flaws that allowed rogue trader Jerome Kerviel to build a fraudulent trading position that cost the bank Euro 4.9 billion (AUD$8 billion).

"Web 2.0 is a thing of the past."

There are few clearer bellwethers as to the imminent direction of technology than where venture capitalists put their money. They're about making money, so they look for industry patterns they think will lead to sure bets. And that means they invest where the tech industry has begun to coalesce its thinking, not on exotic new science fiction. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, VCs have invested a total of US$57 billion in startups -- mostly tech ones -- in 2005, 2006, and 2007.

HP Tuesday announced its plans to acquire EDS for US$13.9 billion in a deal that would double HP's services business and revive EDS' position as a leader in global technology services. The acquisition will catapult HP's annual revenue for services from less than $20 billion to nearly $40 billion and position HP as the second largest services provider in the world. Here is a look at what is happening and why now.