Stories by: Ephraim Schwartz

While I applaud any company's attempt to be environmentally responsible and implement "green" projects, I remain skeptical of long-term commitments to green initiatives that don't decrease costs, fatten the bottom line, or polish the organization's image.

In the coming weeks the feds and the surviving financial services institutions will have the daunting task of unraveling all the securitized loans and other instruments that are hiding the toxic investments. But does the technology exist to do that? And if so, could it have been used to prevent the bad debt from hitting the fan in the first place?

Timing is everything -- in sports, budget requests, and yes, politics, too. So it is with our collective high-tech fingers crossed that we watch as House Bill H.R. 6049 "Renewable Energy and Job Creation" [PDF] and a Senate amendment -- both of which propose tax credits for R&D in the so-called "innovation" industries -- make their way through US Congress.

Picture in your mind the facilities management guy or gal in your building: Are you envisioning someone in a pair of overalls and a screwdriver tucked in the back pocket?

Wikis are deceptively easy to use and install, so are nowadays found in all sorts of IT departments, especially as quick and simple project management organizers.

While reading outsourcing horror stories may be somewhat entertaining, especially if it hasn't happened to you, it's even better to learn from the mistakes of others.

I'm writing about Aspen Technology today not because you are likely to ever need its software (unless you own an oil refinery) but because the way the company allows its customers to purchase its smorgasbord of software applications is unique -- so much so that you may want to consider putting a little pressure on your vendors to consider the same.

As companies look to economize in a weak economy worsened by rising energy costs, it may be more tempting than ever to consider outsourcing your IT -- whether to a cloud-based provider, to a shop in your town, or to a provider in some far-off land. Certainly, outsourcing has worked well for many companies, but it can also lead to business-damaging nightmares, says Larry Harding, founder and president of High Street Partners, a global consultancy that advises company on how to expand overseas. After all, if outsourcers fail, you're left holding the bag without the resources to fix the problem.

When you think of RFID, you likely think of the radio tags being used to track items in a warehouse or verify prescriptions in a hospital -- two long-time uses of the radio frequency identification tags.

Maybe Gartner Vice President of Research Benoit Lheureux can't say, "I've seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked," but he did sound a bit like the poet Allen Ginsberg when -- speaking about VAN (value-added network) service providers -- he said, "I saw these guys sink into the morass of the IT hell hole, and they were bleeding revenue."

US CIOs plan sharp reductions in contract staff, professional services, and hardware -- and almost no investment in cloud computing.