Stories about: Flint

Enterprise software is sure to remain a buyer's market during the economic downturn next year, but assuming you've got a budget, be careful to avoid boondoggles while in pursuit of a bargain, say analysts, consultants and IT executives.

It's no secret that maintenance and support for enterprise applications is wildly profitable for vendors and, likewise, incredibly expensive for IT shops. Some of those IT shops, in fact, are overwhelmed by the cost and find too little return to justify paying for it.

Service-oriented architecture promises many positives: resource reuse, application integration, business agility and infrastructure flexibility, among others. But never do SOA proponents claim ease of management as one of the technology's glories.

An Oracle purchase of business intelligence vendor Hyperion Solutions will likely benefit Oracle, but Hyperion users could find cutbacks in product upgrades and less negotiating leverage, users and analysts said. Oracle Thursday agreed to buy the maker of business intelligence tools for US$3.3 billion.

Before General Motors broke ground on its Lansing Delta Township automobile manufacturing plant on Jan. 30, 2004, the 2.4million-square-foot facility had already been designed, built and equipped -- in cyberspace. Before the first shovel of earth had been turned at the physical building site, the Detroit automaker created a virtual factory -- a complete, 3-D version of the plant and its contents.

Headhunter Matt Ocken was looking for references recently for a vice president of engineering he was considering recruiting for a client. He knew of a CIO at one of the companies on the candidate's resume, but he couldn't get the man to return his calls. Then he tried Visible Path, social networking software his firm had implemented four months before. In no time, he had the needed reference.

Enterprise network managers could benefit from a flurry of acquisitions in which network management veterans BMC Software and Hewlett-Packard separately bought leading-edge technologies and integrated the wares into their software suites.

Hewlett-Packard this week announced an identity management product, HP OpenView Select Identity, which is designed to automate a full range of identity and access control tasks.

In a scorched earth budget that has spent $8.39 billion of surplus taxation revenue to appease voters, the federal government will spend more money than ever on new technology to nail down security - and new security to nail down technology.

IBM last week announced upgrades of two content management tools and said it will ship additional features later this year as part of an effort to broaden its support for managing corporate information other than relational data.

IBM Corp. detailed new versions of its content management and records management software on Tuesday during a press event at its US corporate headquarters. Company officials also used the occasion to discuss how it is working to broaden the reach of DB2 branding from just a database to an information integration infrastructure.