Stories about: United Stationers

For at least three days prior to when Hurricane Katrina struck, Marshall Lancaster and his IT team at Lagasse were closely tracking the storm, hoping it would spare his company's New Orleans-based headquarters and data center but preparing for the worst. By the time Katrina made landfall early on a Monday morning in August 2005, Lancaster and his team were in Chicago at the company's backup data center, having already declared a disaster.

In his keynote address at the recent Network World IT Roadmap event in the US, Marshall Lancaster, vice president of IT, Enterprise Infrastructure Services for United Stationers, offered up lots of tips and lessons learned that can help companies implement effective -- and cost-effective -- disaster recovery plans (Read our main story on his experiences here.)

Justifying the cost of training may not have been necessary in the days of generous bonuses, lavish parties and other perks of the dot-com era. But as companies cut back on salaries and staff, IT managers must demonstrate the return on investment for any expense, including training.

Traditional companies are having an easier time filling long-empty IT staffing positions as former dot-com employees return to the corporate fold. But corporate IT managers report that not all of those returning are the cream of the crop.

TIf you're going to style your business for the Internet, you're going to need IT talent. And right now, demand outstrips the supply of good technologists by far, making it tougher than ever to retain staff.

US Office Products Co. (USOP), which racked up $3.2 billion last year through direct sales to businesses using its print catalog, is aggressively pushing into e-commerce to fend off dot-com upstarts and traditional rivals.