Stories about: Capital One Financial

A decade of rapid growth has a way of making any cutting-edge enterprise feel outdated. But Rob Alexander, executive vice president of Capital One Financial, and his team rose to the challenge.

Data center managers have adopted server virtualization wholeheartedly in the past year, across a variety of businesses for nearly every kind of application, as a way to reduce oversight and hardware costs, IT managers and analysts said at Infrastructure Management World held this week in the US.

Capital One Financial is reducing its server count even as it expands and acquires new businesses. To help make that possible, Lee Congdon, vice president of corporate technology at the US-based credit-card and financial services firm, is using virtualization in his servers and networks and piloting a database virtualization program.

Chris Kniola wants to radically redesign his company's call centers. Instead of eight-pack cubicles -- the sterile setup of four desks in two rows, separated by low walls and equipped with standard desktop computers and phones -- Kniola envisions a free-flowing space that offers customer service reps everything from comfortable chairs to garden-side work spots. "You walk into the office, the security desk gives you your computer, and you go sit wherever you want," he says.

Embedding business intelligence (BI) into operational processes can help workers make better decisions, but such IT initiatives must be focused on an area that will show a significant return on investment and be designed with business users.

Capital One Financial is reducing its server count even as it expands and acquires new businesses. To help in that effort, the credit card and financial services company uses virtualization in its servers and networks and is piloting a database virtualization program. Lee Congdon, vice president of corporate technology at Capital One, said the company's goals are to reduce technology costs and improve the IT department's ability to meet business needs. Congdon also talked about the industry's role in spreading the technology.

Companies can wield business intelligence as a weapon to outmaneuver competitors and boost revenue, but only if data analysis techniques are used enterprisewide and the effort is backed by senior management.

Companies can wield business intelligence as a weapon to outmaneuver competitors and boost revenue -- but not without making analytics an enterprisewide effort backed by senior management.

In a conference room overlooking the site of the World Trade Center, early adopters of biometrics technology this week stressed the importance of determining someone's true identity.

As the world economy begins recovering from nearly five years of stagnation, businesses developed from an industrial mindset face obsolescence. The future will see dramatic change in how, where and with whom we work.

More and more workers aren't showing up at the office. Their cubicles are vacant, their desktop PCs idle.