CIO staff

Wringing efficiency out of the supply chain could be as simple as investing in technology that will automate operational tasks, such as purchase order processing. That's because smoother supply chain operations can allow companies to shift resources to more strategic tasks-such as sourcing-where they can find even more value, according to the Hackett Group.

We asked five members of the CIO Executive Council for their advice on how to pull IT out of its black box and place it squarely on the executive table.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.and the U.S. Department of Defense have been accused of force-feeding radio frequency identification (RFID) to the world, insisting that they will do business only with RFID-enabled suppliers by various drop-dead dates. But a new survey indicates that there are other factors influencing RFID adoption, including strategic ones. Among the reasons companies give for implementing RFID technologies are lowering labor costs (54 per cent) and making their business processes more efficient (43 per cent).

At the EDGE 2004 Conference & Expo, held recently in San Francisco, a keynote panel session, billed as "The Open Source Debate", focussed on the future of Linux.

So how do you find, fix or fire your poor performers? CIO magazine in the U.S. raised this issue and fielded a number of related questions submitted by readers online.

In a bid to accelerate the use of Linux in data centres, Open Source Development Labs Inc. released a document outlining technical capabilities that the operating system needs in order to run enterprise-class applications.

While companies aren't ripping out their PBXs for IP telephony systems en masse, a report from ABI Research says most enterprise voice systems purchased over the next several years will be IP-based.

Cost-cutting, thankfully, didn't dominate the language of IT this year the way it did in 2002. A review of CIO's 2003 coverage shows that CIOs were, instead, locked in a struggle for control.