Pimm Fox

U.S. president Bush speaks about the need for financial transparency: the ability to figure out what's going on inside a business. But the only way this will happen is for top executives to create and use IT infrastructure to get vital data when it's needed, rather than after regulators and investors have been duped.

Ever since Research In Motion Ltd.'s (RIM) BlackBerry e-mail pagers hit the enterprise, they've been badges and handy tools for executives who want continuous access to e-mail. They've also been ongoing IT headaches.

There's so much noise generated by experts chanting the "information is key to business success" mantra that it's a mush of jazz, rock 'n' roll and classical instead of a single piece of music.

Business intelligence vendors such as Cognos, Crystal Decisions and Business Objects combine various Internet-based technologies with thin clients to push business reporting tools further down into a company

Your bumpy path toward getting a clear, single view of the customer by using a data warehouse can be smoothed with the right kind of database, according to Computerworld (US) columnist Pimm Fox.

Within the next five years, approximately 45 per cent of all U.S. federal workers will be eligible for retirement, says Steve Rohleder, managing partner of the U.S. government practice at Accenture Ltd. IT positions will be hit hard as workers decamp for private industry, where salary caps don't apply.

The numbers are frightening. Half of all IT projects fail to meet objectives, and half are delivered over budget, according to Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn. Meanwhile, Aberdeen Group Inc. in Boston reports that 30 per cent of IT projects are canceled prior to completion and 90 per cent are delivered late.

Corporate IT projects and military campaigns have something in common. Both receive monikers designed to either focus the team or heighten the participants