Thomas Hoffman

In a recent Computerworld survey, 52 per cent of the respondents said they're working on IT projects that will provide their companies with a major competitive advantage.

Savvy CIOs know that it's not a question of how much you invest in IT but how wisely you do so.

Historically, the U.S. power industry has been gun-shy about outsourcing critical IT functions to third-party service providers such as IBM Corp. and Electronic Data Systems Corp.

Pat Cozzi has been working on a top-secret project at an IBM Corp. laboratory in Almaden, Calif., since June 2. He's restricted about how much he can say about it, other than that the project centres on archival storage and that the work he and his team are doing could one day have a dramatic impact on future products and the storage market. By the way, Cozzi is a 21-year-old senior computer science major at Pennsylvania State University.

While most eyes were on Tiger Woods at the PGA Tour's Buick Classic this weekend, Jonathan Kaye also had more than his usual share of followers.

Many state and local government IT departments face massive cutbacks because of the weak economy and declining tax revenue. But in Fairfax County, Va., US$9 million is being set aside to continue a series of IT modernization projects in the fiscal year that starts July 1.

Cost pressures and the need for increased business agility are leading a growing number of companies to shift more of their IT work offshore, according to panellists who discussed sourcing issues at the Computerworld Premier 100 conference early this year.

Gartner predicts that business units will gain control over a majority of discretionary spending on technology this...