Tommy Peterson

In the wake of the painful experiences of 2000, the choice of the mechanism used to record and tally votes in this year's U.S. presidential election may be almost as controversial as the battle between the candidates. Unfortunately, a hefty portion of state and local jurisdictions have prematurely adopted electronic voting systems.

When Weatherford International Ltd. began deploying an enterprise-wide ERP system, the company wanted to make sure it gained maximum benefit from the massive migration project. The oil field products and services company wanted to develop advanced search capabilities that would expose the information in its J.D. Edwards OneWorld ERP software and the Parametric Technology Corp. (PTC) Windchill product data management (PDM) system installed with it, says Bill Droke, Weatherford

Much has been said and written about the need for software that aligns with and supports the processes and policies of the business using it. The goal is to make IT systems, and the companies that run them, more responsive to ever-changing market threats and opportunities.

The Internet has buried companies under a mudslide of unstructured data. One of the most pressing problems facing IT is how to turn all that data that won't fit into rows and columns into useful information. And while the amount of unstructured data is growing exponentially, the tools for dealing with it haven't kept pace.

Have you noticed that geekiness is going out of style in IT? The old revelling in speeds and feeds and mounting terabytes of storage is gone.

The Internet has buried companies under a mudslide of unstructured data. One of the most pressing problems facing IT is how to turn all that data that won't fit into rows and columns into useful information. And while the amount of unstructured data is growing exponentially, the tools for dealing with it haven't kept pace.

Anyone who pays attention to corporate IT knows that there's a long, winding road between the first claims that a technology will transform the way business works and the point at which we see the technology actually working in business.

Ray Kurzweil has some advice for you: take care of yourself for the next 10 years, because if you're still around in 2011, you'll have a good shot at immortality.