In a year of consolidation in a hot business intelligence marketplace, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP secured leading positions in 2007. This has cleared the way for a new generation of BI specialists to emerge and take root. "We like to compare the massive consolidation we saw in 2007 to a forest c...

Early adopters are typically characterized as progressive risk-takers who have little to lose and much to gain. Following this logic, it makes perfect sense that within this crowd we find bot herders -- hackers who control a large number of compromised PCs for malicious purposes. Yet it's unsettling...

Candidates, political parties and money might seem to dominate the upcoming 2008 U.S. presidential election, but when it comes to voter relationship management, software rules campaigns and politicking. When qualified U.S. citizens cast a legal ballot to express a preference for a candidate or for a...

The customer is always right -- except for, of course, when he or she isn't. When it's inconvenient for the company, or when the customer asks for something that could negatively affect the company's revenue streams or business model, the customer is never right -- even when he or she is. That's why...

As you read a sentence, its meaning may be clear even before you reach its end. This illustrates our topic. Our minds process text sequentially. As we read, the context presented to us by an author develops in our minds. What precedes clarifies what follows, and vice-versa. This phenomenon is a resu...

Facebook has modified its Beacon ad program by making its off-site broadcasting capabilities more obvious to users and easier to opt out of -- at least, in some cases. However, that adjustment hasn't quelled privacy concerns on the part of users and at least one security vendor. Facebook has been tr...

After a special court made a secret ruling sometime in the last few months limiting the government's authority to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mails, the Bush administration and Congressional Democrats are now at odds on how best to protect the privacy of Americans while maintaining national secur...

Opposing tensions are much in evidence in the legal wrangle over individual privacy rights and security in the digital environment. The dizzying pace of technological innovation continues as individuals and organizations public and private struggle to come to grips with its implications and ramifica...

There's no doubt that terrorist organizations are making full use of the Web today to recruit, train, mobilize, publicize and raise funds, but finding and ultimately prosecuting them is no simple matter. With fleeting URLs and anonymous communications, online terrorist activities are an ever-shiftin...

There's no denying that the Internet has changed the world for both good and bad, but few elements of its dark side inspire more fear than its use by terrorists. Observers around the world were horrified when a video of the 2002 beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl was disseminated on the W...

Every interaction an enterprise has with customers, partners or suppliers instigates a new trail of data that can create a deluge effect over a short period of time. Experts predict that within a few years, it won't be uncommon to see enterprises with networks and databases storing over 100 TB of in...

They're invisible to most online shoppers, but analytics programs that are combing through every click they make are dictating what their shopping experience looks like. Thanks to a proliferation of easy-to-use and affordable -- even free -- analytics programs, a growing number of merchants are usin...

After several years of reported abuse, the Bush administration has rescinded lender access to a federal database containing sensitive financial information on about 60 million college students. The temporary move bars college loan firms from accessing the government-run database over concerns of dat...

Business intelligence is a fast-growing segment area in the on-demand market. BI solutions help enterprises track performance, understand business drivers, and manage an organization's overall operations. "BI is a large, complex set of technologies, processes and methodologies that address all of th...

Microsoft has released Service Pack 2 for SQL Server 2005, making the software giant's flagship database system compatible with its newest operating system and Office 2007. The release is the second major update the company has issued for its enterprise grade database. In addition to integrating SQL...