Businesses IT users now have a powerful voice in defining enterprise IT strategies and over half of CIOs believe themselves to be transformers and visionaries, according to research. A survey of 200 enterprise CIOs, carried out by CIO Connect, revealed 67% of CIOs believe IT users are now one of the most powerful drivers of change in enterprises.
The tech-savvy demographic known as Millennials, born in the eighties, are now a significant proportion of the workforce. These individuals have grown up with technology and represent an opportunity for enterprises to make best use of the latest technologies. However, they are also [...]

Eight out of 10 applications fail to meet acceptable levels of security, according to the latest State of Software Security Report by application security testing firm Veracode. The report is based on the analysis of 9,910 applications submitted to Veracode’s cloud-based application security testing platform in the past 18 months.
Web applications were among the weakest, with a high concentration of cross-site-scripting (68%) and SQL injection (32%) vulnerabilities. The Web Hacking Incident Database shows that SQL injection exploits are responsible for 20% of reported incidents.
Veracode conducted a comparative analysis of government applications against other industries such as finance, and found that [...]

EMC has expanded rapidly from a simple storage company, but to fulfil its potential it must integrate its many acquisitions and overcome the challenges of commoditisation and increasing competition in the storage market.  Having a quarter of the market gives EMC a lot of muscle, but even if the firm itself doesn’t think it has an identity crisis, the market does. After all, it is not the same company as it was even a year ago.
Before CEO Joseph Tucci took the helm in 2001, EMC was a one-trick pony. It made a healthy profit selling the Symmetrix hard drive array, but [...]

Logica is cutting 1,300 jobs as it tackles the consequences of slow European growth due to the downturn. Lower than expected profitability of some of its longer term contracts is making an impact on the business. It has recently become clear that many of its clients are delaying short term expenditure and reducing discretionary investments to weather an uncertain economic future.
Logica said it would be incurring a one-off charge of £39m in 2011 to cover the expected lifetime contract losses as a result of the likelihood of lower expected revenue on a small number of volume-dependent contracts with between four [...]

BMC Software has reported total revenue of $556.7m for the second quarter ended 30 September 2011, an increase of 11% over the $502.3m in the same quarter previous year. The company’s operating income was $161m for the second quarter of 2011, up 12.2% compared with the $143.5m in the previous year’s same quarter.
However, a decrease of 13% was seen in generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) net earnings of the company, from $132m in 2010 second quarter to $115m in the same quarter this year.
BMC chairman and chief executive officer Bob Beauchamp said during the second quarter, they reported solid growth [...]

 
IT management software company CA Technologies’ revenue grew 5% to $1.2bn in its second quarter of fiscal year 2012, ended 30 September 2011, compared to the same quarter in FY 2011.
Year-over-year revenue grew to $1.2bn, up 5%, while the total revenue backlog was $8.07 bn, up 4% in constant currency and as reported, said the company.
Geographically, North America revenue was $735m, up 10%. International revenue was $465m, down 1%.
Total bookings in the second quarter were $972m, down 4%. North America bookings were $664m, while international bookings were $308m, down 11% in constant currency and 8% as reported.
The company said that [...]

 
SAP has just posted a 146% growth in operating profit. SAP third quarter software revenue grew at its fastest rate in a decade, as its operating profit soared 146% to reach €1.76bn, compared to €716m in 2010. The company’s total revenue was €3.41bn, compared to 2010 figures of €3bn, an increase of 14%.
Software revenue grew 28% to reach €841m, compared to €656m in 2010, while support revenue climbed 13% to reach €1.757m.
The Germany-based enterprise application software company said that efficiency gains combined with operational efficiency led to the record performance.
The company said that its pipeline continues to remain very strong [...]

Beware the Internet Explorer 6.0 headache for Windows 7 upgrade
Internet Explorer 6.0 is likely to cause major headaches, because there is no support for it in Windows 7. IE 6.0 compatibility was killed off in the Microsoft Trustworthy Computing initiative to make Microsoft code more secure. As a result, IE6 is not supported in later versions of the browser. Websites and web applications written for IE6 will not work under IE8 or 9. The IE6-dependency issue is a significant problem for many organisations looking to migrate from XP and is a blocker to many Windows 7 migrations.
Microsoft says it’s one [...]

Microsoft ends support for Windows XP in 2014. Realistically, businesses will need to start migration plans in 2012, to leave enough time to test and roll-out desktops. So what steps can an IT department take to simplify the Windows 7 upgrade.
Prepare for XP migration with hardware and software audit
Organisations should try to eliminate Windows XP by the end of 2012 to avoid disruptions, says Gartner. CIOs and IT leaders will be confronted by a host of challenges, as well as some degree of risk, as they work through the preparation and deployment processes. Issues such as software compatibility, licensing agreements [...]

From the way social networking is often reported in the media, it would seem to be that traditional customer relationship management (CRM) has had its day, and all companies need to do is to create a Twitter account and a Facebook page and engage prospects and customers through these. However, it is not quite as simple as that, and the devil – as always – is in the detail.
As with any new technology, the social network does not push away everything that has gone on before. Companies still receive paper mail, telephone calls, e-mails, web contacts and so on. All [...]