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Fourteen Linux vendors have united behind the Linux Standard Base 3.1 -- the first version of the LSB to include support for portable Linux desktop applications -- according to theFree Standards Group, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to developing and promoting open source software standards, and the LSB workgroup ...

Identifying outsourcing leads and beginning the sales cycle can easily take six months or more. The sales cycle for major inbound call center outsourcing contracts usually ranges from 6 to 18 months. At the end of this process, a firm can burn through two million dollars, spend two years in limbo and still fail to gain any business. Meanwhile there is usually a professionally staffed outsourcing facility sitting idle somewhere, consuming additional funds...

People like to put filters over their eyes and ignore important steps they don't want to perform on the road to achieving a goal. All of us have seen examples of when this derails the plan. With OS/2, the last major challenger to Windows, IBM had a list of things it needed to do in order for the product to be successful. This list laid out staffing levels, marketing expense, structural changes to the company and partnerships, and its foundation was one of the most extensive pieces of research that company ever did...

Hewlett-Packard has introduced new software designed to simplify the management of Linux on blade servers ...

"The California courts have a long history of supporting and protecting freedom of the press," said EFF staff attorney Kurt Opsahl. "We are looking forward to the opportunity to ask the Court of Appeal to correct a ruling that endangers all journalists." Endangering Journalist...

To replace incumbent managers, Upadhya recommends looking to promote from within. Creating internal career opportunities can encourage staff loyalty and reduce turnover Falling Prices...

Companies are often challenged by their "bean counters" to justify the cost effectiveness of staffing a live customer service department -- the automated phone system appears to save money up front, but with time, pioneering companies that invest in live customer interaction realize a flourishing return on the investment that continues to pay off. According to Emmett Murphy and Mark Murphy's Leading on the Edge of Chaos, acquiring new customers can cost five times more than satisfying and retaining current customers. Forcing customers to work with automated systems and removing the human interaction aspect will only weaken a company's customer loyalty...

The workforce management module also offers new multisite forecasting, allowing users to predict staffing requirement across many centers or offices to create a single, company-wide forecast ...

Planning a network-wide restart requires extra scheduling on behalf of the IT staff, increasing the pressure to secure the network in a timely manner without any business disruptions, Ashley noted "One suggestion for decreasing these time-to-patch sensitivities is to take an a...

When a call center picks up a new campaign, the facility's human resources (HR) department is often tasked with recruiting and providing initial training for 10 to 40 new agents. If they screen out more than 25 percent of the new recruits, then the center may not have enough staff to launch the campaign, thereby generating pressure on trainers to not weed out too many agents. Postponing the outplacement of poorly recruited staff may slow turnover but not eliminate it...

Xandros, a provider of easy-to-use Linux alternatives to Windows, announced that retail giant CompUSA is now selling the Xandros desktop product in all of its stores across the United States. The Xandros product line offers home and business users a complete, stable, and secure alternative to costly Windows systems, according to the software firm ...

The market for open source and Linux development is deeply fragmented with no clear leader, according to a recent survey from Evans Data ...

Under it, Apple gets into major teaching institutions with Apple iPods and iTunes, which are spuriously presented as important teaching aids, and which are promoted and sold on Apple's behalf by unpaid school staffs In the U.S., Duke University was to the fore as well, with St...

That means the cost of maintenance and support could supercede licensing costs over time if the in-house IT staff does not have the expertise to run the software The Growth of Open Source ERP...

The basic unit of call center provisioning used to be the whole call center -- computers, databases, switches, desks, you name it. To get going, you usually needed one of each. But today the basic unit of the call center has become the seat; with a browser and a USB headset you can be in business. Because of this transformation the business model has expanded. You can still find traditional call center operations that just happen to use on-demand services, but increasingly, what you find are companies with partially or completely remote staffs getting the work done in T-shirts and bunny slippers with no one the wiser...

"Hosted Web analytics solutions are attractive because all of the 'work' is done by the hosting company, which frees in-house staff from having to develop or customize a solution," Sarrel said. Plus, if you are using a hosted service, you can write off the cost of the service as an operating expense...

The company plans to double its research and development engineering staff to 600 within a year, expanding its focus beyond software to include hardware such as servers, storage devices and PCs. Dell's India division filed more than 140 invention disclosures in the software arena last year alone...

Accept the responsibility, Google staffers. Life is neither fair nor easy and it is time to stop complaining and use that energy to make a difference. Google has within it the power to be great, but, without everyone working to that end it will simply share Netscape's fate and become just a bad memory in a few years...

The DHS has been criticized for its bureaucracy and changeover of leaders and staff. There was some hope in the security community that former Symantec executive Amit Yoran would be able to steer the department in the right direction when he filled the post of IT Security Czar in 2003...

Lower cost of ownership. Instead of investing in capital equipment, bandwidth, staffing and in-house operations, enterprises can take advantage of advanced IVR and Web-based applications through managed services and continue to focus on core activities. The technology is owned and managed by the service provider, and is therefore constantly updated and maintained at the network level, saving enterprises many of the costs and risks associated with upgrades, patches and maintaining the technical staff to run the software. When compared to premise-based solutions, managed services can lower total cost of ownership by reducing hardware and software costs, saving floor space, and leveraging the cost-efficiencies and economies of scale associated with setup, training, maintenance and upgrades.