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This story was originally published on Jan. 30, 2009, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series. ...

A while back, someone convinced U.S. businesses that if they outsourced work overseas, costs would fall off a cliff. The Wall Street lemmings jumped, believing they could fly, but instead plummeted to the depths of a global recession. Many of them are still falling, yet they continue to outsource their work offshore. ...

Somewhere in the middle of the laptop/netbook/smartphone explosion, IT lost control. The days of IT issuing the same mobile device to all employees are all but gone. These days, different types of workers need different kinds of devices. Sometimes employees bring their personal devices into the workspace, adding another layer to IT's burden. On top of all that, there's the fact that underlying technologies in devices and apps are constantly changing. It's no wonder the IT world of neat little silos has all but vanished.

Nothing is as heart-wrenching to an e-tailer as watching a customer abandon a full cart just seconds before consummating the deal. To be so close yet so cashless is more than frustrating; it's harmful to an e-tailer's health. A virtual armory of tools are in use to woo, cajole, prompt and push consumers to make the buy -- but are they working, or are they turning even more customers away?...

Part 1 of this two-part series takes a look at the practical communication potential of microblogging service Twitter. Part 2 investigates how businesses use Twitter to communicate with customers ...

The entire world, it seems, is all aflitter about Twitter. Everywhere you turn, from Bill O'Reilly trashing the world of tweets on The View to Rick Sanchez praising it on CNN, someone's got something to say about Twitter. Is there something to this tweet-fest or are we all drowning in a sea of self-fascination? ...

This is the final installment in a four-part series. Part 1 examines how companies can use business intelligence to their strategic advantage. Part 2 looks at the features and functionality of various systems. Part 3 offers insights into the total cost of ownership ...

This is the third installment in a four-part series. Part 1 examines how companies can use business intelligence to their strategic advantage. Part 2 looks at the features and functionality of various systems ...

This is the second in a three-part series. Part 1 examines how companies can use business intelligence to their strategic advantage. Here, we look at the features and functionality of various systems ...

As a former senior executive of Swiss Reinsurance, the world's largest reinsurer of life-health and property-casualty risks, Donna Childs was well versed in both the need and the practice of disaster data recovery. Her experience proved critical when she returned to the United States to start her own small business -- in the area subsequently designated "Zone 1" of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

It may be as sexy as grandma's underpants, but data is the foundation upon which everything else is layered. Without the right support underneath, the fat will roll over your margins, creating an unsightly, unseemly, unprofitable business bulge ...

Perhaps the new slogan in this merciless economic downturn should be "All Hail the Salesman." For it is the salesman that brings home the bacon upon which all other jobs will feed. It is key, then, to see to it that salespeople are equipped with the very best technologies and that they are supported without restraint. It is also crucial that salespeople adopt and use these tools to their full advantage lest they go all "Willie Loman" on us and wallow in a rant against the times rather than embrace the urgent call "to shape an uncertain destiny" issued by President Obama and trumpeted by company execs everywhere...

It's no secret that customers aren't buying much these days. The economic engines have locked and stalled, leaving businesses everywhere in freefall. While companies around the globe are jettisoning anything they can to slow the descent, none are ditching CRM. In fact, CRM may be the last remaining parachute: a fact realized during earlier turbulence...

In an almost surreal scene, unprecedented numbers of euphoric people are mobbing America's capital city to celebrate a new hope for a beleaguered nation. It is a celebration so huge that the bounds of reality cannot hold it in. For the very first time, the inauguration of a new president will be trumpeted in this world and another; in life and in Second Life.

This article was originally published on July 17, 2008, and is brought to you as part of our Best of ECT News series ...

Part 1 of this two-part series examines the virtues of virtual worlds as research environments. This final part looks at some of the types of experiments that are being conducted in the metaverse ...

Universities and government agencies are conducting all kinds of research, both scientific and sociological, in virtual worlds -- but is this merely a newfangled boondoggle or is the research really real? ...

This story was originally published on July 17, 2008, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series ...

The money trail of big tech pay-offs began with voice, then moved to text and now is headed squarely to image data. No longer are businesses or individuals satisfied with words on a page peppered with flat and lifeless 2-D images. Today's big data boost is far more colorful and dynamic than that ...

Among dreamy startups and salty e-commerce veterans alike, Zappos.com appears to be the golden grail -- certainly one blessed, at least, with heavenly rewards. "Zappos is the Amazon of the shoe business, and its model is extremely difficult to mimic," Gene Alvarez, vice president of research at Gartner (and former employee of shoe-biz powerhouse, Nine West Group), told the E-Commerce Times...