Stories by Sue Bushell

NCITA working on new search capabilities

Australian researchers may soon produce a new Internet search system with unprecedented search capabilities to help individuals and organisations retrieve information from the plethora of new data types now populating the net.

Pedal to the metal

On the racetrack, as in all forms of business today, speedy delivery separates the winners and losers. Using the right tools can give an SME outsider the front running in business just as it can on the track.

Poor Procurement Practices Cost US Government Billions

Despite 10 years of procurement and contracting reform, US regulations are still so complex and procurement operations so fragmented that they are severely limiting governments’ ability to cut costs and streamline procurement operations.

Analysis: Innovative? Well, sort of


The IT&T industry is justly delighted that science and innovation have finally come to the forefront of Australian public debate, even if they have been placed there only because this is an election year.

E-procurement: save while you spend

Streamlining the procurement function has moved firmly into the sights of businesses out to achieve ever-greater efficiencies and savings, thanks to the mass adoption of the Internet and e-commerce.

Howdy Partner - Let's Reconstruct the Deal

A large international company signs an IT infrastructure outsourcing deal incorporating the purchase of existing assets by the vendor and transfer of IT staff, in confident expectation of achieving immediate cost reductions.

Clouds on the B2B horizon

In one sense the B2B e-marketplace portends a fundamental revolution in buyer-supplier relationships - one that will dramatically alter the procurement process for office supplies, raw materials and manufactured goods.

Buying (e-CRM's) stairway to heaven

E-CRM - CRM for the connected economy - holds out the next great promise of improved productivity and enhanced profits. It's what Cap Gemini Ernst & Young vice president Andrew Keene calls "the stairway to heaven".

The IT spend: big gain or big drain?

You survived Y2K so well that it's now a faded memory. Your enterprise resource planning implementation is finally done or at least on track and your CRM (customer relationship management) work is well under way.
Now, with time and technology marching on you're energetically tackling the challenge of turning your business into an e-business, knowing that to compete successfully in today's high-velocity business environment, you'll have to constantly accelerate your time to market for products and services.

Futureshock2: Change engine with a vengeance

When Alvin Toffler described technology as "That great, growling engine of change" in his 1970 book Future Shock, the Internet was barely Arpanet and a mobile phone was a telephone on a long extension.

Strange Bedfellows


Today, thanks to the Web, the once-distinct lines between functional areas are blurring. Until a couple of years ago, Amway's IT staff - "the Eggheads" or "IT Techies" as sales and marketing director Greg Bowman likes to call them - were as mentally remote from the rest of the business as they were physically removed.

Hey, Big Spenders


In the new economy do hot skills equal cold cash? Well, yes, no and maybe according to the first local e-commerce salary review.

ERP's year of living dangerously

Enterprise resource planning vendors have had their ups and downs, but now they're paying a heavy price. Financial year 2000 proved a very ordinary year for the ERP market, with barely any growth at all.

Agents of ex-change

To survive the impact of B2B e-commerce, IT managers will need skills, courage and charisma

When IDC senior vice president John Gantz was casting around for a word or phrase to describe what the new digital marketplaces will do to IT departments, movie titles about asteroids threatening the Earth kept coming to mind.
Armageddon. Deep Impact. To Gantz, writing in US Computerworld recently, either seemed to sum it up well enough.

LINUX: the Power and the Passion: Part II

With two factors guaranteed to stir an IT manager's interest - price and performance - underpinning its push into the enterprise, Linux is capturing some heavy-duty fans. In this final of a two-part series, Sue Bushell talks to those who put it to work.

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