As purchasing patterns shift, a battle is brewing over the fastest and most efficient way to get goods and services bought online into the hands of consumers.…
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Cindy Waxer
How smart management of marketing tech can boost site ROI
Today’s marketing technology landscape is a highly complex labyrinth of platforms, applications, and APIs. To fully reap the benefits, though, IT leaders need to do a better job managing their sites' marketing tech mix.…
Read MoreOpportunities in health care from open data
Health care players are making open data as much a part of their business models as they are for slick marketing campaigns. But for an industry that still relies on fax machines to deliver release forms and test results, there are plenty of challenges ahead.…
Read MoreHow HR can make the case for workforce analytics
Once known for its online job boards and newspaper classified ads, talent management is now a $4 billion industry. Helping to redefine this age-old HR practice is workforce analytics, a powerful combination of highly sophisticated computer algorithms and predictive models.…
Read MoreWhy mobile devices need single-sign-on technologies
As the iPad's popularity continues to grow and security concerns increase, providers of cloud-based single-sign-on (SSO) solutions face a prime business opportunity: to make their tools the weapons of choice for next-generation mobile identity management and authentication. By replacing multiple user names and passwords with one-click access to cloud-based apps like Google Apps and Microsoft’s Active Directory, cloud-based SSO solutions have earned a reputation for enhancing end-user convenience, easing the pressure on IT administration, and cutting help-desk costs. Not all cloud SSO technologies, however, come with the same platforms, standards, and feature sets. The following is a breakdown of some of the key players and what each is doing to raise the bar on authentication, mobile, and otherwise.…
Read MoreThe economics of clean-data-center innovation
Around the world, data centers consume around 1.5 percent of total electricity demand, a figure that’s expected to increase significantly. Greenpeace predicts power consumption will grow 19 percent by 2013 to 31 gigawatts. To cut power and, with it, costs, tech titans like Google, Apple, and Facebook are aggressively pursuing strategies to cut electricity use by greening their data centers. But do energy-efficiency gains justify huge capital outlays? This report attempts to answer that question by looking at the ways in which companies are greening their data centers and attempting to achieve social, economic, and environmental value.…
Read MoreThe manufacturers’ race to a cost-effective solar source
The U.S. solar industry witnessed record-breaking growth in 2011, increasing by 21 percent in the third quarter of the year. Yet there is still not a solar panel capable of displacing electricity from fossil fuels. As is the case in any market, disruption calls for smart innovation, and several companies are rising to the task. Challenges await, including trade wars, funding shortages and other roadblocks to commercialization. The clear winner will be the solar-energy player that breaks new records in solar efficiency without the breaking the bank.…
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