More Enterprise Architecture and SOA In Depth

HCL CEO Vineet Nayar: Outsourcing is dead, and there's nothing innovative in cloud technology

The customer always comes first. Except when it comes to HCL, the $6 billion Indian outsourcing -- make that co-sourcing -- giant led by CEO Vineet Nayar, who literally wrote the book on a philosophy known as 'employees first, customer second.' In this latest installment of our CEO Interview Series, Nayar spoke with IDG Enterprise Chief Content Officer John Gallant about how that philosophy is fueling HCL's rapid growth and why more CIOs ought to consider adopting it.

Legacy Application Fixer-Uppers

Justifying the cost of legacy software replacement isn't easy. Here's how three shops approached the issue. One common theme: identifying business challenges and opportunities.

Rethinking the ESB: Building a simple, secure, scalable Service Bus with an SOA Gateway

For years the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) has been seen as a corporate integration and messaging backbone upon which application architectures are built. However, this concept must evolve to meet the requirements of today's corporate landscape, where IT boundaries are blurring, driven by the need to integrate with partners, cloud and mobile applications.

Are Google's best days behind it?

Slowing product development, legal woes, and rising bureaucracy may signal trying times ahead for Silicon Valley's favorite company

10 essential MySQL tools for admins

The MySQL community is a hotbed of free, open source tools to enhance the performance and health of your MySQL systems

NoSQL standouts: New databases for new applications

Cassandra, CouchDB, MongoDB, Redis, Riak, Neo4J, and FlockDB reinvent the data store

IT jobs: Winners and losers in the cloud era

We survey the cloud's effects on nine classes of IT jobs: Architects and sys admins win, middle managers and tech specialists lose -- what about you?

After OpenOffice and Hudson, will Oracle stick with open source?

NetBeans, MySQL, and GlassFish are all likely to remain in Oracle's software portfolio as they have profit potential

The Good, Bad & Ugly of Dropbox Authentication Error

Online storage service Dropbox made an embarrassing error Monday, turning off password authentication for millions of users.

Best Buy Laptop Warranty: What Does It Cover?

In 2009, I bought my teenage son a MacBook from Best Buy, and I added a two-year extended warranty with "Accidental Damage From Handling" coverage based on the sales associate's recommendation. Lo and behold, my son accidentally ran over his MacBook with his car after leaving it on his trunk. I filed a claim with Best Buy, and an associate advised me to purchase another computer, saying the company would issue a credit if the original MacBook couldn't be fixed. But Best Buy eventually denied the warranty claim on the grounds that this type of incident isn't covered in the accidental-damage plan. I thought that my extended warranty covered all accidents. Can you help?

Extreme automation: FedEx Ground hubs speed deliveries

FedEx Ground's highly automated hubs, which sort 3.5 million packages a day without human intervention, are speeding up deliveries and helping the company win market share.

The Best Web Apps and Online Services

Everyone seems to be moving into the cloud. With Web-based apps and online storage services that give us constant access to the most important data from all of our devices, we have more computing power at our disposal than ever before. Online productivity suites let you work with Office documents on your laptop or smartphone, and keep them perpetually available on the Web for easy access. Cloud streaming services make your entire music library available on any device you have handy, or let you tap into an unlimited supply of free tunes from a personalized online radio station. Web-based phone services allow you to call anyone in the world--with video--for next to nothing, and receive calls on any phone. You can even protect your PC with online antivirus apps.

Cloud Security Apps Promise Up-to-Date Protection

One of the biggest criticisms routinely leveled against desktop security software is that it's bloated and inefficient, slowing down PC performance and nagging users about frequent updates. In response to those complaints, a new breed of security apps is emerging from the cloud.

Cloud Phone Services Offer Flexible Calling Options

If you subscribe to a triple-play broadband package through a major cable or phone company, chances are good that your phone service already runs through the cloud--that is, the Internet. But you can get even more flexible calling options--and cool extras such as video chat or automatic voicemail transcripts--from a pure cloud service provider such as Skype or Google.

Keep Your Data in Sync Across Platforms and Devices

People are no longer tied to any specific location or device as they roam about getting work done on laptops, tablets, or even smartphones. The challenge is to keep everything synced so you can access the same data from each of those platforms.

Don't Gamble Your Company's Reputation on Data Governance

Today's growing challenge: Data. There is suddenly too much of it, and while firms rush to mine it, they do so without adequate regard for the risks in keeping and using it.

Enterprise architects break out of the box

Once regarded as IT-focused, enterprise architects are becoming integral to business strategy

How to integrate with the cloud

All it takes is a credit card to spin up a SaaS application. But consider how you integrate with that cloud app, or you'll be condemned to create another silo

Archive and Access Old Tweets with TweetBackup

TweetBackup does exactly what its name implies: backs up your Twitter posts (a.k.a. tweets). It's a free and easy service, and it has the potential to prove very handy.

SlideShare Presentations for LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a great way to market yourself and your professional qualifications. Problem is, you have to rely on a lot of plain black-and-white text in order to do so. Wouldn't it be nice if you could use the social network to actually show colleagues (and prospective colleagues) what you can do, instead of just telling them about it? With the free SlideShare Presentations, you can. This LinkedIn app is an extension of SlideShare.net's professional sharing community, which allows you to upload and share a variety of content, including PowerPoint and Keynote presentations, Word documents, PDFs, and videos.