Expert Advice

So you are ready to embark on an e-commerce project. You are not alone. The Economist found that of 15 major industries studied in late 2008, only one -- e-commerce -- had a sunny outlook for 2009. My analyst tells me that 20 percent to 30 percent of firms that do business online will start a major ...

Lacing a shoestring budget with enough green to get your startup up and running takes some finagling. Still, it can be done. If you can't find investor backing right now, then turn to alternative funding routes. You may want to start with your own hidden assets to find the cash you need. One example...

In today's world, it seems that more of the people I run across do not feel they need -- or, more accurately, don't understand why they need -- a protocol analyzer for their network. A few years ago, it seemed that more people understood just how important the analyzer was. For some reason, as netwo...

Funny thing about economic disasters: They tend to spawn a bevy of new businesses. It's not that a recession is the best time for pie-in-the-sky thinking; rather, it's when pie-in-the-mouth issues become most pressing. "The tantalizing successes of some startups, coupled perhaps with the rise in une...

The products that fueled first-generation e-commerce -- books, software and music, to name a few -- are all simple to understand items that can be easily shipped to consumers. Today, we are at the outset of a second wave of online growth, as consumers push beyond these simple transactions to researc...

We all know that some things are easier to do than others. In fact, what separates an average manager from a great one is the ability to balance decisions based on two almost totally unrelated sets of criteria: ease of accomplishment on the one hand vs. value to the organization on the other. Think...

Employees are the lifeblood of any business, and the data they produce is critical to productivity. Unfortunately, during recent uncertain economic times, businesses of all sizes across America have laid off hundreds of thousands of employees. Yet when any employees leave during turnover, important...

It should come as no surprise to any IT manager that your organization's appetite for data keeps growing every minute. No sooner than a new set of storage tools is deployed, it becomes clear there's a need for more, and you start planning the next wave of hardware purchases. More hardware means more...

The Internet has become a critical component in today's fast-moving business environment and continues to play a central role in delivering mission-critical business applications and vital communications to employees, partners and customers. The Internet holds the promise for organizations to stream...

With consumers' inboxes perpetually filled with clutter, marketers are challenged to find new ways to break through with valuable, targeted messages that their customers actually want to open. The secret could lie in a largely untapped vehicle: transactional emails. The historical open rates of tra...