That's what Randall Stross asked in the Sunday (July 30) NY Times (although the Lakeland (FL) Ledger may be an easier place to read the story. http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060730/ZNYT01/607300353/1001/BUSINESS Sun CEO Jonathan...

I just went through the NJ homeowner rebate form – you know, one of those programs were politicians who have taken a lot of your money give some of it back, usually shortly before an election It reminds me of how badly computer forms are still done. On...

. The MSDN Financial Services Industry Center provides architecture guidance for CIOs, CTOs and Architects looking to solve industry concerns with Microsoft technologies. The site will provide prescriptive architecture guidance addressing current and...

Brian Jackson, an Industry Technology Strategist on the Worldwide Financial Services team at Microsoft, offers his insights on financial services, with a focus on banking, at his blog -- http://blogs.msdn.com/bjacks/ . His first posting describes how...

Listening to insurance carrier CEOs talk about enterprise risk management at the IIS meeting in Chicago felt like a bit of a time warp – didn’t I hear banks talking about enterprise risk a decade ago? One of the panelists said the insurance industry is...

A couple of issues back in Windows in Financial Services, I suggested fintech vendors ought to take a regulator to dinner to show their appreciation for the way new regulations drive new technology investments. In the area of risk, perhaps the free dinner...

Note the front page story in the Wall Street Journal today about accusations that Marshall Wace, the London-based hedge fund, traded on insider information. But pay attention to the way the fund organizes the ideas it receives from brokers in a system...

Vital Forsikring decided to implement its new core pension system on an SOA. Vital's SOA deployment is based on Microsoft .NET 2.0 and includes BizTalk Server, Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 (MOM) and the SOA Management system from AmberPoint Inc....

http://www.gonzobanker.com/article.aspx?Article=291 "We’ve heard it said that choosing a new core processing system is really not all that difficult—the hard part is in getting the actual conversion done," writes Bill McFarland in GonzoBanker. "Yet...

Avian flu, terrorism and natural disasters are the unknown risks that insurance companies confront, said J. Barry Griswell, CEO of Principal Financial Group who said that the most severe natural catastrophes in the U.S. had occurred in unlikely regions...

The London Stock Exchange, which has some of the top performance among global exchanges and runs on Microsoft, has selected HP Proliant servers to power its Infolect. Based on the Microsoft .Net framework and Microsoft SQL Server database, Infolect...

But don't count it out, warns InformationWeek, because the company has experience in coming from behind. Used to be whenever Microsoft declared it was entering a new market, competitors shook with fear. When the software company last week said it would...

Microsoft and Panorama are loading business intelligence into customer relationship management engines. Panorama's BI for credit management will allow financial service companies to display customers' credit information, buying behavior, past purchases...

"Stratus has real-world experience helping clients move from the proprietary mainframe world to open systems, and membership in the MMA allows us to leverage our core competency -- providing servers and solutions for continuous availability of mission...

Almost half the 38 financial institutions surveyed by PA Consulting had done any sort of due diligence before outsourcing IT operations. Now 72 percent said they now wish they had. Commenting on the research, Fons Kuijpers, head of IT sourcing, PA...

For Mobile Developers Intel offers a wealth of sites. Join the chat at http://intel.r.delivery.net/r/r?1.1.Cq.2VA.jlmik.BuWPhM...CkPe.2dlA.3udXE0 Get the Mobile Platform Software Development Kit at http://intel.r.delivery.net/r/r?1.1.Cq.2VA...

CA, which bought XOSoft for an undisclosed amount, says it plans to integrate XOSoft products with its BrightStore ARC server backup software. XOSoft applications include continuous data protection software, vital for disaster recovery, which supports...

Allstream, a national business communication solutions provider, and CATAAlliance, in association with Microsoft Canada Co., announced the launch of a secure communications system designed to help companies share critical documents and prepare for securities...

India eNews covers a recent UK report that the British softeare indusstry is approaching a meltdown because of IT skills shortages. Citing a report from the British Computer Society and Lancaster University, it says there has been a 60 percent drop in...

"CRM could easily be the next billion dollar business for Microsoft," said Margo Day , a regional vice president who just moved to that role from her post as vice president of the U.S. Partner Group. Microsoft, Redmond, Wash., claims 7,000 CRM customer...

Financial Tradeware , provider of STP systems for portfolio and fund management and a SWIFT approved supplier of Member Concentrator Services (MA-CUG), has announced the appointment of a new business partner, Paris-based Finance Outsourcing Systems Technology...

Fascinating piece in The Times on Google and its effort to custom-build the computing power it relies on -- the story suggests it may be the 4th largest computer builder in the world, after Dell, HP, and IBM. Yahoo guys suggest Google is wasting time...

It will be interesting to see if SWIFT comes under pressure from its European bank members over its cooperation with US investigators. Could it lead to pressure to move the data center out of the US so the member-owned company doesn't fall under control...

Many of them rely on Microsoft or integrate closely with Microsoft Office, including Cartesis, which just announced support from XBRL, OutlookSoft and Clarity, which both make good use of Excel. http://www.dmreview.com/article_sub.cfm?articleId=1057929

The bank, which had been using SAS and Excel for analysis, wanted a tool that would better understand its data, says Linghsueh Shu, a team member of Business Card Risk Management, Wells Fargo Bank. "Tableau enables users to transform raw data into smart...