From David Margulius at Infoworld: Quick. When was the last time you remember being pleasantly surprised by how effectively a company used data about you to improve your customer experience? ...Personally, I’m amazed that none of the companies I’ve...

As consumers and business buyers held off on new desktop licenses, waiting for the new Vista and Office 2007, it was server sales that drove Microsoft's increases in revenue and earnings. Revenue from server software made up for slower growth in sales...

October 04, 2006 (Computerworld) -- Until a few months ago, the clearing and billing system for NYSE Group Inc.’s stock options exchange consisted of about 800 discrete Cobol programs running on an IBM mainframe. Today, the entire application set has...

Banks are taking Basel II Pillar II seriously, though many Pillar II projects are far from complete,” according to Suhas Nayak, director, Basel II, for SunGard’s BancWare business unit. “Banks around the world are recognizing the benefits of including...

IT consulting firm Capgemini said it will acquire Kanbay for approximately $1.25 billion. Both firms do extensive work with Microsoft technology in financial services. http://www.capgemini.com/m/en/doc/06_10_26_PR_Kanbay_acquisition.pdf

Digital River has announced a three-year agreement with Microsoft to build, host and manage e-commerce stores to support the direct and indirect online sale delivery of popular downloadable Microsoft software products, including its personal finance and...

Instead of briefing books loaded with paper, corporations are turning to portals to provide directors with the information they need. Commercial solutions may run $20,000 or more a year, but companies can probably develop their own with their existing...

It's not just Microsoft and Google building big data centers for online traffic, reports Kristine Shevory of the NY Times. "Any company that wants to do business online -- such as the tech giants Microsoft and Google, insurance companies or banks -- is...

With the right communications link and readily available development tools, you can transform an off-the-shelf smart phone into a low-cost, mobile user interface for your next embedded-system project says Warren Webb, technical editor at EDN. With the...

What's driving storage sales? Fear! The next Eliot Spitzer -- where do you find an attorney general who isn't a headline hog? Anyway, Iron Mountain, the storage specialists, and Microsoft, which needs no introduction, are teaming up with Office 2007....

Gonzobanker, my favorite banking commentary (ok, the list of interesting banking commentaries is short but must include Tom Brown) has a checklist for bankers to see if they are using their communication practices to hide from customers or provide reasonably...

Wall Street Systems, the leading provider of global treasury and capital markets solutions and services, today unveiled version 3.0 of TremaOne, marking the company's long-term commitment to its customers and the on-going development of world-class treasury...

At the annual Information Security Solutions Europe (ISSE) event in Rome this month, some experts warned that the growth of e-commerce and online banking is being undermined by a lack of awareness and fear of transacting via the internet. <a href=...

Microsoft announced at Sibos 2006 that it now supports the full complement of SWIFT messaging services, adding adapters for SWIFTNet FileAct and InterAct to Microsoft BizTalk Accelerator for SWIFT. In addition, the solution has been granted a SWIFTReady...

BankServ announced at SWIFT's Sibos conference in Sydney that it has applied to become a member of the SWIFT banking network, making the San Francisco-based financial technology firm the first accredited SWIFT Service Bureau to join the network as a corporate...

The future of Microsoft with Ray Ozzie replacing Bill Gates as Chief Software Archirtect arouses intrigusing speculation that has already been the subject of several long articles in leading biz publictions like Fortune. Now Fred Vogelstein offers more...

Insurity, a Microsoft partner and member of the Insurance Value Chain and national provider of business-processing services and technology to the property-casualty insurance industry, has named Jerry Markland to the position of chief technology architect...

Microsoft is banking on its new vice president for Enterprise Partners, Peter Boit, to evangelize its "People-Ready" business philosophy to Microsoft's network of partners. Last week the company announced the creation of that position within its Enterprise...

CFO Magazine reports that PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, who was the company's CFO, praised the benefits of XBRL and said the cost of initiating its use was minor. As a participant in the SEC's XBRL pilot program, Pepsi filed four regulatory forms, spending...

HP has improved it high value payments technology to help financial institution better manage their payments and identify new revenue opportunities. “With the enhancements HP is announcing today, financial institutions are empowered to do more in...

Henning Kagermann isn't bothered by SOX requirements -- he thinks they play to SAP's strengths in ERP. "You can debate if it'sa little too much regulation, but we have no issue with it. We fulfill the requirements," he told Institutional Investor. "Being...

Forget about Boomers liquidating all their holdings to pay for retirement -- a lot of them won't retire, and besides the world is awash in liquidity, he said.Today's predictions are based on the past, just as Wall Street when Milken got there in 1969...

London is a better market, said Clare Curse, writing in the FT. Like many who look at regulators, she says that London's principle based approach to regulation, from the FSA, is superior to the detailed law making and regularion in the US. It "continues...

HSBC has taken an aggressively global approach to its technology, seeking to provide services in a consistent way around the world. Now Silicon.com says the CIO has proposed $5 billion more in investments for the year ahead. HSBC's annual IT budget...