Inside CIO paychecksCIO salaries in the U.S. average between $157,000 and $262,500, according to Robert Half Technology. But salary is just the beginning. Cash bonuses and equity awards can propel pay packages into the millions. To find out how much CIOs at giant global companies really earn, we scoured the proxy statements of the 500 largest U.S. companies (according to Fortune's ranking) and found 25 that disclosed CIO pay. Here are the details on their pay packages, organized from lowest to highest paid. If available, compensation for these individuals in prior years is included.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
CurrentC, an electronic payment system backed by many of the biggest retailers in the U.S., will begin a limited public roll-out in August, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.The smartphone-based technology is intended to rival payment services from Apple, Google and Samsung, and an August launch would be in line with the “mid-2015” schedule the company told IDG News Service in April.CurrentC will offer the same type of convenience as its rivals, enabling consumers to pay at participating retail outlets by phone. But rather than rely on the phone’s wireless NFC (near-field communications) chip, the first-generation CurrentC involves the customer scanning a barcode on a retail terminal to initiate payment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As I climbed into the Honda Pilot SUV, I didn’t have high hopes.I was trying out Honda’s Dream Drive, a prototype technology that pairs an Oculus Rift headset with data about the car’s movements to produce a virtual reality simulation.The car was going to drive around the parking lot at Honda’s new R&D center here in Mountain View, California, and the headset would let me gaze into another world as we drove along.“I bet it will be a race track with cars whizzing by,” I thought as I put on the headset. Perhaps I’m jaded, but I’ve tried many VR demonstrations and while fun they often feel a bit lacking and uninspired.And sure enough, there was the race track. I could see spectators to the left, the pits to the right, and sponsorship banners (Honda’s, of course) on a gantry above the first straight.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
An appeals court has ruled that shareholders cannot sue Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg in a case that accused the company of withholding key financial information from the public until after its IPO.The shareholders alleged that Facebook had failed to share its projections for mobile ad sales prior to the offering, disclosing them only to analysts who then relayed the information to certain investors.The plaintiffs complained that Facebook’s stock was “hammered” after it went public and the market learned of the lower forecasts. Facebook’s shares opened at just over US$42 on the Nasdaq on May 18, 2012, and fell to the low $30-range in the ensuing days. The stock has since risen strongly, trading at around $96 on Friday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Chrysler has launched a recall of 1.4 million recent model cars that were vulnerable to being remotely accessed and controlled by hackers.The recall comes days after Wired reported a demonstration by hackers in which they were able to access and control a Chrysler Jeep as it was being driven.The hack detailed in the Wired article took place under somewhat controlled conditions—the driver, a Wired writer knew that it was about to happen—but it occurred on the busy Interstate 64 near St. Louis. It culminated in the vehicle slowing down and causing something of a traffic obstacle for cars behind.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cloud services continue to grow by leaps and bounds for Amazon.com.The company reported that Amazon Web Services generated $1.8 billion in sales in the second quarter, up about 80 percent from the $1 billion it brought in a year earlier.That helped Amazon achieve a profit of $92 million, a turnaround from its loss of $126 million in last year’s second quarter.Overall revenue grew by 20 percent, reaching $23.18 billion.Amazon offers an increasingly broad range of products and services, including an e-commerce site, video streaming, cloud computing, ebook readers, tablets and phones.The company continues to briskly roll out new online services. During this last quarter, it launched Amazon Business, an e-commerce portal for businesses, as well as Amazon Mexico, a version of its e-commerce site specifically for that country. It also introduced the Amazon Echo, a voice-controlled device for ordering Amazon products or playing music and audio news.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The United States is sorely unprepared for electromagnetic threats – which could originate in space from the Sun or a terrorist nuclear device exploded in the atmosphere -- to the nation’s electric grid.That was the main conclusion from a number of experts testifying before a Senate committee hearing entitled “Protecting the Electric Grid from the Potential Threats of Solar Storms and Electromagnetic Pulse” this week.+More on Network World: NASA’s cool, radical and visionary concepts+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google had its sights fixed firmly on Amazon Thursday as it launched its new, low-cost Nearline cloud storage service out of beta and into general availability.Originally introduced to much fanfare in March, Cloud Storage Nearline now promises 99 percent uptime, on-demand I/O, lifecycle management and a broadly expanded partner ecosystem. Aiming to further sweeten the deal for companies currently using other providers, Google is now offering the service with 100 free petabytes of storage—equivalent to 100 million gigabytes—for new users for up to six months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices. Click here to subscribe. From time to time, companies must undertake a data migration project for one reason or another. Perhaps it's to consolidate data onto a single platform after a merger or acquisition, or to accommodate an application upgrade or consolidation. Migrating away from legacy systems is another popular reason to move data around. Whatever the motivation, a data migration project is no fun.In the years 2000, 2007 and 2011, Bloor Research undertook research studies on the costs and challenges of data migrations. Their 2011 study showed that the average budget for a data migration project is $875,000. Despite spending that kind of money, only 62% of such projects were brought in "on time and on budget." The average cost of budget overruns is $268,000. One of Bloor's recommendations for achieving the greatest chance of success with a project is to have a dedicated internal competency center or team specializing in data migration. Even with that, success is not guaranteed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I don't want to seem cranky or brash, but I really wish "Rachel" would stop calling me. Remember Rachel? That feminine voice on the other end of those "robocalls," telling you she's from cardholder services, a non-existent outfit that tries to scam the unsuspecting?
Despite millions of complaints from consumers on the receiving end of unwanted telemarketing calls, the big phone companies are unwilling to use readily available technology to block them. This week, the attorneys general (AGs) of 44 states and Washington D.C. wrote a letter to the CEOs of five major telecommunications companies (AT&T, CenturyLink, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon) to tell them to cut off Rachel and her obnoxious cohorts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It's been 10 years since Johanna Rothman co-authored 'Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management’ with Esther Derby. In the time since, Rothman has become known as the Pragmatic Manager, served as Program Chair of the Agile 2009 conference and wrote the Jolt Award-winning "Manage It!," a guide to pragmatic management. Most recently, Rothman has been focused on dealing with management problems in larger organizations, which led to two books, “Manage Your Project Portfolio” in 2009, and, more recently, “Agile and Lean Program Management.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Yahoo, a trailblazer in the world of online fantasy sports, recently released a daily fantasy service, and the company plans to use its experience to compete with pioneers such as DraftKings and FanDuel in the daily fantasy market. It was a natural move for the fantasy sports mainstay, which launched its first offering in the late 90s, but it required technology innovation. "From an industry standpoint, if there was any doubt about the legitimacy of daily fantasy sports, the Yahoo announcement made it very clear that there's a business opportunity in this area," says Ben Shields, a lecturer in managerial communication at the MIT Sloan School of Management and author of The Sports Strategist: Developing Leaders for a High-Performance Industry and The Elusive Fan: Reinventing Sports in a Crowded Marketplace. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Qualcomm will lay off about 15 percent of its workforce and may separate its chip and patent businesses in a major realignment of the company.The action is designed to cut annual costs by about $1.4 billion. Qualcomm will cut back its investments in new product areas and focus those efforts on data centers, small cells and the Internet of Things.MORE: Biggest tech industry layoffs of 2015, so farThe mobile technology juggernaut is also shaking up its board of directors as part of an agreement with investment company Jana Partners. Jana, which owns a chunk of Qualcomm's stock, has pressured the company to spin off its chip division from its patent licensing business.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Application container giant Docker and upstart rival CoreOS have ceased hostilities following the announcement of the Open Container Project (OCP). The project will work to develop industry standards for a container format and runtime software.As a starting point, the OCP standards will be based on Docker technology: Docker has donated about 5 percent of its codebase to the project to get it going.The OCP will run under the auspices of the Linux Foundation, and its sponsors include AWS, Google, IBM, HP, Microsoft, VMware, Red Hat and HP as well as Docker and CoreOS. So this can be seen as an industry-wide initiative to ensure that containers meet the following criteria:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple's budding partnership with IBM culminated in the release of AppleCare for Enterprise, the company's business-specific support service, but for the vast majority of organizations that use Apple products the initiative is nothing more than a glorified Genius Bar. CIOs and IT professionals welcome Apple's recent interest in the enterprise, but many are still unclear on the levels of support and services the consumer giant offers — and few are satisfied with Apple's commitment.
AppleCare for Enterprise, which is roughly 8-months-old, includes 24/7 phone and email support for all Apple hardware and software, on-site service from IBM, next-day device replacement, a designated account manager and one-hour response times for urgent issues. These services are virtually unattainable for most business customers because many don't have relationships with both Apple and IBM, a requirement for the support services.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
After ten years of making networked set-top boxes, Cisco Systems plans to quit the business, selling its Connected Devices division to French firm Technicolor, the companies said Thursday.Although Cisco will stop making video customer premises equipment for service providers, it will continue to develop software and cloud services to help telcos deliver IPTV and other video services to their customers, Cisco’s business development director Hilton Romanski wrote in a blog post.The companies plan to collaborate on developing video products for service providers, he wrote, and that collaboration will include Romanski taking a seat on Technicolor’s board.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Need something to watch on a flight? You can download an episode of your favorite show in less than a minute and a half on Verizon Wireless at Atlanta’s airport—or spend 13 hours doing the same over T-Mobile USA at Los Angeles International.The comparison of 45-minute HD video downloads illustrates the wide variation in cellular service at U.S. airports, which RootMetrics laid out in a report for the first half of 2015 that’s being issued Thursday. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson is the best place to go mobile and Verizon covers airports best overall, but just like security lines and de-icing delays, it all depends.RootMetrics tested mobile data connections using all four major carriers at the 50 busiest airports in the country, checking not just for speed but for how long it took to get on and how well the connection stayed up. The tests took place in well-used places like ticketing, baggage claim and terminal gates. RootMetrics didn’t test voice service or Wi-Fi networks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Need something to watch on a flight? You can download an episode of your favorite show in less than a minute and a half on Verizon Wireless at Atlanta’s airport—or spend 13 hours doing the same over T-Mobile USA at Los Angeles International.The comparison of 45-minute HD video downloads illustrates the wide variation in cellular service at U.S. airports, which RootMetrics laid out in a report for the first half of 2015 that’s being issued Thursday. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson is the best place to go mobile and Verizon covers airports best overall, but just like security lines and de-icing delays, it all depends.MORE: Hottest network & computing startups of 2015 To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For many enterprises, big data is hard and slow. Procurement and deployment of data infrastructure can be both expensive and difficult to scale at the pace that data volumes can grow. A startup founded by former Netezza executives says that the answer to these data engineering woes is the cloud.
The startup, Cazena, came out of stealth today after two years of development with an enterprise big data-as-a-service offering intended to simplify and automate securely moving and optimizing big data processing in the cloud. It's a managed service platform that founder and CEO Prat Moghe — who served as senior vice president of strategy, products and marketing at Netezza — says addresses the security and complexity challenges that have kept many enterprises from migrating their big data workloads to the cloud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
IBM is stepping up its efforts to atract cloud developers. Big Blue today announced a three-pronged approach that includes a new collaborative platform to help developers stay on top of open source technologies, the release of 50 tools and services to the open source community and partnerships with 200 academic institutions across 36 countries.
The new platform, developerWorks Open, is a cloud-based environment through which developers can download code and access blogs, videos, tools and techniques. The goal is to accelerate their ability to build and deploy open source apps.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here