In February 2008, CFO Research Services, a unit of CFO Publishing and part of The Economist Group, began a research project with Business Objects, an SAP company, asking senior finance executives to give views on their priorities and challenges around integrating operational and financial planning processes. 

Until recently, it was difficult for manufacturers to obtain a true picture of what was happening on the shop floor. Real-time, accurate data reflecting production activity, planned production schedules, quality checks, machine breakdowns, inventory levels or a shortage of materials made it a challenge for shop floor management to keep track.. 

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we look at the importance of IT strategy when budgets are under pressure. The first part of our Buyer’s Guide to virtualisation examines the barriers preventing many organisations from adopting the technology; and Transport for London’s CIO talks about how IT helps avoid Olympic travel chaos. Download the issue now. 

In this week's Computer Weekly, we hear from Visa Europe CIO Steve Chambers on the technology behind the credit card transactions that retailers rely on. We examine the challenges facing the government's G-Cloud project; and we ask how Microsoft will cope when customers no longer want to purchase software licences. Download the new issue now. 

IT spending is often an issue for any organisation, but especially in harsh economic times it is even more important to see what benefit IT brings to the business. This report looks at the degree to which UK organisations understand what IT is doing for their business, and in particular how some companies measure this and benefit from it. 

This white paper discusses the procedures for upgrading your Oracle database,— particularly focusing on using Oracle’s real-time data integration software, Oracle GoldenGate— along with the results of such upgrades. 

File exchange is an integral part of daily business life but the problems with current methods make it into a proverbial marathon. File transfer methods include FTP, physical transfers, and personal emails which lack security, compliance, and efficiency. Managed File Transfer (MFT) solutions are the answer to the question, "How do I send this?" 

While some individual users are experimenting with cloud processing, other users have already fully committed to the cloud as an important part of their enterprise architecture and operation. Read this white paper to learn about the evolution of cloud processing and whether or not the cloud processing boom will continue. 

Individuals and organizations often want to retain as much e-mail as possible. Reasons range from convenience to compliance to organizational policy. Some are also the result of court action and legal hold orders. The most common is the individual’s own requirement to keep e-mail as long as possible in a readily accessible log for collaboration. 

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we mark the 10th anniversary of Microsoft’s Bill Gates announcing the Trustworthy Computing initiative, and ask if it has made IT more secure. We look at what Oracle’s latest developments mean for its software users running rivals’ servers, and conclude our Buyer’s Guide to IT consumerisation. Download the issue now. 

Taking steps towards meeting the legal challenge of carbon reduction within data centres in a sensible, cost effective and sustainable manner. 

The enterprise must be ready to embrace technologies that facilitate the blurring of the boundaries between work and life, in order to maximise the productivity, insight, innovation and collaboration gained from investments in its people, as well as technology itself. 

This white paper details how organizations can leverage cloud-based storage offerings as part of their data protection plans. The paper also takes a closer look at the solutions offered by Riverbed that allow organizations to integrate cloud-based storage within solutions that address a growing set of data protection demands.