A single unexpected burst in traffic can overwhelm a website that isn't prepared. The only way to be prepared for a sudden traffic burst is to have an immense amount of server capacity and bandwidth on tap. Now a new breed of Web hosts has emerged. They offer more capacity when needed and use so-called grid hosting, a network of formerly standalone servers that work as a team.

One of the hottest of hot topics these days is the topic of Internet platforms, or platforms on the Internet. In this blog post, Marc Andreessen attempts to disentangle and examine the topic of "Internet platform" in detail.

Editor's Note: I think this is a good read for both the technically inclined and technophobes...

By analyzing overlooked behavioral cues, researchers are creating a new understanding of organizational effectiveness.

What is the force turning the technological tides? Traditional answers focus on what is essentially the "supply side" of technical change --- the evolution of firm capabilities. Ron Adner, Associate Professor of Strategy and Management at INSEAD and Daniel Levinthal Professor of Management at Wharton, argue that in fields such as electronics and information technology, where constraints on technology development are relatively low, technology evolution is increasingly guided by the demand environment.

In their research, the professors find that as technology performance begins to exceed consumers' requirements, firms' abilities to command price premiums for superior performance erodes. In competitive environments, such as the market for personal computers, this imbalance between consumer requirements and product performance leads firms to offer products of increasingly high performance at a stable price. The research sheds light on competition in such regimes and suggests a new approach to evaluating the technology life cycle and firms' position within it.

The open source model can play an important role in innovation, but know its limitations.

Posting jobs on the Web is easy. It's sifting through hundreds of resumés that's a pain.

An umbrella term for an emerging core of technologies, trends, and principles, Web 2.0 is not only changing what's on the Web, but also how it works. Many believe that CIOs who understand these new applications and technologies--and apply the benefits early on--stand to greatly improve internal business processes. Among the biggest advantages is better collaboration with customers, partners, and suppliers, as well as among internal users.

Nanotechnology often inspires images of "science fiction" rather than science. The word conjures visions of technological marvels such as atoms and molecules joining together to create materials hundreds of times lighter yet stronger than steel. This material is used to build "carbon nanotubes," allowing pod-like crawlers to carry cargo thousands of miles up to a space station. Hollywood caters to the fiction, most recently by portraying Spiderman's Green Goblin's alter ego as a nanotechnologist. But remove the artistic license and the business implications of the science offer an equally compelling story.

The term "hydrogen economy" is the title of a recent book [Rifkin, 2002], but the concept of using hydrogen as fuel for transportation systems has been advocated by environmentalists and others for at least three decades. There is no universally accepted definition of the "hydrogen economy," but it is generally viewed as the replacement of the vast majority of petroleum fuels used by transportation vehicles of all kinds (automobiles, trucks, trains, and aircraft) with hydrogen that is burned in internal-combustion engines, external-combustion (jet) engines, or preferably, used in fuel cells to more efficiently generate power for transportation.

Why should it take more than a quarter of a century to achieve the hydrogen economy? One can postulate many reasons - such as the difficulty of the technologies involved, the high costs involved, and competition for public funds with other worthy programs. Before hydrogen can achieve its promise, all stakeholders must work together to overcome an array of technical, economic, and institutional challenges. This article attempts to clarify and put in perspective these challenges.

Editor's Note: a bit technical at points, but still readable by the layperson...

Ever since the world wide web exploded in the mid-1990s, attempts have been made to extend its basic presentation format to create a richer, more meaningful network of information. Internet users have envisioned a web that presents information that can not only be read by humans but also be understood by computers.

Why does that matter? The reason is that it could usher in entirely new ways of doing business. The web could evolve from a collection of loosely linked pages to an enormous database that could be searched and filtered and re-assembled in new ways.

For example, when someone views information on a web page about an upcoming concert, why can't he instantly add it to his personal calendar? Or when a person's contact information is displayed, why can't it be added to a contact list or cell phone directory with a single click? The reason is that the HTML [hypertext markup language] tags used to display these items on the web don't describe what they mean. If one web site links to another, the link doesn't carry any information about why the sites are linked. But what if it did? And what if every event listed on a web page could also be read by software that could understand its date, time and location?

Picking the right new technology -- and then developing and marketing it correctly -- can catapult a company ahead of its competition, expand its customer base and boost profits. For decades, top minds in research and development have relied on the S-curve theory to help them make those decisions. But research by Ashish Sood, an assistant professor of marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School, and a colleague indicate that the theory is flawed and a new approach is much needed.

Deploying a relational database on almost any scale requires a thorough understanding of the fundamental concepts and rules that govern their behavior. This excerpt from Get It Done With MySQL 5 explains the fundamental concepts underlying relational databases, including sets, tables, Codd's 12 Rules, normalization, and the limits of the relational model. No matter which database application software you choose, understanding these concepts is essential before deploying any relational database.

Describes some very important and very elusive IT concepts including:
- eXtensible markup language (XML)
- Universal description, discovery, and integration (UDDI)
- Web services description language (WDSL)
- Simple object access protocol (SOAP)
- Service oriented architectures (SOA)
- Business Process Management (BPM)
- Business process execution language (BPEL)

Utility computing aims to transform IT into a pay-as-you go service. That sounds far simpler than it is.

RFID technology may well revolutionize how companies track their products.

Editor's Note: this article is a bit topical, but I found its discussion of the pitfalls of RFID useful (and usually ignored in similar articles)

The successful transfer of new technologies from the research laboratory to the commercial sector has many benefits: the creation of wealth, new jobs and new solutions to society's problems. For nearly three decades, Stanford University has been a leader in technology transfer, fostering the growth of northern California's Silicon Valley and the biotechnology industry and providing a model for other research and educational institutions across the country and the globe.

Note: Older EBF articles are not currently online. I'm not sure if this is temporary or permanent. If you click you will be taken to the Archive.org site to find an archived copy.

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Every so often a technological innovation, social revolution or geopolitical shift fundamentally changes the business landscape, providing the nimble with new opportunities for profit and the complacent or foolhardy with threats to their survival. But how can CEOs and other members of the top team distinguish a mirage from the real thing? Where should we be looking? Is technology the only source - or at least the main one? What does history teach us about those who succeed in spotting the right trends and those who fail?

These are some of the questions addressed by EBF's distinguished panel of contributors - a mix of academics, business advisors and business executives. Their rich variety of perspectives are broadly grouped into three main themes:
1. Dangers of Next Big Thing thinking (Thomas Davenpor, Enrique Dans)
2. The Next Big Thing and Technology (Will Hutton and Gwendolyn Carpenter, Peter Cochrane, Josephine Green, Bo Parker)
3. Next Big Thing case studies (Julian Perkin, Tim Harper, Michael Mainelli)

Editor's Note: I found the articles by Thomas Davenport, Peter Cochrane, Tim Harper, and Michael Mainelli to be the most interesting.

Is it time to add wireless access to your employees' desktops? Such a loaded question is inevitably answered with some head shaking and hand wringing from business-technology managers. For some, wireless has been a priority since the early 1990s. But even for companies without a strategic need--without a single application around which to rally a wireless strategy--wireless technologies can still offer modest productivity gains that are worthwhile.

Editor's Note: for more on wi-fi wireless technology and its impact, see the A.T. Kearney article, "How Wireless Changes the Way We Work: Tracking Disruption"
http://www.atkearney.com/main.taf?p=5,3,1,76

A new computing paradigm known as web services is quickly gathering momentum in enterprise IT. Web services represent an emerging model for developing and deploying enterprise software applications that promises to fundamentally change not only the way companies build and deploy software, but also how they communicate with their partners and customers.

This increased flexibility emerges because web services will likely change the fundamental cost structure of enterprise application integration (EAI).

Still, notwithstanding the enthusiasm and the major investments in product development made by software vendors, the deployment of web services is very much in its infancy, and many questions remain: What are the practical implications for early adopters? What problems can web services help solve today? What are the first steps?

Note: Darwin Magazine is now dead. Some articles are moving to CIO. I will try to update the links when I have time...

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U.S. businesses hold 15 million meetings per day. No wonder it's hard to reach a decision. But there are software tools that can help - group decision support systems (GDSS).

Next generation Auto-ID technologies promise a range of business benefits in many industries. This paper from the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change discusses the potential benefits across the value chain, and business models for deploying Auto-ID.

"A new company called Liquid Engines Inc. can't do much about death, but corporate taxes are another matter.

At a time when technology start-ups are rare and technological innovation even rarer, this Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company plans to launch an entire suite of products designed to help companies manage financial performance. The first product, out later this month, is tax-planning software that can, Liquid Engines claims, fully analyze in 5 to 10 minutes the kinds of mind-numbing tax situations that typically keep teams of consultants busy for weeks - situations involving perhaps scores of business units operating across dozens of states, each with hundreds of unique tax regulations.

Relying on a powerful econometric modeling technique called hedonics, the software can cope with any number of financial constraints and variables and zero in on the optimal solution to virtually any corporate tax-planning problem, claims CEO Joe Fantuzzi."

Editor's Note: this article starts mid-way down the page (it's the second of two articles in CFO's July techwatch section).

New applications and business drivers are fueling renewed interest in document-imaging systems.

Larry Downes, coauthor of Unleashing the Killer App, deconstructs the new-order IT architecture that will connect tomorrow's information supply chain.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has come in and out of vogue more times than Madonna in the past 20 years: it has been hyped and then, having failed to live up to the hype, been discredited until being revived again. AI's biggest enemy may be the promises made by its proponents. Nonetheless, the AI-development community has generated techniques that are beginning to show promise for real business applications. The following exhibits introduce three types of AI, along with real business applications for each.